The Fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace...

I meet with a couple of wonderful friends every Monday night for Bible study.  We are currently working our way through "Living Beyond Yourself" by Beth Moore.  Okay, first of all if you have never read a Beth Moore book~go out and get one; any of them, they're all amazing.  I love the way she writes, because she doesn't take the time to beat around the bush...she gets right to the point.  If you know me, you know I tend to get lost in the "fluff" of beating around the bush! 

So far we have studied Love, Joy, and Peace (Galations 5:22-23).  God has been working on my heart (over the past few years) about what real love "agape" means.  Agape is so hard for me to wrap my head around.  We are so bombarded with a worldly view of love, that it makes it difficult to understand the love that God teaches about.  Agape always seeks the highest and best for another; agape always flows out of what is right and best; agape never exposes the faults of others.  Agape means that God has called us to love the unloveable.  God has shown me that agape is a divine love; one of which I cannot do on my own, it has to come from Him.  It is a response to His heart rather than my own.  Joy comes from an absolute assumption of His Grace...His unmerited favor towards me.  Knowing that we will not be judged by our works, but that we are saved by Christ's work.  Knowing that God will restore me.  "If God has ordained difficulty for me, He has also ordained restoration for me."  

"Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain,

to the place where you dwell.  Then will I go to the alter of God, to God, my joy and my delight."     

Psalm 43:3-4

I have learned a lot about peace during this study.  Honestly, going into this study I thought that peace would be the "easiest" fruit to study.  You'd think that my thinking that would tip me off by now :)  We started this study in the book of Job.  A book about a man who literally lost everything...his livelihood, his servants, his children, and his health.  Job says it best, "What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me.  I have no peace, no quietness."  (Job 3:25-26)  Job had lost his peace...life is absolutely unbearable without peace.  Peace means having the absence of fear and turmoil, no the absence of pain and grief.  Peace comes knowing that God is in control, ALWAYS.  Even when it doesn't seem like it.  Peace comes when we choose to focus on Christ and not on our circumstances.  

"trust in Him at all times, pour out your hearts to Him, for God is our refuge."  Psalm 62:8