Ask God for gentleness.

When you think of all the aspects of God, you don’t normally think if gentleness at the top of the list. God is big, and loving, and merciful, but we forget that He is gentle. And He requires gentleness from us as well.

When you think about it, gentleness is not for the faint of heart, especially if it’s cool to be sarcastic. It takes guts to act gently in an environment that’s built on pride. Gentleness is humble. Gentleness takes great care about the feelings of others. It’s very protective.

Let your gentleness be known to all men. (Phil 4:5) If your gentleness is known to all men, you have to be gentle all the time. It should be something that you are known for. If you are a boss, your employees should know that you will never treat them harshly, even in discipline. It means that you can correct and guide without shame or humiliation.

We are supposed to be gentle to each other, all the time. It is preferring other people over ourselves. It’s basic to kingdom principles. If we can’t do that, then we have a long way to go. Ask God to make you gentle. Your gentleness will be the touch of God to someone else’s life.

Patience will make you godly.

Imagine your life if you were patient. Not a patient, but someone who can calmly wait in the checkout line or let someone else finish a sentence. Impatience is pretty rude. It means that what ever you are doing is more important than everyone else, and they should know it.

Patience will allow you to listen to people. That is a gift. You know how it feels when you talk to someone who really listens and isn’t waiting for you to finish so they can talk? Patience lets you slow down and see the beauty in people and everything around you. When you are bent on getting your way not matter what, you miss all the good stuff.

Patience is rather key in developing you into a godly person. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. (James 1:4) Whoa! Patience will do that? Yep. But we are not changed into perfection overnight. It takes time. It takes us desiring  and pressing in to be changed. We have to be patient with the progress. If we get frustrated because we don’t see instant results, then we won’t get any.

Patience is yours for the asking. Just be patient about getting it.

Self-control will change your life.

When we think about the fruits of the Spirit we want in our lives, we usually think of the obvious — love, joy, and peace. We rarely think that we want, or need, self-control. Lack of self-control can raise its ugly head in every area of our life. We can lose our temper, spend more than we should, or eat ourselves into disease.

Lack of self-control will manifest through pain, money, and frustration. Now here’s the creepy part. If you are not in control, who is? God does not manifest Himself through pain, poverty and frustration, but the enemy does. Your lack of self-control is handing over the reigns of your life to the enemy, and he will gladly take them.

How can you live happily in the kingdom if you claim to love God but fail to show discipline in your life — if you are constantly overdrawn, suffer health issues do to overeating, or yell at people in traffic?

Self-control will change your life. It will help you balance what is good and what is over the line. The Holy Spirit will lead you in this if you ask Him to. Be persistent. It takes time to change, but if you really want it, you can have it. And everyone around you will be glad you did.

All the fruits of the Spirit are your if you really want them.

For some reason, I was always a little confused by the fruits of the Spirit: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,  gentleness, self-control. (Gal 5:22-23) I’m not sure why, but I always assumed that there was one “fruit” that was mine, that I was defined by. I was supposed to know which one it was and live up to it. Or I had to pick one that I wanted in my life.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The fruits of the Spirit are all aspects of God. And when we have the Holy Spirit in our lives, we have all of Him. All those fruits are in us. But they are probably not all active, so to speak.

Each one of those fruits is yours for the asking, but it’s not as simple as it sounds. Like all things in the kingdom, we have to “earnestly desire” the things we ask from God. It can’t be casual. I learned this from personal experience.

I asked God over and over for one aspect of Himself. I thought I would feel a download from heaven and be changed when I asked, but it didn’t happen like that. It came over time. As I continued to ask, He continued to change. I can see now how gradual it was.

Press into those aspects of His Spirit that you need. Keep at it, and you over time, you will see a difference.