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Take a fruitful walk
Hayes Richard
Pastor Richard Hayes

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” Gal 5:22 -23

 

Modern technology has afforded us the opportunity to be bombarded with the latest news, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We can know the who, what, when, where, and why at the click of a button. Most of the time the news we receive is not positive in a way that makes us feel good, generally, it makes us feel bad and wonder, "What is this world coming too?" This bad news usually involves someone breaking one of our many laws and doing harm to another individual or group for their own personal gain or agenda. But I’m thankful that as a Christian, God has prescribed for us a lifestyle that should keep us far away from unlawful activities.

 

In the book of Galatians, the Apostle Paul writes to the church and tells them all the fruit of the Spirit that we should possess, because God’s Spirit now lives in us. These fruit of the Spirit reminds us that it is our nature to love everyone, have joy in difficult seasons of our life, live peacefully with everyone, long suffering through challenging times, be gentle in rough circumstances, have faith when you can see your way, walk-in meekness, and show temperance when you desire to be angry. When we employ and live our lives in such a way that reflects the Spirit of God living in us, Apostle Paul states that there is no law that can come against us. In other words, it would be hard to prosecute a man or woman that was consistently walking in the fruit of the Spirit.

 

These days, we see far too many people who state that they are Christians, caught up in unlawful acts. This behavior, unfortunately, is taking its toll on the church and many have fallen away because the ones that should have taken a stand in love, left because of emotions. Matthew 5:13 says, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot." We must set the example and walk-in full evidence of the fruit of the Spirit and when we do, the church continues to shine! There is no law against being good.

 

Richard D. Hayes is the Pastor of New Day Community Church and the President of the United Ministerial Alliance. 

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