continued from Chapter 7 Turning Curses to Blessings

…joy,

Joy is important because the joy of the Lord is your strength. But the enemy would like to steal your joy, if he can, so he can weaken you. Otherwise, he can’t beat you. Look, if the joy of the Lord is your strength, Satan has to steal your strength, your joy, in order to be successful against you. But when your joy is full, he can’t even get into the same room with you! Joy is really important, but when the joy is lacking, walking in love is how we fill the joy bucket.

…peace,

Until love and joy overflow, there can’t be peace. “Unity in the Spirit in the bond of peace.” is not about doctrine. God didn’t put these fruit in this order by accident. I’ve had to change so many doctrines that I held before. And I thought I had it down pat. I still think I’ve got it down pat, and then the Lord shows me how my doctrine needs some fine-tuning and I have to change again! God gives more grace to the humble. Our humility does not have to be to people, but it has to be to God. The word “Lord” means, “Boss.” So, when he says that we should do something, we don’t go by how we feel but we take him at his word. By the way, it is love to obey. That results in joy and then yields a peace in your heart. The joy bucket cascades into the peace bucket!

…longsuffering,

You can’t have longsuffering unless love, joy, and peace are already there. Otherwise, you would just be worshipping your suffering. Then you’d have a suffering ceremony and invite people over. You’d publish suffering newsletters and you’d say, “Look at my scars!”

…gentleness,

I’ll tell you, it took a lot of love for me to become gentle, because I was not gentle. You really have to work on these things. I’m a warrior and I admit that I love to fight and I love to get into battle. But if you get so caught up in the battle all the time, you’re not gentle when you need to be. So, what brings a balance? Love, joy, peace, and longsuffering! These have to overflow before there can be gentleness.

…goodness

Goodness is the next bucket in line. All of this fruit is not something you accomplish and polish up and put a wax coat on it. You’re supposed to feed on it. This fruit is Spirit food! You’ve heard of soul food? Well, this is Spirit food. There really is a difference between soul and spirit. By the way, I do like soul food, but I love Spirit food more! This fruit is fruit of the Spirit. You get weary and then you grab one of those big old goodness fruits and you eat. Do you notice how you like to have an apple shine, even if you do eat it? This fruit is there to feed on and God help you if there is no fruit in your basket!

Do you see why Israel became so miserable? They got to the point, where there was no fruit in their basket, and they denied the Lord Jesus. We as Christians have to be very careful that we do not fall into the same trap.

…faith,

Once you have the rest of the fruit, you will have faith. You can even have a faith ministry. This is easy to achieve because you have all this fruit just pushing right along. And how does faith come? We are used to hearing that ‘faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Faith also comes as we walk in the other fruit, starting with love.

Faith is spiritual. Many times new Christians or weakened Christians try to make themselves faith Christians. But this is something that you cannot do on your own. Becoming a faith Christian requires doing the love and filling the preceding buckets. Your faith will build and overflow because all of this is pointing to a relationship with the Lord Jesus. As we walk in love, we walk with Jesus.

…meekness,

Until faith and all the fruit preceding it overflows, we can’t have meekness. Being meek is saying, O.K., Lord, I’ll do it! Can I choose where, how and when I’m going to be meek? No! God wants meekness from us. We can get to the point where we are so caught up in our own game plan, that it can become a god to us. We have to be very careful that we are meek according to God’s word.

…temperance: against such there is no law.

This “such” includes all the fruit, not just temperance. There are people who want to say, “I don’t live under the law; this is the grace administration and I can do what I please. I know about dispensations.” This is the grace administration, but we cannot live under the fullness of grace unless we have fruit of the Spirit in our lives. If we live in sin, it brings rotten flesh fruit. Doing things by the flesh brings us under the Law. The Law is for the lawless. The kind of fruit we have in our life or the lack of good fruit shows how much authority the Law still has.

If we are lacking good fruit in our life, we need to go back to the love bucket and make sure it does not have a hole in it. Fill up your buckets, starting with love and watch how they overflow to produce much spiritual fruit. The fresh overflowing will always be evident.