Praise brings joy. Joy brings victory. We must be strong in the Lord to gain a victory. Joy will help us in this area. Nehemiah 8:10 (KJV) says, “…the joy of the Lord is your strength.” When we are weak and heavy-laiden, downcast and depressed, we need to “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” and […]

There are many, many examples of God’s children glorifying God in the midst of their circumstances, like Abraham did. My favorite example of this is found in Acts chapter 16, beginning in verse 16. To give you a little background here, earlier in verse 9 we find that Paul had a vision in the night […]

One purpose or function of joy is to provide victory in our lives, to cause us to become “overcomers” in all situations in our lives. The key to overcoming every situation in our lives is to realize what we are seeing and to realize that, as in 2 Corinthians 4:18 (AMP), “So we look not […]

Since joy comes from God, let’s look at some examples in the Bible to find out what causes God to rejoice. God rejoices in His own works – He rejoices in us! Here are some examples of God’s joy for us: *Psalm 104:31 (KJV) “The glory of the Lord shall endure forever: the Lord shall […]

Just as there are different types of love, there are different types of joy. Joy comes from different sources – some temporal, some eternal. Here are some more definitions for you to think about: *Eternal: never ending, lasting forever without beginning or ending in time; ceaseless, constantly repeated, continued without interruption; independent of time or […]

What is joy? Webster’s Dictionary says it is: “intense happiness or great delight; that which gives rise to this emotion, or on which the emotion centers; the outward expression.” The Bible Dictionary says of joy: “In the Word of God, joy is an attribute of Diety (Psalm 104:3), and is an important part of that […]

Another way to cultivate love, and cause it to grow in our lives, is to pray for one  another. It is very unlikely that you will be able to continue to hate, or badmouth someone who you spend time talking about each day, asking that He will begin to bless that person and speak to […]

Another way we can cultivate the fruit of love in our lives, and cause it to grow and produce, is by being obedient to God’s Word. 1 John 5:3  (Amplified), “For the [true] love of God is this: that we habitually keep His commandments and remain focused on His precepts.” If our mind is stayed […]

One way to cultivate love in our lives, and cause it to grow, is to learn the art of forgiveness. Sometimes forgiveness is a leap of faith. Sometimes we can forgive a person openly, sometimes we cannot; for example, sometimes the person we need to forgive has died, and we are unable to face them […]

Another purpose of the fruit of love is to build our faith. Faithfulness is another fruit of the spirit that we will explore in depth later. For now, know that faith is the opposite of fear, and we already talked about getting rid of fear by using love! Galatians 5:6 (KJV) says, “But faith… worketh […]