Willpower Won’t Work

“Never pray for patience,” my seventy-year-old friend warned me, “or God will give you opportunities to learn it.”

Are you good at patience? I’m not.

We hear today’s passage in Galatians frequently. I still remember the song of it I learned as a kid. But as I grew up, one part began to stick out to me. “The fruit of the Spirit…” You see, before, I’d only ever focused on the many admirable attributes listed in today’s passage.

I strove to be patient, have kindness, and live in joy. But I never seemed to succeed for very long. Someone would come along and soon I’d be snapping at that person or feeling sorry for myself. The positive spiritual traits gone, I was just a sinful, selfish human again.

I was forgetting where all of those things came from — the Holy Spirit. If I tried to rely on my own human love, joy, or peace, I inevitably failed. Because I’m human. I’m not perfect. I’m self-centered.

When we get to the root of those positive attributes and seek not just love and peace but the very Holy Spirit living in our hearts, that’s when we can have true love, joy, and peace in our hearts. Because it comes from him. It is a fruit of having him in our hearts.

So if you — like me — feel like you’re failing again and again, take a step back and make sure you’re trusting the Spirit, and not yourself.

“Lord, thank you that we don’t have to produce the fruit of the Spirit on our own. Please forgive me for the ways I’ve failed, and I ask that the Holy Spirit would live in my heart and produce his fruit through me. In your name, amen.”

Go Deeper — We are filled with the Spirit by faith: by obeying his will, knowing that he is giving us all we need to do so. What is he asking you to trust him to do through you today?