“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”
– Galatians 5:22–23
What a powerful description of the fruit of the Spirit of God in our lives in Galatians 5:22–23. You look at this chapter, it’s contrasting the fruit of the flesh, the works of the flesh, which Galatians describes as sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, enmity, strife, jealousy, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, things like these. These are the works of the flesh like left to ourselves and our sinfulness. We are prone toward all of those things. Yet by the power of the Spirit in us, again, think Galatians 2:20, the life of Christ in us produces fruit and that fruit is totally different from what our flesh produces.
Let us pray that God will bring about this fruit in our lives talked about in Galatians 5:22–23. By the power of God’s Spirit, may we be a people marked by this fruit.
The fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace and so on. I just want us to pray for these things in our lives. Regularly I try on a weekly basis amidst some specific things, I try to pray for in my life, my wife and my kids, and co-labors around me in the church god’s entrusted me to pastor. One of the things I try to pray for consistently is this verse. Just constantly praying this over my life, my family, my home, my church, the brothers and sisters who I’m serving alongside on mission with in this world. Like I’m constantly praying for this over them. Let’s just pray together for these things. God produce these things in us. We pray.
Prayer For Love, Joy, and Peace
We pray that you by the power of your Spirit of God would produce in us, in me and each person who’s listening to this today in greater measure produce in us love. God, we pray for Spirit driven, supernatural love, Christ-like love. Please help us to love like Jesus loves. God, we pray for joy. We pray for Christ-like joy. Even Hebrews 12, “For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.” Oh, God, we pray for joy that transcends our circumstances today, even transcends suffering. That’s supernatural joy. We pray for it. We pray for peace, God, in a world where there is so much anxiety, so much temptation to worry. Oh, how worry and anxiety have affected, are affecting even right now so many of us. We pray for supernatural peace.
Prayer For Patience and Kindness
We pray for patience. Oh, God, please help us to be patient. Please help us to be patient with people around us. God, please help us to be patient amidst circumstances around us as we are waiting in different ways. We pray for patience that doesn’t come naturally to us. God, we pray for patience. We pray for kindness. Please, oh, God, produce Christ-like kindness in us. May the kindness of your son be evident in our demeanor, in our words, in our tone, in our actions, in our posture toward those around us today. God, please produce supernatural kindness in us for goodness. God, we want to lead good, beneficial, fruitful lives in all the right ways. Fruitful lives.
Prayer For Goodness, Faithfulness, and Self-Control
God, we pray that the goodness of Jesus, the righteousness of Jesus, would be evident in us. God, we pray for faithfulness. And God, please help us to be faithful to you, to be faithful to the people around us, to our spouses, to our children, to our parents, to our brothers and sisters both physically and in the church. Help us to be faithful members of your church. God, help us to be faithful to your commands, faithful to share the gospel to the lost. God, we pray for supernatural faithfulness. As we pray for gentleness, God, please give us the gentleness, the humility of Jesus. God, amidst all of our different personality types, we pray for a transcendent gentleness. We pray for self-control. God, please give us self-control.
By the power of your Spirit in us, help us to control our thoughts, our tongues, our emotions, our actions, our words. Cut in every email we send, every social media post, every reaction to every circumstance. God, we pray for self-control. Oh, God, none of these things we confess come naturally to us, but we know that your Spirit produces these things in us, so we ask for them now. God, may the fruit of your Spirit be more evident in us today than yesterday, and tomorrow than today. Make us the people who are exuding, displaying, illustrating, demonstrating Spirit-filled love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. May it be so by the power of your Spirit in us. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
