The Spirit's Fruit of Joy

The fruit of the Spirit is…joy.

The second fruit that should grow on the tree of a Christian’s character is joy. This fruit is a little trickery to define since it refers to an affection or emotion of the heart more than it does to an act of the will. But let me try and piece it together, first by contrasting it with the type of joy that the world displays.

The joy of a Christian is not based on material possessions. The world so often finds gladness in goods. We can easily fall into this trap ourselves. The problem with getting our joy from material realities is that as Jesus points out “moth and rust can destroy and thieves can break in and steal.” The joy of a Christian is not rooted in the temporary but the eternal. Here’s a good way to test how much of your joy is wrapped up in something material and temporary: Is there any possession that if you lost it or if it broke down would cause your day to be ruined and your attitude to be soured?

Also, the joy of a Christian is not based on circumstances. Circumstances ebb and flow like the rise and fall of the ocean tide. Not only that, but our feelings about our circumstances, whether they’ve changed or not, can feel like riding a six-flags roller coaster. A tough day at work, a rough day with the kids, a tense meeting with a friend, should not dictate your joy. Don’t mistake this to mean that Christian’s always have to walk around with a plastic smile telling everyone that they feel “swell.” The joy of a Christian can be present even in the midst of real tears over real sorrows.

So if the joy of a Christian is not based on material possessions or dependent on circumstances, what is it? The joy of a Christian is a happiness of heart that is firmly rooted in God’s sovereignty and salvation.

It is rooted in God’s sovereignty, which gives the child of God the unshakeable confidence that despite my circumstances God is on the throne and He does whatever He pleases and will work out all things for His glory and my good.

And it is rooted in God’s salvation, which gives the child of God an eternal possession of greatest value that can never fade or perish unlike the things of earth.

Sadly, we often allow many weeds to grow up in our hearts that rob us of joy. For example, we allow envy, greed, and discontentment to rob us of joy. We wish we had what they have, or if only we could have that newer vehicle or bigger house then we could breath a little, or how can I be joyful when my clothes don’t fit like I’d like them to. Our joy can be robbed from a Gospel-Amnesia. We neglect to meditate on the glories of the Gospel and so our heart grows cold and damp and joyless. Also, we can lose our joy in the Lord when we harbor secret sin and live in hypocrisy. David makes it clear in Psalm 32 that secret sin sucks out all the joy of the Christian life.

For these reasons and many more we need to regularly confess our joylessness and ask the Lord to restore joy to us. Here is a prayer that can guide you down the path of confession:

Our Heavenly Father,

Forgive us for we have lacked the joy of the Spirit in our lives. At times we have honored you with our lips but our hearts have been far from You. We have choked out the joy of the Spirit with discontentment, coveting, grumbling, and hypocrisy. Create in us a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within us. Restore to us the joy of your salvation, and uphold us with a willing spirit.

In the Name of Christ we pray, Amen.

Even though you do not rejoice in the Lord as you ought, you should take great joy in the fact that the Lord rejoices over you. If you don’t believe me read it for yourself from Zephaniah 3:14-17:

Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you; he has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall never again fear evil…The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

Did you catch that? God “rejoices over you with gladness.” God, the infinitely happy God, takes joy in you, his redeemed child. As a Father comes into the room of his little child to sing a sweet lullaby to them, so the Lord sings over you with deep and overflowing affection. How can you not be joyful at news such as that?

The Spirit's Fruit of Love

The fruit of the Spirit is…love.

The first fruit of the Spirit that Paul mentions in his list is love. Love has been referred to as the crown-jewel of Christian character. You could say that it is the fruit above all fruit and the fruit that is present in all the other fruits. But what is love? There are as many answers to this question as there are 80’s rock songs about this topic. Perhaps a better way to phrase the question would be this: What does it mean to love in a distinctively Christian way? Our love should not be conformed to the definitions and standards of culture but to the character of Christ. He is the One in whom the Spirit’s fruit of love flourished purely and perfectly. When we look at Christ’s actions and words they give us this definition and model of love:

Christ-like love is serving and sacrificing for the good of another regardless of whether the act is reciprocated or the person is deserving. [1]

Love is…serving

Jesus demonstrated the servant-hearted nature of love in John 13 when he humbly stooped down to wash the disciples (disgustingly dirty and terribly smelly) feet. After this act of service he said to his disciples: “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.” (John 13:34)

How can you show tangible love by serving those in your church family today, this week, this year?

Love is…sacrificing

As Jesus demonstrated for us in the ultimate act of love on the cross, love requires sacrifice. We are called to emulate that love: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (1 John 3:16)

What sacrifices of time, energy, money, resources, personal ability, and gifts can you make to show love to others?

Love is…for the good of another

True Christian love is about motives and aims just as much as it is about action. You can serve in great ways and sacrifice to great degrees but not have love if you’re motives are impure. Serving to gain recognition is not Christian love. Sacrificing so that others will praise how much you sacrifice for others is not Christian love. Christian love is a self-forgetful others-oriented love. Christ-like love looks at another person and says “What burdens do they have that I can help them bear?” “What needs do they have that I can help them meet?” “What griefs do they have that I can share?” “What trials do they have that I can help walk them through?”

How would you answer those questions in relation to people you know of in your own life?

Love is…regardless of whether the act is reciprocated

Love is never offered as a bargaining chip or as a form of negotiating a mutually beneficial agreement. Love does not look for a “return on investment.” When we act in a “I’ll scratch your back and you scratch mine” sort of way, that’s manipulation not love. Jesus died for us “while we were still sinners” even “enemies” of God. If Jesus had waited to love until we were able to reciprocate that love, we would be perpetually left in a state of “unloved.”

Where are you withholding or being stingy with love because the person isn’t reciprocating the love like you’d hoped they would?

Love is…regardless of whether the person is deserving

One of the most precious realities about Christ’s love toward us is that there is nothing we could do to merit it and we have done everything to demerit it, yet he has freely lavished his love upon us. What ought to separate a Christian’s love from the love that the world shows is that our love extends even to our enemies, those who are actively hostile and opposed to us.

How can you show tangible love to someone in your life who is “undeserving”?

May the Spirit abundantly produce the sweet fruit of Christ-like love in your heart and life.

[1] This definition and some of the explanations are borrowed and adapted from Paul Tripp, What Did You Expect?, p. 188-189.

4 Encouragements to Meditate on God's Word

This is an excerpt from the sermon ‘Resolved to Meditate on God’s Word’

What motivation does the Scripture gives us to encourage our meditation on His Word?

1. To Stir Our Affections

First off, meditating on God’s Word helps to stir and deepen our affections for God and the things of God. 

To illustrate this, one Puritan used the imagery of starting a fire: “Meditating is like trying to build a fire from wet wood. Only those who persevere will produce a flame. When we begin to meditate, often our affections are cold and damp and wet, so all we experience is a bit of smoke. Then as we continue on there are a few sparks here and there. But, at last, if we continue to press on there is a flame of affection and joy that rises up to the Lord.” (A Puritan Theology, p. 896).

Look in our passage to see how the Psalmist shows this link between meditation and affection. Listen to verse 97:

Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.

There is this sort of back and forth relationship between the Word of God and the heart of the Psalmist. Because the Psalmists loves the Law of the Lord, he meditates on it. And the more he meditates on it, the more he grows in his affections for the Lord and His Word. It’s like a classic game of pong.

Look also at what the Psalmist says in verse 103:

How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

You can study how honey comes to be formed, you can read the nutrition facts on the back of a honey jar, you can even interview Winnie the Pooh about the joys of honey, but nothing beats dipping your own hand into the honey jar and letting your own taste buds relish in the delights of honey. To relish the sweetness of honey, you have to let it linger over your tastebuds so that you get the richest enjoyment out of it. 

That’s how we stir and deepen our affections through meditating on God’s Word. If we want our cold damp heart to spark into flames we must persevere over a text. If we want to take in all the sweetness of God’s Word we have to let it linger over our spiritual tastebuds.

The Puritans, who in Church History have really been the loudest cheerleaders for meditating on God’s Word, recommended two particular topics for meditating to stir our affections: Meditate on the (1) Savior and meditate on (2) Sin. That seems to be an odd combination but it is a proper one. You see, the goal of our spiritual growth when it comes to our affections, the desires of our heart, is that they would mirror God’s. Meaning, that we would love what God loves and hate what God hates. Also, as Thomas Watson said, “til sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet.”

So if you want to taste more of the loveliness of Christ, linger over a passage like Colossians 1:15-20. When it comes to the person and work of Christ, this passage is like deep sea diving in the Mariana Trench, no matter how long you swim you’ll never make it to the bottom. And the truths are so deep that the theological pressure almost causes your head to burst, in a good sort of way.

To taste more of the bitterness of sin, start with a topic like pride or coveting or disobeying your parents, look up what the Scriptures have to say about it, and then take some time to ponder these two questions:

(1) Why does a Holy God find pride or coveting or disobeying parents so detestable?

(2) Where in my heart and life do I need to confess pride or coveting or disobeying parents?

Meditate on God’s Word helps to stir and deepen your affections.

2. To Guide Our Prayers

Second motivation to meditation: Meditating on God’s Word helps to guide and inspire our prayers.

Have you ever felt in the act of praying that your prayers are scattered and shallow or your distracted and start running down rabbit trails in your mind or you come to prayer but you feel like a car with a dead battery that won’t turn over? Meditating on a particular passage of Scripture is a wonderful remedy for that kind of prayerless praying that we often experience. When you lack motivation to pray or don’t have the foggiest clue what to pray, the best recourse is to pray God’s Word back to Him. Take a text of Scripture and transpose it into a personal prayer. Meditating and Praying is like holy God-approved multitasking. 

One practical way to see the link between meditating and praying is to think of every passage as a house of prayer and inside that house are 4 rooms that you should walk into. The 4 rooms are Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication, the 4 different types of prayers. So let’s take Psalm 23:1 as an example: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” 

First, you enter the room of Adoration: Lord, what a marvelous God you are, that you would watch over and provide for lowly sheep like us. 

Then, you walk into the room of Confession: Lord, I have wandered this week from your Shepherding-care and been anxious and worrisome because I have lacked trust that you would provide for all my needs.

Next, you come into the room of Thanksgiving: Lord, I thank you for how you guided me through another year of ministry. Thank you for providing our family with another child and a beautiful undeserved home.

Finally, you enter the room of Supplication: Lord, I pray that Mrs. Jones would know even in the midst of her grief that you are the kind of shepherd that never leaves of forsakes your sheep. I pray that in the midst of Mr. Jones job loss you would supply all his needs.

By just taking that one verse and viewing as a house for prayer, you can turn it into a time of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication without feeling like you’re lost or at a loss for things to pray.

Meditate on God’s Word to guide and inspire your prayers.

3. To Improve Our Application

A third encouragement for meditating on the Scriptures is that it helps you improve your application of the Word to your life.

It has been rightly said that the goal of digging into God’s Word is not to gather information but to experience transformation. God’s Word must journey through our head, into our heart and out our hands. 

The intended destination is not the head, although that is a necessary and essential stop in the journey, because we need to learn to think God’s thoughts after Him. 

The intended destination is not even the heart, again a necessary and essential stop along the way, because we need to learn to love what God loves and hate what God hates. 

The intended destination is the hands, because, as beloved children of God, we need to learn to act as God acts.

Meditating on God’s Word, truly digesting, regurgitating, then digesting it again, helps move God’s Word from head to heart to hands.

Think of this specifically in relation to listening to the preaching of God’s Word. Listening to the preaching of God’s Word is wonderful, I highly recommend it. You’ll never benefit from the sermon you never hear. Yet, remember the warning James gives us: “be doers of the word, and not hearers only… (James 1:22-25)” Our hearing the preaching of the Word should lead to living out the Word that was preached.

When a Pastor preaches, it’s as if they are scattering the seed of God’s Word over the soil of your heart. For that seed to actually bring forth the fruit of application, you need to tend to it and cultivate it through meditation. Chew on the sermon, sip and savor it like an expensive well-aged wine, all the while asking the question “How is God calling me to live differently in light of this Word?”

A wonderful example I have seen of this is how one family uses Sunday lunch to go around the table and discuss what they learned and what questions they had about the sermon. I like that idea, my sermons are very forgettable so strike while the iron is even luke-warm!

Meditate on the Word of God to improve your application.

4. To Sharpen Our Conscience

Finally, I would commend this practice of meditating on God’s Word because it helps to sharpen and calibrate our conscience. 

The Bible speaks of the conscience as our internal compass for morality and wisdom. Our conscience is designed by God to help us choose right over wrong and wisdom over foolishness. Jiminy Cricket’s advice to Pinocchio was “always let your conscience be your guide.” But there’s one major problem with that piece of advice: because of the effects of sin, our ‘conscience compass’ doesn’t point due north. We need to sharpen and properly calibrate our conscience so that it can be a faithful guide in issues of morality and wisdom.

Look at what the Psalmist says in verse 102: “I do not turn aside from your rules, for you have taught me.” The Psalmist is able to walk in line and not turn aside from God’s rules because he has been taught by the Lord through meditating on His Word. 

The more we steep our minds in the Word of God, the more calibrated our conscience will be to the will of God. In this present cultural moment where ethical fences are being plowed over, we need a very sharp conscience.

So if you would taste more of the sweetness and digest more of the nutrients of God’s Word, take up the practice of meditating on God’s Word.

Reading through the Bible in 2019 and Beyond

If you’re looking to begin plodding your way through the Bible again, a Bible reading plan is a wonderful tool and guide. Below are my favorite Bible reading plans which I have broken down by length of time it takes you to get through the whole Bible:

One Year Bible Reading Plan

Read through the Bible in a year with each day of the week dedicated to a different genre: epistles, the law, history, Psalms, poetry, prophecy, and Gospels.

Two Year Bible Reading Plan

Read through the Bible in two years simply by reading two chapters a day, one from the New Testament and one from the Old Testament.

Three Year Bible Reading Plan

Read through the Bible one chapter at a time, one chapter a day. Readings alternate between the Old and New Testaments.

Or if you’re not interested in following a calendar plan but still want to work through the whole Bible, here is a wonderful Bible Reading Record Chart.

How about a Bible app to help you along the way? Check out these two apps:

Crossway ESV app for iPhone and Android: Comes with the ESV version of the Bible, a free audio Bible, and preset Bible reading plans that you can follow.

Read Scripture app for iPhone and Android: Comes with videos on each book of the Bible and videos on certain significant biblical themes.