Everything the enemy seeks to bring against us, we can turn it around by moving in the opposite spirit. The enemy wants to get to our spirit so that it breaks its connection to God.
Whatever comes against us to oppress us should trigger us to move in the opposite spirit. If we feel depressed we should start rejoicing. If we feel fear, we need to start believing and speak who God is for us. I thank you lord that you meet all of my needs according to your riches in glory.
When we move in a negative emotion or thought we are empowering the enemy against ourselves. Negative thinking and emotions attract the enemy; we give off an aura (a distinctive quality that surrounds us) which the enemy recognizes.
MORE THAN A CONQUEROR
As we learn how to walk in the spirit, we will become more than a conqueror and the enemy won’t even show up for the fight.
There is no law against the fruit of the Spirit and it gives us immunity to the enemy, nothing he has can penetrate it.
When we practice the fruit of the spirit, we are becoming Christ like, we are fulfilling our primary destiny.
DEVELOPING FRUIT
What particular fruit of the spirit is The Father developing in us at this time? When God wants to teach us a particular aspect of His nature, He will begin to reveal that to us, so that we can practice it, so that we are enabled to tune into it at any time.
We love because He first loved us. God reveals His love to us so that we are enabled to appropriate it and then minister it to other’s.
Whatever God is He is persistently. He will overwhelm us with His goodness, over and over again, until we become that aspect of His nature.
DEVELOPING INTIMACY
When we learn how to develop intimacy with the Lord, He will begin to overwhelm us with the different aspects of His nature. He wants to totally penetrate us so that our personality becomes fashioned after His.
The moving of the Spirit of God inside of us affects every part of us, the way we think, the way we speak, the way we walk and the way in which we engage with people.
Through the infilling of the Spirit he wants to possess us until we are thoroughly possessed by His love, joy, peace, patience, and all the attributes of His Spirit until we can feel the nature of God inside of us.
God gave us emotions so that we could feel Him. Love is not just an action it is an emotion; we are supposed to feel it. We are supposed to feel peaceful. We are supposed to feel joyful and patient. God wants us to feel things. We need to experience God in our emotions.
God wants to touch us emotionally. He wants to make us emotionally whole. It is the will of God to be as Happy as he is that we are as peaceful as He is.
We are transformed through the renewing of our mind by thinking in line with the fruit of the Spirit. It is through the fruit of the Spirit that we begin to think and feel like Him. God has chosen our emotions for us which is the result of His Spirit flowing into us.
It is through the renewing of our mind that our mind can be free from worry, fear, anxiety, frustration, anger and bitterness.
FAITH WORKS
Our faith begins to work when we are filled with the fruit of the Spirit. Our faith works just fine when we are filled with love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, meekness and self control.
Faith works by love, so God wants us to feel His love for us in such a degree that our automatic response is to believe Him. God wants to touch our emotions to such an extent that faith is a result.
The joy of the lord is a source of strength. When we are full of joy it is easy to believe God.
All our circumstances in life are about practicing the fruit of the Spirit so that we can develop His nature in our life experience.
THE NATURE OF GOD
The nature of God sets us free from the enemy. Everything that works for us in Christ automatically works against the devil. The fruit of the Spirit is an encounter with God that leads us into an ongoing experience which opens us up to the fullness of who God is for us, who God is in us and becomes the lifestyle that He takes the greatest pleasure in.
What God is offering us is his unchanging self. So that we too can become unchanging in our way of life, that means unchanging in our nature and character, unchanging in the sense of I am going to become like Jesus no matter what happens in my life. When we become unchanging in that desire, we become constant and consistent in our approach to people and circumstances regardless of whether they are good or bad.
The fruit of the Spirit gives us confidence in His relationship with us. As we commit ourselves to practicing the fruit of the Spirit, we are appropriating His character. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, so the fruit of the Spirit is where we learn to abide in God’s nature.
IT IS NOT ONLY FRUIT IT IS POWER
The fruit of the Spirit is the power of God to enable us to become Christ like.
When we look at love, love is determined affection. Love is about cherishing, it is about treasuring. Love is the tangible favor and goodness of God. Love demonstrates loving-kindness. It is about having a regard for someone with love. It is about taking delight in someone or something, so that we cause that person to feel beloved just because we are a friend in their life.
Joy is about an intensity of gladness. We cannot help but smile. Joy is about delight; it is bigger than we are, and it is bigger than all our circumstances.
This is why James said to count everything as joy; we overwhelm our circumstances with the joy of the Lord. We overwhelm our situation with the happiness of God. There is an intensity of gladness, there is a delight.
Joy is who God is, rejoicing is our response to who God is. When we are worshiping, we like to rejoice in the fact that God is the happiest person we know. Joy is about elation, it is about having a sense of wonder. It is taking absolute pleasure in someone or something, it is being jubilant, it is being cheerful, triumphant, and celebratory.
When we are practicing joy we are learning the art of celebration. What are we celebrating? God is for me, He is with me, He is for me, He is on my side, He is in me, He surrounds me, everything about him is for me and He will help me. I am rejoicing in the fact that I know what God is like.
Peace is a state of being quite, it is about learning to be calm, to be restful, it is a freedom from disturbance, it is an ease of mind. It is about stillness, having an inclination towards calm, so that when we are walking into a troubled situation we bring the peace of God with us. When we walk into a room it should make a difference in the atmosphere.
Peace is about being undisturbed, untroubled, content, composed, and free from strife. All these things are encounters and experiences that make us Christ like.
Patience is the quality of being able to persevere under pressure with a good heart and mind. It is about endurance without complaint, not easily provoked, having a calm expectation, being even tempered. It is a quiet persistence in the nature of God.
Kindness is about being considerate, being thoughtful towards someone, being benevolent, compassionate, generous, loving, showing superior qualities of grace.
Goodness is about looking after someone else’s welfare, acting with honor, being favorable towards someone, blessing them, lifting them up, and giving them a divine advantage.
Faithfulness is about being consistent, constant, unceasing, firm in our promise, loyal, reliable, unwavering, keeping our word, being trustworthy.
Gentleness is about having a powerful humility, being meek, merciful, sweet spirited, like a dove, tenderhearted, overcoming.
Self-control is about being restrained, having a good frame of heart and mind, exercising discretion, believing the best about someone. Being composed and disciplined and even tempered, having a moderating influence on people and situations.
These are all the attributes that God regularly practices in His relationship with us. If God didn’t practice the fruit of the Spirit we would all be dead. If all of those things work for us and compel us to become like Christ, then they will also work against the enemy. In the kingdom what works for us automatically works against the enemy.
PRACTICING THE FRUIT ON PEOPLE
We are to practice the fruit of the Spirit on every person we meet, the more difficult the person the better the opportunity for the fruit to grow. We become Christ like by practicing the fruit of the Spirit on people.
God has provided a particular fruit of the Spirit to all the negative experiences of life. God has made provision for ever negative situation by giving us the fruit of His Spirit.
Every time we experience a negative emotion it becomes a trigger, a pointer to a particular aspect of God’s character that he wants to develop in our lives.
God will bring a certain kind of person into our life to teach us about His nature even if that person doesn’t like us. Every person we meet can help us grow spiritually as we tune into God’s heart for them, and how He wants us to respond to them.
We are to love our enemies and bless those who persecute us. The purpose of an enemy is to teach us to love better, where we have to reach into God so that His love is flowing in our heart towards those who persecute us. Rather than being offended, we come under the empowering presence of Love.
Persecution teaches us the power of blessing. Rather than coming under the pressure of persecution, we respond by blessing the person. We have to activate our spirit by speaking in a way that blesses the person and then we become more aware of the Spirit of God than what is coming against us. Through the infilling of the Spirit there is a counter force greater that what is coming against us.
We can come under persecution and be diminished in our anointing, or come under the power of blessing and be elevated, to be lifted up in our spirit.
Heb 10:24 let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good works. Love is an action. Love is doing something. Love is involvement.
Rom 12:20 if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty give him a drink, for in so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head. This is the spirit of retribution by kindness, ministering the goodness of God to lead the heart of an enemy to repentance. We repay him by loving-kindness, for the wrong that he has done to us. We are releasing them from the wrong and loving them because that is the nature of God. God has provided a fruit of the spirit to every negative situation.
OVERCOMING TRIBULATION
John 16:33 in the world you will have tribulation, but cheer up, I have overcome the world. When we have tribulation, we need to get excited because it is here to teach us how to be cheerful.
Count it all joy; we are to overwhelm every situation with the joy of the lord. We have to practice being happy. The joy of the lord is a constant, it is a river that can be continually flowing in our lives. God gives us permission to count everything as joy. It doesn’t matter whether it is good, bad or ugly we can always rejoice because of who God is for us in every circumstance or any relational encounter.
We don’t ask the lord for peace because He has already given it to us. My peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you, do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful, this is not an option.
Being anxious, having a troubled heart, a fearful mind is not an option because the lord left His peace with us so that we would not have to be troubled, so that we wouldn’t have to be fearful.
When you feel troubled or fearful, our spirit has access to the peace of the Lord. We just need to learn how to lay a hold of it, how to tune into it.
God has provided peace to us, so that we never have to be troubled or fearful, we just need to learn how to use it. If we use it, like everything else in the kingdom, it grows by use.
God is not content with us being filled with peace; He wants us to overflow with it, so that it produces an atmosphere around us. God has provided peace to us like a river, so that we can go into troubled neighborhoods and start giving the peace of God to that neighborhood. Releasing peace in a neighborhood is more powerful than the presence of the police in that neighborhood. The kingdom overwhelms everything in the world.
2thes 3:16 may the lord of peace himself continually grant you peace in every circumstance.
LONGSUFFERING TOWARD PEOPLE
If we don’t practice the truth we don’t believe it. If we don’t practice the word we don’t know it. In the bible knowledge and experience are the same thing. God doesn’t want us to know stuff in our head, He wants us to know it in our heart and through our life and through our eyes, the way we see people, the way we talk to people, the way that we walk around in this world. He wants us to have experiences of Him that touch people around us. He is granting us peace in every circumstance.
God has provided longsuffering and patience to us in all those situations. We have people in our life whose role seems to be to empower us to become long suffering. Longsuffering has to do with people, patience has to do with circumstances.
2tim 2:24 the lord’s bondservant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient.
When we are wronged, we all want to defend ourselves, we want to let everyone know that we have been wronged, we need to practice longsuffering.
Rom 15:5 may the God who gives patience and encouragement, grant you to be of the same mind. God is giving us encouragement and patience in all of our circumstances
We have been programmed to the way that the world works, we must become open to the way the kingdom of heaven works. We are citizens of heaven living here on earth; we are in the world but not of it. The world around us has nothing to teach us about living properly with Jesus.
In heaven people live a certain way, the law of the Spirit of life governs the kingdom of heaven. We are taking our directives from the kingdom of heaven because we are a citizen of heaven living here on earth.
Things are available to us that are not available to people in the world and the lord wants us to be overwhelmed and full of those things so that the world can catch the overflow.
So that when we walk into someone’s life, we can make a difference just by being there. We can bring the peace of God, the joy of the Lord, we can bring the love of God into someone’s life because we are overflowing with the presence of God because that is what it means to be made in His image. It is an overcoming lifestyle.
1 peter 2:20 when you do what is right and suffer for it and you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. When there is some unjust thing going on in our life the lord is saying don’t take retribution on a natural level. If we patiently endure, His favor will come into our life and circumstances, and He will sort it out better than we can possibly imagine.
We are so concerned sometimes that someone is going to take advantage of us. Everybody we do business with has to be advantaged. Everyone we come into contact with should be advantaged. When we apply kingdom principles in our business the king shows up.
Love your enemies, do good and lend, expecting nothing in return and your reward will be great and you will be sons, for He himself is kind to evil and ungrateful men. It is just the nature of God.
Col 3:12 put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bearing with one another and forgiving each other whoever has a complaint against anyone just as the lord forgave you so also should we.
We do not have a right to be offended. If we are easily offended it means one thing, that we don’t yet have an intimate relationship with the comforter, where His comfort is flowing into us. We are not experiencing God’s presence in that area of our lives.
God’s love to us is a constant even when we were falling short; we need to show that same love to others. If we are being offended, we are not being comforted; His love is not flowing in our heart.
We have no right to be wounded; we have a right to be healed. We don’t have a right to be offended; we have a right to be compassionate and forgiving.
We are use to exercising all our self rights, thinking that we have a right to be angry, because they did that. He made me so angry; we are justifying it because they made me angry.
The truth is No one makes us angry, we yield to it, and we choose it. Through our spiritual connection with God we can choose love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, goodness, mercy and so forth. We could have chosen all those brilliant things and but instead we choose anger, that is foolish.
Some people do the anger thing prophetically, if they say this, then I am going to be really angry. We are planning to get angry. This is our response to life? We are planning to be angry even if they don’t do anything. It is on our agenda.
ACTS OF GOODNESS
Gal 6:10 talking about goodness says, while we have opportunity let’s do good to all men, especially to those in the household of faith. We are not to ration ourselves in goodness. We plan to do good to everyone in some way. Our heart can be touched by the goodness of God.
Eph 2:10 God has prepared acts of goodness we can step into. When we get in difficult situations, the lord is right there saying- act of goodness prepared.
We need to be able to hear the lord giving us instructions, because He is right there with us.
2tim 2;13 if we are faithless, yet He abides faithful for He cannot deny himself. God loves faithfulness so much that even if we are being faithless to Him, He will still be faithful to us. He cannot deny who He is. He enjoys faithfulness so much; He is going to let us have it even if we don’t deserve it.
Rom 3:3 if some did not believe, their unfaithfulness will not nullify the faithfulness of God. God is going to be faithful no matter what we do, so we need to get over our self.
God has allocated specific fruits of the Spirit, so that we may not come under a negative mindset and reaction but instead we can learn to grow up into Christ by practicing the nature of God to people in all our life situations. Practicing the fruit of the Spirit allows us to develop self-control in the inner man so that we are not taken in by the schemes of the enemy.
2 peter1:5 if these qualities are yours and increasing they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our lord Jesus Christ. As long as we practice these things we will never stumble.
Moving in the opposite spirit is a vital part of our development in Christ, and the fruit of the Spirit is essential to that growth.
Self-control empowers us to overcome negative emotions and unstable thoughts so that we become free to portray the nature of God.
So, God allocates a fruit of the Spirit to a negative so that we can choose the spirit and not the flesh.
The kindness of God leads us to repentance. It is impossible to repent unless we have experienced the kindness of God. The goodness of God brings people to repentance so that when we observe a person’s sin, our only act of judgment is to in love determine how much goodness and kindness is required to empower that person to be touched by God.
When people behave unrighteous towards us, we do not have to move in judgment, our response is how much goodness and kindness does this person need for them to receive a touch from God. And what the lord tells us is what we give them. It is called moving in the opposite spirit.
In every relationship we are asking how much grace does this person need? How much love does this person need? How much peace and joy does the Lord want us to give away into this person’s life?
WAGING WAR ON NEGATIVITY
It is vital that we wage war on all negativity in our own lives so that when we are free of negativity, then we can wage war on negativity all around us. And we do that by walking and moving in the fruit of the spirit.
Replacing a negative by a fruit of the Spirit causes us to grow up into who Jesus is. The fruit of the spirit is a gift that we can give to someone else.
When we impart the Spirit of God to a person, a touch of peace, joy, love, they then have a connection with God through us. This opens up the door for them to receive the Spirit of God so that they can have their own intimate relationship to God.
A fruit of the Spirit changes the atmosphere in our heart, it encourages a climate of faith, and it develops a relationship with a God on a more intimate level.
When we only focus on positive things and we are not going to engage in anything negative ourselves, it makes us different to be around. People will begin to adjust their behavior with ours. The more antagonistic the person gets with us, the more we are going to love them.
We will eventually win because there is an inexhaustible supply of love behind us. Love always wins. We wear people out with our kindness. When we choose no matter what other people do, this is how we want to show up; it is then that nothing can work against us.
When we start to practice the fruit of the Spirit and give ourselves to it, we will see a difference in ourselves. We get stronger and our spirit gets bigger, and we become more like Jesus.
As we practice the fruit of the Spirit more and more of the nature of God gets developed in us. As we sow a fruit of the Spirit into someone’s life we will reap it back into our own life. What we sow we reap. If we sow peace we are going to get peace. If we sow love we are going to be loved. If we sow joy we are going to receive joy. If we sow negativity we are going to receive that as well. Opposition attaches to what we don’t remove.
MAINTAINING OUR SPIRTUAL CONECTION
When we feel the presence of God manifested in a fruit of the Spirit, if you want to keep that feeling, then we must practice it. It is a simple thing that is called abiding.
When we have a spiritual connection or condition, then we can maintain it. If we abide in it, it gets easier and easier to practice it. The more we practice the more we abide, the more we abide the more we practice. It is a cycle, of sowing and reaping.
The fruit of the Spirit allows us to have self-control. It empowers the presence of God in our circumstances. And it allows us to partner with the Spirit of breakthrough.
The fruit of the Spirit is already in us and we can release it to any situation that we want. We may know someone who is astonishingly irritating. So we allocate-distribute patience to them. That person has value in the kingdom and if we minister patience to them, they will start to experience it.
Nothing can resist the fruit of the Spirit and nothing will work against it. The fruit of the spirit is in us, we need to use it. We don’t ask the lord to give us long suffering with this person. If God is in us we already have it.
When we use it, it is like anything else in the kingdom, it gets bigger the more we use it. We can be a giant or a grasshopper in patience, it depends how much we want to use it. If we use it, it grows and comes back to us.
We need to practice a fruit of the spirit on each person we are involved with. We minister a fruit of the Spirit to the person and see what happens. We will see what happens in us, and we will see what happens in them. If we have any resistance to that it is because the practice of negativity has got a hold of us. Practicing the fruit of the Spirit is fun. We are going to see some amazing things turn around.
If growing up in God is not our priority, then we are destined to repeat every situation and every test we face. The only true victory is not the resolution of our circumstances; it is in becoming like Jesus in the processes of life.
Moving in the fruit of the Spirit means we have to stop complaining, no more self-pity, no more being the victim. Complaining is the worship language of hell. We are in the kingdom so we are rejoicing, praising, worshiping and giving thanks. We cannot do both, we have to choose one.