Galatians 5: 22-23
By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness , and self control. There is no law against such things.
1 Peter 3:4
Let your adornment be the inner self with the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God’s sight.
Today is the third part of the sermon series, Fruit of the Spirit. We’ve been looking at this fruit as one all about relationships - our relationship with God with people and with ourselves.
The first three manifestations of this fruit as described in the Galatians passage has to do with our relationship with God: love, joy & peace...
When we keep working on our relationship with God and really try to see all of creation - through God’s perspective, it is God’s love, joy and peace that we become a part of...something indescribable, something not of this world as we know it.
The next three has to do with our relationship with each other: patience, kindness, and generosity...
when we treat each other with patience, kindness and generosity - exactly what happened all week at the Bible Day Camp-...
- our connections with each other grow stronger
- our relationships with each other makes God smile
And this week we explore the next three manifestations which has to do with our relationship with ourselves: faithfulness, gentleness, and self control..
You know, in order to have a relationship with ourselves - we really have to know ourselves - who we are, who we have been, who we can become, our strengths, our weaknesses, every bit of ourselves...it’s not easy - for we are complex people. We are alike, yet different, we are created in God’s image...getting to know ourselves has been fodder for poetry, essays, songs, soulsearchings for thousands of years... Remember in Hamlet? Polonius’ wise words of advice?
To thine own-self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day. Thou can'st not then be false to any man.
Yes, folks, the old adage - “know thyself” has been around for a long, long time. I was curious about what others have found out - so, I went on the internet, typed in “know thyself quotes” and there were 73,100 websites! I went to one of them and found a collection of 97 quotes from sources from the Bible to Shakespeare, from Confucius to Nietzche, from Cicero the Greek philosoher to Fannie Brice the Jewish comedienne, from poet William Blake to xgeneration singer and songwriter Alannis Morisette. It was she who wrote: You grieve you learn, You choke you learn You laugh you learn You choose you learn You pray you learn You ask you learn You live you learn
Ms. Morisette places a high priority on learning - she seems to know that no matter what happens, she learns and she writes and sings about it.
Learning was the essence of others, too. Michelangelo on his deathbed, said, “Still I am learning.”
What do you know about yourself? and how do you understand yourself? Carl Jung said once, Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.......
I can attest to that! I think I was much too much like my mother for us to get along well. She saw in me all her own shortcomings (headstrong, super-independence, impatience) and I saw in her all the things I was afraid that I would become...which was all of the above traits.
So - get to know yourself - as God made you. Then comes the faithful part - be faithful to the God-given you........be gentle with yourself – it’s a hard lesson to learn. I’ve been around for over six decades and I’m still learning about myself, my strengths and my growing edges. Now I tend to look at the positive side of things…sometimes it’s a real asset; other times I wonder if I’m ignoring harsh realities. Like most things in life, there’s a good and not-so-good side to the same characteristic or personality trait. I have to admit that I’ve always thought of my tendency to procrastinate as a bad thing…you know, putting stuff off to the last minute, ignoring what is inevitable (like doing my taxes). But I’m learning that maybe even procrastination may have a positive slant – sometimes it allows for the serendipitous workings of the Holy Spirit!
We do tend to be demanding of ourselves - “I should have said something encouraging - I had an opportunity, why didn’t I?”
“I should have said, “I love you” and now it’s too late.”
“I should have been helping instead of just sitting there”
I should have asked her to come with us... we are harsh on ourselves.
We need to be patient with ourselves, don’t we? and maybe some humor wouldn’t hurt?
A Sunday school teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five and six year olds. After explaining the commandment to "honor" thy Father and thy Mother, she asked, "Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?" Without missing a beat one little boy (the oldest of a family) answered, "Thou shall not kill."
Self - control!
In the Tao Te Ching, it is written, “Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.”
Sounds like self-control, doesn’t it? That’s one of the manifestations of the fruit of the spirit as well. and the thing is - it’s a process -
There is no satisfaction that can compare with looking back across the years and finding you've grown in self-control, judgment, generosity, and unselfishness. -- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
And to me, it’s back to our relationship with God and with each other.
For whoever we are, however we are, whatever we are - it’s good to thank God...
Helen Keller once said, “I thank God for my handicaps, for through them, I have found myself, my work and my God.”
Let your adornment be the inner self with the lasting beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in God’s sight.
May it be so! Amen.