The fruit of the Spirit - with a place to practice

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." -- Galatians 5:22-23

New Year's resolutions can probably all be boiled down to: "In the upcoming year, I want to be a better person."  That might mean eating differently, exercising more, spending more time with family, or not kicking the cat. But the end goal is to somehow improve your life in some way. Often times it's hard to stick to those goals. Without outside encouragement or accountability, it's easy to let things slide.

This is certainly true for Christians, and not just at the New Year.  Exhorted by the Bible to love our neighbor as ourselves, to be loving, patient, gentle, self-controlled, etc. we are constantly encouraged to better ourselves (not so that we might achieve our salvation since that was the whole point of Jesus' coming after all, but so that we might be people of integrity who mirror the characteristics of our messiah.) But just because I read that I should be loving doesn't make me loving.  And just because I'm told that I should be gentle doesn't make me gentle. It takes practice. And that's where church should come in.

Church should be a safe place where I can practice forgiving, or asking for forgiveness, or being loving when someone annoys or upsets me, or being patient. And I should be safer there because the people are of the same body. It's to their benefit for me to improve myself, just as it's to my benefit as they improve themselves. So when I "try" to be patient and end up screwing up royally, it's the church (meaning members of that same body) that should come alongside me, help me to calm down, encourage me to continue trying to be patient and perhaps even step in if my impatience is harming another. And this should all be done, not in judgment, but in brotherly love.

Of course, I keep saying the church "should" do this because it is, by definition, made up of a bunch of screwed up individuals who aren't always going to be patient and loving and kind with each other. But as our savior has forgiven us, he has enabled us to forgive others. Yes, we'll keep messing up, but we also need to keep forgiving, keep moving forward, keep encouraging, keep loving. Church should be like family -- a group of people who accept us even when we've messed up and who encourage us to do better next time.