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Facets of Fruit: Gentleness Gentleness is power with reserve. Find out why there's no weakness in Spirit-given gentleness and why and how you should practice this facet of fruit in your life. Show Notes: Welcome back to More than Milk; I’m Hannah Rebekah. It’s been two weeks, and I’ve managed to produce a new podcast! Hooray for being productive and timely! Today we’re talking about the facet of the Fruit of the Spirit known as gentleness or meekness. The Greek word here is prautés, which means gentle strength or power with reserve and gentleness. I remember one year at summer camp a chapel speaker was talking through the beatitudes and called meekness “strength under control.” I think it’s easy to equate meekness or gentleness with weakness, especially in certain contexts. But the heart of prautés is power, not weakness. It’s all about how you use that power than matters. When you’re handling a newborn baby, you use a lot of gentleness—not because you aren’t capable of more but because gentleness is what’s required. We would never think positively about someone who manhandles a baby just to show off how strong he is. At the same time, there’s something very touching about a man with bulging muscles holding a tiny child so tenderly—and no one would dare call him weak! Handling babies is a good picture of what gentleness means, but it’s not the only place this facet of the Fruit of the Spirit is called for. In fact, we are always to have this quality. Anytime there is power to be had, it can be under control. We all know what the opposite of this looks like. It’s the proud and arrogant coworker who talks down to everyone and will do anything to get ahead. It’s the older sibling who uses their position to make their brother or sister work so they can do nothing. This “unnecessary roughness” is very common. I used to do a positive peer, anti-bullying program at the local school with the staff of the camp I worked for. We would go into the middle school and work with the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grades individually, for a half day each. Every year, we would ask the 7th graders how the 8th grade class had treated them, and every year, the answer was not great; they were abusing their power. We would also ask the 7th graders if they would break the cycle the next year. You could see the people who really thought hard about this, but there were always kids who yelled audibly that they were going to do the same things and enjoy being on top while they had the chance. Breaking that cycle is difficult, because we’ve all been hurt. We’ve all had people who used their power to gain the upper hand, and we’ve all thought to ourselves at one point or another, ‘Wait until I am in that position; I’ll show them. No one will treat me like this anymore.’ And then when we do move up the ladder, to prove to ourselves and others that we are powerful, we do the very same behaviors that we used to hate. To avoid this, we need meekness and gentleness. God has given all of us a measure of power, some greater and some lesser. He expects all of us to use that power not to build ourselves up and make ourselves look good but for the good of those around us. True gentleness can only come from the Holy Spirit because it requires that we first understand that God is taking care of us. Only then can we use the power He’s given us to better those around us. Philippians 2:3-4 says, “Do nothing out of rivalry or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.” That’s the heart of gentleness. So how do we cultivate this facet of fruit in our lives? As always, step one is pray. We need the power of God to look outside of ourselves and see how we can use the power God has given us to benefit others. Step two is continually be growing in the knowledge of who you are in Christ. When we forget, even for a second, that we are loved, valued, and planned for by God, it is so easy to use the power God has given us to make ourselves look and feel good at the expense of others. If we are going to be gentle, we must remember that we are worth so much in God’s eyes, and we don’t have to prove that to anyone, including ourselves. Finally, we need to cultivate a Spirit of humility. As C.S. Lewis put it, gospel humility is not thinking less of ourselves but thinking of ourselves less. A humble and gentle spirit is aware of other people more than of itself. So what does all this look like practically? In conversation, a gentle person looks for ways to make the other person feel known and heard instead of looking for opportunities to make themselves heard. This is a big one and a great first area to work on. Pay close attention to your thoughts and words when you’re talking to someone. Are you always looking for ways to interject your own life and thoughts into what the other person is saying, or are you really listening to and hearing the other person? Instead of trying to bring the conversation back to you, ask yourself what emotions are behind what the other person is saying. Is there something they’d like to say but are waiting to see if you care enough to hear it? If we’re always turning conversations back to ourselves, we will miss opportunities to love people, because they will be less likely to really open up about their needs. This is not to say that we can never talk about ourselves or our own needs, but we have to balance it and be aware of why we’re talking about ourselves. Is it just to get noticed? To prove that we’re better at something? To point out that we have it worse? Those are selfish motivations. On the other hand, it is totally okay to let a close friend know that we’re struggling and need help with something. That’s not being needy or proud; it’s being real and honest the way the Body of Christ was designed to be. So what else does gentleness look like? It means not looking for praise for yourself but looking for ways you can build up others around you. It means not grabbing at leadership opportunities so you can have the power but evaluating if you as the leader would be best for the whole team or if it would be better if someone else were. It means serving those under you, like Jesus washing the disciples feet. Having power is not bad. Our positions of leadership and power over other people, whether it’s relational, positional, or whatever, comes from God. I don’t want you to come away from this thinking you can never be in a leadership role again because it’s wrong. If you are wired to be an effective leader, don’t shy away from that. But when you have power, use it well. Use it for the good of the whole and not just for yourself. Be the kind of person people want to follow, rather than the person they can’t wait to get out from underneath. This is important even if you’re not a “leader,” because everyone has power somewhere. Whether you have a little or a lot, know your power and look for ways to use it well. Those who are responsible with little will be given more. Thanks for joining me on the podcast today. I hope it will open your eyes to see where maybe you are misusing power and also to where you have some power that maybe you didn’t realize. I will see you again in two weeks when we talk about the facet of the Fruit of the Spirit called self-control. I hope you’ll join me then.