Long suffering – continue to know the 9 Fruits of the Holy Spirit.

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 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” (Galatians 5:22)

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These 9 fruits are major fruits and qualities that are coming direct from God Himself – and every Christian should do the best they can to work with the Holy Spirit in getting all 9 of these fruits worked into their personality.

Note the following:

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1. The word “Spirit” is with a capital “S” – which means these 9 fruits are coming directly from the Holy Spirit, not from ourselves.

2. What this means is that God’s love, God’s peace, God’s joy, and God’s goodness can start to be transmitted up into our personality. These are His divine attributes and personality qualities that will start to move into the core of our personality.

3. Think about the ramifications of this – that God the Father Himself is allowing us to share in a part of His divine nature by allowing His Holy Spirit to transmit and impart these nine divine qualities right up into our soul and personality!

 

This is why God the Father is specifically telling us in this verse that these 9 fruits are coming directly from His Holy Spirit – so that we can all fully appreciate the magnitude of such an experience.

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Long suffering

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One of the main definitions of the word long suffering is that it is referring to patience. And patience is another sorely needed quality in the fast paced world in which we live in today.

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Just watch people standing in line at the grocery store or at your local fast food restaurant and watch how short some people’s fuses are today.

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Road rage is still a major problem on some of our highways. Look at someone the wrong way and they will want to try and take your head off.

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With the fast-paced ways of our society, many people have had their fuses shortened up and it thus takes very little to set them off. As a result, many people have very little patience operating in their personalities today

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For Christians, this poses a major dilemma. One of the ways of our God is that He is a very patient and long suffering God. His ways are not our ways.

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And one of the things you will find out very early on about His ways is that He works on a much slower time frame than we do. And unless you learn to adjust to His slower way of working things out, you will find yourself easily losing your patience with Him and how He wants to work things out in your life.

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You will really have to work with the Holy Spirit on this particular quality to get it properly worked up into your personality.

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The reason for this is that your own impatience will start to act up and try to override the patience and long suffering that the Holy Spirit will try and transmit to you. At times, it may become of battle of wills – your will against His will.

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But once the Holy Spirit starts to try and manifest this quality up into your personality, then you have to try and move with it and allow it to get worked into your mind and emotions. If you do, then His patience will start to override your impatience, and before you know it, your fuses will start to lengthen and you will not lose your patience like you used to do.

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Here are the different definitions for the word long suffering:

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1. Forbearance, patience

2. Patient endurance and steadfastness under provocation

3. Forbearance under ill-will, with no thought of retaliation

4. Patience, endurance, steadfastness and forbearance

5. Forbearance under suffering and endurance in the face of adversity

6. Ability to endure persecution and ill-treatment

 

With the way all of these definitions are reading, you can really see why we all need the patience and long suffering of the Holy Spirit to start operating in our souls and personalities – especially when we are forced to face any kind of adversity. Sometimes it will be the patience and long suffering of the Holy Spirit that will be the only thing that will give you the ability to last the entire length of a bad trial.

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Learn how to ride and flow with the patience of the Holy Spirit in your daily life and walk with the Lord – and you will then be able to enter into a much more restful, peaceful state within your mind and emotions.