Fruit of the Spirit “Love”

In a world full of chaos, turmoil and our own desires, there are two forces, which are constantly fighting in our lives. God desires us to see all people through the eyes of Christ. I want to begin with asking each of you a question. Do not hold back! Please rate yourself honestly on a scale from (1) to (10), on the fruit of the Spirit in your own personal life. On a scale of (1) to (10), (10) means this is the way I am acting right now at this very moment, and (1) means I am not bearing fruit and I certainly have a long, long way to go.

For example, if you are walking down the street enjoying the fresh, cool breeze in the early morning and suddenly you look down at the sidewalk and you see a brand new crispy clean one hundred dollar bill. What should you do? Your first instinct will be to cry out to Jesus and say “Hallelujah Thank you Jesus for the blessing”! Then something inside of you says to look around to see if someone is playing a trick on you or if this is real. There will be a lot of ideas that flood your mind, before you bend down to pick up that new one hundred dollar bill. Then of course, the thought comes maybe this is not a financial blessing, but actually this lost one hundred dollar bill belongs to a person who worked diligently hard to make ends meet. In fact, you even wonder if this money was supposed to be used for food or bills.

According to the Bible, the love of money is the root of all evil (I Timothy 6:10). Now, as a Christian, this entire scenario poses a problem. Let us go back to our fruit scale of (1) to (10). What is the right thing to do in this situation? Our selfish desire would be to check once again to see if anybody is watching and if not, then we quickly place the one hundred dollar bill in our pocket. However, if we desire to have love and to walk in the fruit of the Spirit; then although it may be painful to turn the money in we must do what Christ commands us to do. It is better to be compassionate and go the extra mile to do the right thing even if it hurts. We must never forget that God sees and hears everything; and that our treasures are stored in heaven.

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