Take My Hand Inspirations
Fruit of the Spirit Series
THE TRINITY FRUIT of PEACE
Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one
will see the Lord (Hebrews
12:14). Why? Because: Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God (Matthew 5:9).
And: You will keep him in perfect
peace, whose mind is stayed on You; and nothing causes them to stumble
(Isaiah 26:3; Psalm 119:165).
Once
again, consider your Christian life like a plant; and Jesus Christ as the
Sower. From our conversation (Blog #15),
when I introduced this Fruit of the Spirit Series, we
trustingly embraced the knowledge that when we give our hearts to Christ, He
opens our hearts and plants His seeds of whatever things
are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just,
whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever
things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is
anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things . . . and the God of
peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:8-9).
As
you allow these seeds to germinate with the watering of God’s Word in your
mind’s thoughts (and emotions/feelings stored in your heart), YOUR SOUL
(therefore, your life) becomes rooted in Christ: That
Christ may dwell in your hearts [soul] through faith; that you, being rooted
and grounded in love, . . . may be filled with all the fullness of God
(Read Ephesians 3:17-19).
We
are born through the portal of the Fruit of Love. We experience power from the Fruit of Joy
when we embrace who we are in Christ and celebrate the talents, strengths and
beauty He has breathed in all of us without discrimination or partiality. Generous is the Lord in His giving. So in Love and bubbling over with Joy, why is
it so hard to get and maintain PEACE within our own souls as well as sustain it in the
outside world whirling around us?
As
we are watered, we grow and mature and develop our multi-coloured,
sweet-smelling flowers in preparation for pollination, fertilization and fruit
production. As a teacher of so many
subjects, the one I find most exciting is science. When we understand (even a little) how God
created everything and how it all works, is it most astonishing. I feel part of
God’s plan as I teach some of the mysteries of His work! How a flower fascinatingly becomes a fruit is
so much like the processes necessary for the Christian to produce the Spirit’s
Fruit of Peace.
Meditating
on the Fruit of Peace and actually applying its principles to produce this
trinity fruit were a challenge for me. And
I am not a theorist wherein I share the “how” and never do it. I must first do it (apply the Word of God
about peace), see how it works, learn from my failures when I do not achieve
it, then meditate on it some more and try again. That is why it took me this long to write
this blog.
Peace
does not develop overnight, instantaneously as we will it to come. Developing
the fruit of peace, to me, is a three-step process—that’s why I call it the
Trinity Fruit; and it’s also the third fruit produced in line with the Holy
Spirit. Just as a flower goes through
many processes before transforming into fruit, so must the life of a
watered-by-the-Holy-Spirit Christian go through ups and downs before “the Peace
of God which surpasses all understanding” (Philippians 4:7) can shoot out of
his or her life.
Step 1: We must clean up our “house”
before we endeavor to bring peace into it. That cleaning involves putting the
“GOOD” or the “BAD” sticker on our thoughts, as I’ve spoken on throughout this
series. What are you thinking
about? Is it about the wrong spoken against
you, or how you are going to give to those less fortunate than you? Ask yourself whether what you’re thinking
about is “GOOD” (in line with Philippians 4:8-9) or is “BAD” (totally off the
markers of Philippians 4:8-9) then pour those marked “bad” into the toilet and
flush it.
Step 2: Now get your mind in order by
scrubbing and rinsing and re-washing it in Philippians 4:8-9. Read, watch and talk about everything relating
to God’s Word in books, audio and visual cassettes, films, podcasts, etc.; go
to lunch with fun-loving, faith-filled
Christians; take a short vacation to enjoy nature; or gather family and friends and host a fabulous Birthday party for Jesus!
Get in the kitchen and cook or bake till you drop while singing and
dancing to worship and praise songs to the Lord. Or simply smile as you go on visitation to
the sick and shut-in; volunteer in your community church’s soup kitchen—do
something kind or give something nice to a stranger. Encourage the down-trodden with the goodness
in you.
DO GOOD TO OTHERS AS THE LORD LEADS YOU.
Step 3: Work on how you relate to
yourself and to others. Peace involves
human relationships. Peace also involves
the inner relationship you have with yourself.
If you are a contentious, argumentative person who is so easily provoked, you take yourself
wherever you go and will continually experience rivalry, jealousies, fights and
quarrels with everyone around you. What
is in you surely comes out in any situation or environment you find yourself
in.
Don’t
get me wrong, there are “haters” always ready to falsely accuse you about
something absurd. Look at the
flower. Are only birds, beetles and
butterflies allowed to pollinate it?
Birds, beetles and butterflies are the “beautiful” ones—the ones who
love you for who you are with all your strengths and weaknesses. They are the ones who stick to you in hard
times. Your soul feels “beautiful” when
you are around them. 
But
flowers are also pollinated by stinging bees, acidic-biting ants and ugly
moths, even bats and houseflies. They represent the haters—those who don’t value anything
about you. They wait for you to fall or
fail, and rejoice when you do it, though ever smiling and pretending to be your
cheerleaders all the while hoping and wishing for your demise. Yet, we need the “haters” to produce the
product of perfect peace because they force us to run to God to find a way out
of their terrifying entanglements. Life
is not only a bed of roses. To get to
peace, we surely will learn life-long lessons from stings and bites and pinches
and punctures and odious odors.
But
how you handle the outside world definitely relates to how you handle your
inside world. This is a conversation I usually have with myself (my soul): O.K. I love myself.
Others don’t love themselves.
They strike out against my “sunny” disposition to bring me down into
their darkness. Oh, Lord, I need your
grace to overcome wanting to be accepted and thus drown in that depression. I definitely need Your help to bring about a
change in how I want to be in this situation and bring others up into Your
light with me. Show me how right now,
Lord.
Then
the Lord opens the way and I run through it emerging on the other side with
great and perfect peace. You must
develop the Fruit of Peace through the gift of
discernment (read 1 Corinthians 12:8-11)—seeing how a situation
is going and listening to God as He tells you how to move through it to achieve
peace. So ask the Lord right now for
this gift of discernment. That is your
way to developing His Fruit of Peace.
And
when you find yourself in a situation desiring peace, He will tell you how to
get it without compromising your Joy. He won’t make the other person feel good,
and leave you feeling awful at the end of it all. Listen for His voice. At times, the Lord has told me to do one or a
combination of these to move into peace and stay there.
· *
Say,
“I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”
· *
Keep
silent. Don’t talk.
· * Excuse
yourself and walk away; at times, just calmly walk away.
· *
Flee! Run! Don’t look back.
· * Tell
the truth. Stop lying or trying to cover
yourself with half-truths.
· *
Speak
with frankness and clarity on an issue as the Holy Spirit gives you the
boldness to do so.
· *
If
you can “see” (discern) what’s good in you, then force yourself to “see” the
good in others and tell them about it.
· *
Switch
off the phone for a few hours and rest your mind.
· *
Leave
that platform—it’s doing nothing good for your soul’s inspiration.
· *
Give
the troublemakers, the peace-snatchers, over to the Lord in prayer. You cannot change the stubborn; they must be
put on the Potter’s wheel for a while.
When
we shut God out, perfect peace can never be achieved because we would resort to
our humanness to solve problems with shouting, disrespect, cursing and
dissention—the works of the flesh. The
Fruit of Peace can only germinate by the watering of the Holy Spirit in an atmosphere of prayer. Memorize and recite Psalm 23 throughout the day--everyday!
My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to
you. Let not your heart be troubled,
neither let it be afraid (John
14:27).
Glory
to God in the highest,
And
on earth PEACE,
Goodwill
toward men!
(Luke 2:14)
© 2017 by Take My Hand Inspirations, a
division of PepParadise Society Ltd Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior
written permission of the publisher. The
only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Unless otherwise stated, all scripture
quotations are from The New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas
Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All
rights reserved.
Most of the paintings selected is
retrieved from “Black Art” search engine.
Take My Hand Inspirations
