Ideas for gifts, characteristics and practices.

 

 

Taking delight in ourselves, our life and our world builds confidence in God.

 

Sharing our deepest weaknesses and failures with God and trusted friends, through which we experience grace, forgiveness and healing.

 

Abstaining from food (usually), so we learn to be sweet and strong when we don’t get what we want.

 

Engaging with other disciples enlarges our capacity to experience more of God.

 

Giving money releases us from the love of money.

 

Prayerful ruminating on God, His word and His world. This may also include memorising scripture.

 

Interactive conversation with God about what we and God are thinking and doing together.

 

Deliberately forsaking the security of satisfying our own needs with our resources - in the faith and hope that God will sustain us.

 

Consciously refraining from having our good deeds and qualities generally known disciplines our longing for recognition.

 

Loving, thoughtful, active promotion of the good of others and God’s causes in our world helps us to go beyond ourselves.

 

Closing off our souls from sounds, noise, music and words. This stills the inner clatter of our hearts, and helps us to be increasingly attentive to God.

 

A single-hearted focus on God results in an outward lifestyle of modesty and openness. This checks our hunger for status, glamour and luxury.

 

Creating an open, empty space in our lives by abstaining from interaction with others puts us in a place to be found by God.

 

Engaging the mind with the Bible and God’s world so the mind conforms to the thing on which it concentrates.

 

Allowing God to direct your life and allowing others to input into your life.

 

Expressing the greatness and goodness of God and entering into his dynamic presence.

 

 

A general or specific insight into God’s purposes.

 

Reveals stuff we don’t know.

 

Unshakeable confidence that God is about to resolve an impossible situation.

 

Healing illness in the power of the Spirit.

 

Performing acts of extraordinary supernatural power.

 

Speaking out God’s words.

 

Discerning what’s behind something; God, humans or spirits.

 

Speaking an unlearned prayer language.

  

Knowing what a tongues-speaker is praying.

 

Opening your home and your life to others.

 

 

Love

 

Joy

 

Peace

 

Patience

 

Kindness

 

Generosity

 

Faithfulness

 

Gentleness

 

Self-control

 

 

Don’t “try hard” to be this kind of character, but simply ask. It’s the fruit of the Spirit’s work in us.