The word of God tells us in Galatians 5 22-23 that the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Notice that love is listed first. It's not by accident.
Love stands at the head of the list because it is the foundation upon which all the other fruits grow. Every other fruit, joy, peace, patience, flows out of love. Without love, the rest cannot flourish.
The very moment you were born again, the love of God was shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Spirit. That means the God kind of love is already in you. You don't have to pray for it to come down from heaven.
You don't have to wait for some emotional feeling to arrive. It's there deep within your spirit because the spirit of God himself lives in you. You have the capacity to love like God loves.
But that love must be developed. The fruit of the spirit doesn't appear in full bloom overnight. Just as natural fruit grows from a seed, the fruit of the spirit grows as you feed your spirit on the word of God and yield to the Holy Ghost in daily living.
You see, spiritual growth doesn't come by praying alone. It comes by practicing the word. Love must be acted upon.
The more you walk in love, the stronger that fruit becomes. Now, this love we're talking about is not natural human love. Human love is selfish.
It loves those who love it back. It's based on emotion and circumstance. But divine love, the love of God, loves regardless.
It's unchanging. It's steadfast. It's the love that forgives even when wronged, that blesses even when cursed, that reaches out even when rejected.
That's the love Jesus displayed when he hung on the cross and said, "Father, forgive them. " That's the same love that has been placed in your heart. Too many believers are trying to live the Christian life through their own strength.
They struggle to walk in peace, to keep their joy, to forgive others. But all the while they're neglecting the key. The key is love.
When love dominates, everything else falls into place. You won't have to try to be joyful. Love will produce joy.
You won't have to strive for peace. Love will bring peace. You won't have to struggle to forgive.
Love will make forgiveness natural. When you allow love to lead you, you become a vessel of God's nature on the earth. That's what the world needs to see.
Not another sermon, not another argument, but the demonstration of divine love in action. Love that gives. Love that endures.
Love that refuses to be offended. Love that sees beyond faults and failures to the heart of a person. The Holy Spirit within you is ready to cultivate this love, but he won't force it.
You must choose to yield. You must choose to let love rule your thoughts, your words, and your actions. When that co-worker speaks harshly, respond in love.
When someone betrays you, choose to bless them instead of curse them. That's not weakness. It's strength.
It's the power of the spirit working in you. Walking in love is walking in victory. The devil can't defeat a believer who walks in love because love never fails.
Strife, bitterness, and offense are tools he uses to rob you of your faith. But love closes every door he tries to open. Faith works by love.
And without love, faith is paralyzed. That's why the enemy fights so hard to get believers into division and anger because he knows if he can destroy love, he can stop faith from working. But when love dominates, faith flourishes.
Prayers get answered. The anointing flows freely. The presence of God becomes tangible in your life.
Love draws heaven's atmosphere into your home, your church, your workplace. So make it your aim. Not just to talk about love, but to live it, to practice it, to let it govern every part of your life.
Let love become the driving force of your words, your decisions, your relationships. Let it be the fruit that identifies you as a child of God. Love is the first and foundational fruit of the spirit from which all other fruits flow.
When the apostle Paul listed the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5 22, he began with love for a divine reason. Love is not just one fruit among many. It is the root from which the others grow.
Without love, there is no real joy, no lasting peace, no genuine patience, and no enduring faithfulness. Everything that God does, every action he takes, and every blessing he gives is born out of his love nature. God is love and because we are his children, that same nature has been imparted to us through the Holy Spirit.
The moment you were born again, love moved in. It is now the core of who you are in Christ. But like fruit on a tree, it must grow and develop to fullness through the nurturing of the word and the yielding of your heart to the spirit.
Love is the soil in which the other fruits take root. Joy blooms when love is present because love rejoices in truth. Peace flows where love reigns because love refuses to harbor strife or resentment.
Patience flourishes in love because love is willing to endure and to bear all things without complaint. Kindness and goodness express themselves as the outward working of love toward others. Faith works by love and without love faith becomes powerless.
Meekness and temperance are the natural outgrowth of a heart ruled by love because love seeks not its own and keeps itself under control. When you understand that all the fruit of the spirit are simply different expressions of love, you will begin to see why love must come first and why it cannot be substituted by anything else. In the natural world, a tree cannot produce fruit without roots.
The deeper the roots, the stronger the tree and the sweeter the fruit. In the same way, the believer who is rooted and grounded in love will bear fruit that remains. Love stabilizes your spirit.
It anchors your walk with God and gives strength to your faith. When storms come, love holds you steady. When offenses arise, love keeps you from falling into bitterness.
Love is the divine force that enables you to stay strong when everything around you seems uncertain. It is the unseen current of the spirit that sustains the life of God within you and makes spiritual fruit possible. When love is absent, spiritual growth is stunted.
You can have knowledge of the word. You can have gifts and talents. But without love, they are empty.
Love is the motive behind every true work of the spirit. It is what gives value to your faith and power to your prayers. That is why the word instructs believers to pursue love above all else.
The more you walk in love, the more your life aligns with the heart of God and the more the other fruits of the spirit will naturally begin to manifest. The love of God is already in every believer's heart through the Holy Spirit. When a person is born again, the very life and nature of God are imparted to their spirit.
Romans 5 declares that the love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. That means the love of God is not something you are trying to get. It is something you already have.
It is not a feeling that comes and goes with circumstances, nor is it something that grows from human effort or willpower. It is divine, supernatural, and eternal because it is the very essence of God himself living inside you. When the spirit of God came to dwell within you, he brought the full capacity of God's love with him.
That love resides in your recreated spirit, waiting for you to recognize it and let it flow into every area of your life. Many believers pray for more love, not realizing that they already have all the love they will ever need. What they must do is learn to release it.
Just as a seed contains within it the potential for growth and fruit, the love of God within your heart must be cultivated and expressed through your actions. It is not a matter of feeling love but of acting on love. The Holy Spirit is constantly prompting you to walk in that love.
Even in moments when your flesh wants to react differently. The decision to yield to the spirit and not to the flesh is what causes that love to come forth. The more you obey those inner prompings, the stronger and more evident that love becomes.
It begins to shape your thoughts, your words, and your responses until walking in love becomes your natural way of life. This divine love is far greater than human love. Human love can be conditional, limited by emotion, and easily offended.
But the love of God that dwells in your heart is unconditional and unchanging. It does not depend on how others treat you or how situations appear. It flows from a higher source from the spirit of God within you.
When you face people who are difficult to love, you can draw from that inner reservoir. You can choose to respond with kindness and patience, not because of your own strength, but because the spirit of love is empowering you to do so. This love forgives quickly, bears patiently, believes the best, and endures through every challenge.
It is love that refuses to fail because it is born of God. When you acknowledge that God's love is already within you, it changes the way you live. You stop striving to manufacture love through effort and instead begin to release it through faith.
You stop saying I can't love them and start declaring the love of God in me can. You become aware that the spirit who dwells within you is constantly supplying that divine love to meet every situation you encounter. Divine love is not based on emotion but on choice and the nature of God within us.
The God kind of love operates on a higher plane than human feelings. Human love depends on how someone acts, how situations turn out or how emotions fluctuate. But divine love flows from a decision of the will.
It is a choice to obey the word of God regardless of personal feelings. When the Bible commands us to love our enemies, bless those who curse us, and do good to those who mistreat us, it is not appealing to our emotions. It is calling on the divine nature within us to take the lead.
The moment you choose to act on love, you are yielding to the spirit of God. You are allowing his nature to dominate your mind and your behavior. That's why this love can bless those who persecute and forgive those who wrong you.
It's not human. It's divine. Love is the very character of God.
Everything he does flows from love, not emotion or reaction. When Jesus walked the earth, he was moved by compassion. But compassion is not an emotion.
It is love in action. He healed the sick, fed the hungry, forgave sinners, and raised the dead because love compelled him to act. That same love has been imparted to the believer through the new birth.
You have within you the ability to respond like Jesus responded, to walk as he walked because his spirit lives in you. Love then is not something you try to feel. It is something you decide to live.
Feelings may follow, but they do not lead. When you let the love of God direct your choices, you will find that emotions eventually align with the decision your spirit has already made. This kind of love will not always feel comfortable.
It will often go against the natural instinct to retaliate, to argue, or to defend yourself. But every time you choose love, you strengthen your spirit and weaken the flesh. Love is patient when the flesh wants to hurry.
Love is gentle when pride wants to prove a point. Love forgives when the mind wants to remember every wrong. Walking in divine love is not weakness.
It is strength under control. It takes spiritual maturity to choose love in the face of offense, to bless when you are wronged, and to remain peaceful when others provoke you. But every time you act on love, you are allowing God's nature to rule instead of your emotions.
The more you do this, the more you become rooted and grounded in love, and the less control the flesh has over your life. The divine love of God is steadfast and unchanging. It does not fluctuate based on the opinions of others or the pressures of life.
It remains constant because it is anchored in the very nature of God. When this love governs your heart, you are not swayed by offense, manipulation, or fear. You walk in freedom because love casts out fear.
And you live in victory because love never fails. Walking in love keeps faith strong and shuts the door on the enemy. Faith and love are inseparable.
They work hand in hand. The Bible declares that faith works by love. meaning that love is the power that gives faith its effectiveness.
Without love, faith becomes powerless and unproductive. Many believers struggle to see results in their prayers or in their walk of faith because they have allowed bitterness, offense or unforgiveness to creep into their hearts. These things choke the flow of divine love and when love is hindered, faith cannot function as it should.
Faith operates in the atmosphere of love and love keeps the heart open, pure and sensitive to the spirit of God. When love rules, faith becomes alive and active because love keeps the spiritual connection clear and unhindered. The enemy knows this truth well and that's why he constantly tries to stir up strife, offense, and division among believers.
He knows that if he can get you out of love, he can stop your faith from working. The moment you step out of love, you step into his territory. Strife opens the door to confusion, doubt, and defeat.
But love closes that door tight. Walking in love is one of the most powerful defenses against the enemy's attacks. Love refuses to hold grudges.
Love refuses to repay evil for evil. Love refuses to be offended. When you walk in love, you are walking in the light.
And the enemy cannot operate in the light. Darkness cannot overcome light. And Satan cannot touch a believer who stays in love because love is the atmosphere of God's presence.
Faith thrives in an environment where love is active. When your heart is clear and free of resentment, your prayers flow freely, your confession of faith carries power and your spirit remains strong. Love keeps you sensitive to the prompings of the Holy Spirit so that you can hear his voice clearly and follow his leading.
When love governs your life, even in difficult situations, you find that peace and confidence replace worry and fear. You know your faith will work because your heart is right before God. That's why the word tells us to keep our hearts with all diligence.
For out of them flow the issues of life. Keeping your heart in love is the key to keeping your faith alive. Walking in love is not always.
When love dominates, it produces joy, peace, and victory in every area of life. Love is the atmosphere in which the power of God flows unhindered. When you choose to walk in love, you are choosing to align yourself with the very nature of God.
And that alignment brings stability, harmony, and blessing into your life. Love brings joy because love looks beyond circumstances and focuses on God's goodness. Even in times of testing, love refuses to give into despair.
It rejoices in the Lord knowing that he is faithful. Love brings peace because it does not strive. It does not compete and it does not harbor resentment.
A heart filled with love remains calm in the middle of the storm. It does not react to every offense or get drawn into every argument. It remains steady because love anchors the soul in the assurance of God's presence and care.
When love rules the heart, victory becomes a natural result. Love conquers fear, and fear is the force that defeats many believers before they even begin. Perfect love casts out fear because it gives confidence in God's promises and his character.
When you know that God loves you and that his love is operating through you, worry loses its grip. You can face challenges with boldness, knowing that love never fails. Even when things appear to go wrong, love keeps your faith alive and your heart secure.
The person who walks in love cannot be easily shaken because love produces spiritual strength and endurance. It keeps you from being moved by offense, disappointment, or opposition. You rise above circumstances instead of being crushed by them because the love of God within you empowers you to see from his perspective.
Love also produces unity and harmony in relationships which opens the door for God's blessings to manifest. Where there is love, there is peace. And where there is peace, the spirit of God can move freely.
Strife and division hinder his power, but love creates an environment where his presence can dwell richly. Love forgives quickly, believes the best about others, and refuses to take offense. That kind of love disarms the enemy, and builds bridges where walls once stood.
It draws people together and allows the light of Christ to shine through every word and action. In that atmosphere, joy overflows, peace reigns, and victory becomes visible in every area of life. When love is the ruling force, even trials become opportunities to demonstrate God's nature.
Love responds with patience when tested, with kindness when mistreated, and with faith when tempted to doubt. It is not weak or passive. It is the greatest strength of the believer because it reflects the very heart of God.
When love dominates your life, it changes your outlook, your reactions, and your expectations. It releases the joy that keeps you strong, the peace that guards your heart, and the victory that overcomes the world.
