Walking in the Holy Spirit & Producing Love
Big Idea
Last week, we established the right theology of the Holy Spirit — He is a Person. This week’s blog is about how that Person expresses Himself through us, preeminently in the virtue of love. The fruit of the Spirit is not a self-effort project on a Sunday school flannel board. It is the natural outworking of a life in real-time communion with God by the Holy Spirit.
Recap: Three Activities of the Spirit
The Holy Spirit works in our lives in three primary ways that we partner with by faith and prayer:
Wisdom and revelation — He illuminates truth (Ephesians 1:17)
Love in the inner man — He releases power so we know the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:16-19)
Power from on high — He endues us with power to be witnesses (Luke 24:49)
Paul names this same triad in another place:
"for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control (sound mind)." (2 Timothy 1:7, ESV)
God touches the mind with wisdom, the heart with love, and the hands with power.
God Is Love
The mystery at the center: of all that God is, He is love.
"Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love." (1 John 4:8, ESV)
He commands us to abide in that love.
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love." (John 15:9, ESV)
And the connection point — the way that love actually gets into us — is the Holy Spirit.
"and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Romans 5:5, ESV)
The Walk That Produces the Fruit
Galatians 5 is the key passage. The instruction is to walk in the Spirit. The result is fruit, and that fruit is described in the language of love.
"But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." (Galatians 5:16, ESV)
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." (Galatians 5:22-23, ESV)
This is not striving to be more patient by gritting your teeth. This is a relationship with God, through the Holy Spirit, that naturally produces these virtues.
Paul describes what that love actually looks like, so the world's counterfeit cannot confuse us:
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." (1 Corinthians 13:4-7, ESV)
What "Abiding" Actually Means
Stripping away the mystery: abiding means talking with the Holy Spirit and with God throughout your day, and letting Him talk to you through His Word and through the Spirit. Practically, it means I direct my inner thoughts toward God many times throughout the day instead of running a constant interior monologue with myself, and I keep intentional times of sensitivity and listening, both longer times in the Word and shorter pauses through the day where I actively seek to be led.
When you're in constant communion and communication with God by the Holy Spirit, the natural expression in your life is love and all the virtues that go with it. You're touching God moment by moment, and His presence shapes you.
Three Practical Steps to Cultivate Abiding
1. Regular daily time with God in the Word. Journaling, talking to God, listening to Him through Bible studies and devotionals. If reading the Word feels like cutting through a forest, follow someone else's path, until you are ready to carve your own. Use a reading plan, a devotional, a commentary, or one of the prayer guides our church produces. We have several free resources on different topics designed for exactly this.
2. Intentional pauses through the day. Once you have the daily practice, add moments where you turn your heart to God in prayer throughout your day intentionally. Pray at meals. Pray when you get in the car. Pray before team meetings without letting it become rote. Pray before important decisions and after difficult conversations. Add the phrase, "let's pray about this," to work conversations, family conversations, interactions with others. In secular environments this can feel awkward, but being salt and light means inviting God into all kinds of situations where appropriate. Don’t be religious, but be relational with God in all the situations of life.
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths." (Proverbs 3:5-6, ESV)
That acknowledgment is what invites God into our activities and lets us enter into His heart for them.
3. Turn your inner thoughts toward God continually. Instead of talking to yourself all day, talk to God. Make this a habit. In time you will be doing what Brother Lawrence calls practicing the presence of God.
"There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God; those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it."
— Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
This is not the language of mountaintop mystics. Brother Lawrence was a 17th century monastery cook. The kitchen was his sanctuary.
"The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquillity as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament."
— Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
Notice how unembellished his approach was. No special posture. No special words. Just a continual, simple turning of the heart toward God in the middle of whatever was already happening.
"We ought to act with God in the greatest simplicity, speaking to Him frankly and plainly, and imploring His assistance in our affairs, just as they happen."
— Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God
As you do these three things, your sense of God's presence grows. What feels like a path you've never navigated will become a well-worn trail.
The Promise
"Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:4-5, ESV)
The fruit isn't the goal you chase. The fruit is what grows when you stay connected to the Vine.
Cutting Trails in the Woods
I have trails that my wife, Hannah, has cut into the woods on our property. They are well-worn now, kept open by daily walking. Those trails are a picture of what I am asking you to do.
A trail starts as nothing. Just a direction someone decided to go. The first time through, you are pushing branches out of the way, stepping over fallen limbs, second-guessing whether you are even going the right direction. The second time is easier. By the hundredth time, your feet know where to land. The trail is no longer something you cut. It is something that carries you.
Where our trails end, the woods get hard to navigate again. So we are slowly extending them, working to connect with an adjacent green space where there are miles of well-worn trails already in place. To enjoy what is out there, we have to do three things at once: maintain the trails we already have, cut new ones to reach further, and connect with the ones others have made.
That is exactly the rhythm of walking with God. You can begin on a trail someone else has cut. A reading plan. A devotional. A prayer guide. That is wisdom, and you should use it. But there will come a season when the path you are on ends, and the only way forward is to cut something new. A new practice. A new rhythm. A deeper place in God that no one else's worn trail will reach for you.
Cutting new trails is intimidating. The undergrowth looks impossible. But it is almost always easier than you think, because the moment you start walking it daily, the trail begins to form under your feet. What felt impassable becomes familiar. What felt like work becomes home. (See a real photo of our trail in the woods)
