After I finished my blog and posted it about \u201cwatching our words on the battlefield\u201d, yesterday, I read this daily email from a ministry. It was the \u201cicing on the cake\u201d of what I had said in my blog: \u201cI call you, My people, to be kind to one another. The world is filled with selfishness and hatred. But you belong to Me and not to the world. When you become one with Me, your attitudes will reflect My heart and not yours. And the fruit of My Spirit will be evident in all that you are and all that you do, says the Lord.” “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, KINDNESS, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such, there is no law.\u201d Galatians 5:22-23 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those words pack a punch, don\u2019t they? I reeled them into my heart –hopefully to stay there, germinate and then produce a bumper crop of those fruit \u2013 especially the \u201ckindness\u201d fruit. Yep! That\u2019s a fruit I needed a couple of days ago \u2013 before my blog, yesterday. From hearing way too much irritating smack talk that I \u201cshushed\u201d that person with fingers to my mouth. To someone else, I really wanted to retaliate (but didn\u2019t) when they opposed my way-of-thinking. And to another, I even let casual words slip out that \u201cstung\u201d them enough to end a conversation. Holy kindness, Lord, I pray!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What in the world? I\u2019m that on-purpose gal who does her best to never get my \u201cpanties in a wad\u201d, but that day I did. Eventually, I realized the enemy was setting me up for a crummy day. Those are his tactics \u2013 it\u2019s not just one little incident, but incidents — multiplied. But, he is such a loser that he doesn\u2019t get that those of us who are the blood-bought, filled-with-the-Holy Spirit, strivers to improve our love-walk daily \u2013 recognize him. We take that nonsense long enough and, in my case, I turn it into a blog that teaches a better way \u2013 God’s way of handling opposition. You messed with the wrong girl, devil!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I love this quote Joyce Meyer says about herself: \u201cEach morning, before getting out of bed, I pray that I will love and be kind to everyone today. But, then I get up and encounter people!\u201d That hits home. I live by myself so, really, I should be okay, but then again, I know myself enough that I need to stay on guard for myself to keep ME out of trouble! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If anyone should speak on behalf of staying in tune with the Holy Spirit, it\u2019s the Apostle Paul. He wrote these words: \u201cAsk God to bless those who persecute you \u2014 yes, ask Him to bless, not to curse\u201d. (Romans 12:14). We all have people in our lives that require extra grace from us. They annoy, anger, frustrate, and test us. But they also help us grow. God calls us to demonstrate mercy and kindness to everyone — even those who cause us the most trouble. And being Spirit-led people who have the fruit of the Spirit in us, we just get “kindness” out of the fruit basket and refuse to be offended. Most of all we purpose to always take the higher ground. Proof positive of being fruit bearers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we take the high ground, we can see past the behavior of others. When we take the high ground, we rise above the irritation and the conflict and choose to live in peace and to be loving and kind fruit bearers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ronald Reagan said it well: “Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, leave the rest to God.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After I finished my blog and posted it about \u201cwatching our words on the battlefield\u201d, yesterday, I read this daily email from a ministry. It was the \u201cicing on the cake\u201d of what I had said in my blog: \u201cI call you, My people, to be kind to one another. The world is filled with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12968,12967],"tags":[4501,12971,1210,1254,3403,9510,12970,12969,41,8959,2046,132,5757,44,12972,2680],"class_list":["post-10012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-ground","category-kindness","tag-be-kind","tag-bless-those-who-persecute-you","tag-blog","tag-fruit","tag-fruit-of-the-spirit","tag-galatians-522-23","tag-hatred","tag-high-ground","tag-joy","tag-joyce-meyer","tag-kindness","tag-love","tag-love-walk","tag-peace","tag-reagan","tag-selfishness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10012"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10015,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10012\/revisions\/10015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}