What does it mean to be faithful? Often, we think in terms of a marital commitment, as in faithful to your spouse and not having romantic relationships with anyone else (yes, emotional affairs count but that's not my purpose here.) Certainly, that is a great demonstration of faithfulness, but let's think of a few other ways faithfulness may be evident in us when the Holy Spirit indwells and our focus is on glorifying God.

We will think first about what God wants for the day, and lay our own desires down in a desire to be faithful to His commands and leadership.

We will be careful about what commitments we make, and those we do make, we will do our best to fulfill.

We will be trustworthy in our friendships, not revealing information to others that they do not need to know and giving focused attention to those we are spending time with.

We will finish out a commitment to its reasonable end (this does not mean we do something forever) and have a good transition plan for someone else to take over if applicable.

We often fail in faithfulness because we fall into the busy life trap and unintentionally get into habits like:

·       promising to do something and forgetting to write it down or do it

·       telling people we should "get together sometime" but never make it happen

·       volunteering for a task, and then complain under our breaths about everything we have to do.

The next fruit is meekness. We don't use the word meek very often. In fact, I needed to look the word up! One of the definitions is "yielding." I like that. "Yielding" is not a popular virtue, and indeed, there are some things we should NOT yield about. But as we look at the Holy Spirit in our lives, "yielding" is a good thing.

I remember being counseled during a difficult job loss to "lean into" what God was doing. It's like a child that comes into a strange situation. They tend to lean into their parent, sometimes burrowing their face into their mom or dad's side.

I think that is partly what God invites us toward as we develop meekness. It's a surrendering of the "me first" mentality and instead, accepting what He allows into our life. Again, I'm not suggesting it is biblically appropriate to never stand for truth, or to allow others to control you. I am suggesting that we often take too much control and fear leaning into, or yielding, to what God is doing. I confess I'm in a season myself where I have a hard time leaning into what God may be doing.

Ironically--or not--as we have a meek and humble spirit, we will likely see ourselves grow in faithfulness, love, joy and peace. Again, isn’t it amazing how all the fruitful characteristics complement each other?