The eternal life of God is the fruit of the Spirit; it flows into our spirit, through the first love gate in our spirit.
We want to be filled with the Spirit so we need to be aware of the gate way that the Spirit flows into.
First love speaks of an intimate relationship where we are receiving and giving love. Love is not something that is stationary
First love is a divine love and we become aware of it when our spirit comes alive to God. As God reveals Himself to us we become aware of His love for us as it flows into our spirit and then we respond to it by loving him back.
As our awareness of God’s love for us increases, our capacity to love Him back increases. In learning how to love God we first of all have to be a good receiver. It takes God to love God. So His love for us has to fill us, to be shed abroad in our whole heart, penetrating every area of our lives, which moves us to lay down our life for Him.
We do not love God with a human love that fails, but we love Him with the identical love, that He first loved us with. This is a divine love and is a result of His Spirit moving in us.
We become aware of the fruit of the Spirit through a flow of the Spirit where the river of life is flowing, the Spirit of God is moving.
Worship is one of the highest expressions of loving God and we can become aware of the presence of the Lord through it, when our heart is full of worship, it opens up the revelation gate in our spirit.
The love of God is active, it isn’t just a love that is there or a joy that is there. The fruit of the Spirit is always directed toward someone. The love of God is very intentional. The essential meaning in agape is an exercise of the will of God in deliberate choice.
Can there be the fruit of a long-suffering unless there is someone or something that you’re long-suffering about? Can there be any kindness unless that kindness is directed toward someone?
Where the fruit of the Spirit is, there is love—and that love is directed towards someone. There is joy—and that joy is towards someone. Paul, in writing to the Philippians, called them his joy and crown. There were to him an expression of joy; he would get so excited when He saw God moving in their lives. They were a crown of rejoicing to him.
We always think of peace in relationship to ourselves, that we can tune into the Lord, so that His peace is flowing into us, but it is also something that we should be ministering. People, who are troubled, will be drawn just to talk to us when they are in a hard situation, because of the focus of peace that we can direct toward them. In our presence they will seem to quiet down and the confusion ends.
Even if we do not have a word from the Lord to them, just by talking to us there problem will be dissipated. This is what the fruit of the Spirit is all about—the love, the joy, the peace, and the longsuffering.
Longsuffering has to be directed towards someone; so that it has a target, God always has a few in the church who so very much in need of His longsuffering beamed toward them. If there are none, God will bring in a few so that we can show His longsuffering. We can’t give up on anyone; we can’t be discouraged; because God sends them so that He can show His longsuffering and kindness through us toward them.
It’s easy to be friendly and kind to someone who will be that way to us, but within this flow of divine love that God is bringing forth is a response of kindness towards everyone.
Contrary behavior towards us does not provoke us, when the love of God is flowing in us, and we respond with kindness instead of getting upset.
When people put up icy walls to one another we melt them with the warmth of the kindness of the Lord that is beamed toward them. It is something that we release into the atmosphere, like a ray gun. When that kindness of the Lord is beamed toward the people who are isolated within themselves, desiring and needing so much, we melt the walls with the kindness and goodness of the Holy Spirit.
They said of Barnabas when he went to Antioch—that he was a good man—but where did that goodness came from? Goodness is always beamed towards someone. Goodness is not a vague quality for then you’re good for nothing. But we are good because the goodness of the Lord comes through us.
What is the faithfulness of the Lord that worked in us? Responsibility is a better word even than faithfulness. When we say a brother is a faithful elder, it means he carries the people in his heart. He has the sense of responsibility and he performs it in the Spirit. One of the most responsible duties we know on the human level is a mother caring for her little one—that is faithfulness But God says, “My faithfulness, my responsibility for you is greater than a mother’s love. They can forget but I’ll not forget you.”
When God starts working that same faithfulness in the elders of our church, we can feel their responsibility toward us when you go to them in a need. Faithfulness involves more than a sense of duty, for there may be reluctance in that or a drawing back at the total involvement—but not so with responsibility. Faithfulness means that I give my heart to the Lord to serve His people. This is the fruit of the Spirit.
Meekness— is that which never rises up against another person; for in every encounter between two people there’s that thing within the heart that reaches out to see if it will encounter hostility or what the reaction will be.
The fruit of the Spirit, meekness, is that which enables us, without defensiveness, without aggressiveness, in the meekness of Christ, to meet a person and disarm them of all their hostility and aggressiveness because they find nothing in our spirit to fight or overcome. It’s pointless for them to be aggressive because there is nothing to overcome. It’s pointless for them to be defensive for there’s nothing in us that will criticize them. And so the meekness of Christ comes through us and wins them. This is the fruit of the Spirit.
Self-control—that which puts a rein upon all of our weakness, harnesses us to a nature and a force greater than ourselves, enables us to live by a power and an acquired spiritual instinct that comes from the Holy Spirit, that controls us in every situation where we know the flesh would fail.
When we see a person exercising self-control we may say, “I don’t know how they could take it. I don’t know how they were able to bear It.” it was the Holy Spirit that gave them that control.
We need to see the fruit of the Spirit as it really is. It is the flow of the Spirit flowing into our spirit, soul and body out into the world producing the atmosphere of the Kingdom of God.