How God Loves Us: 40 Days to Discovering His Character in the Fruit of the Spirit

By Jessica Thompson

The fruit of the Spirit isn’t just something we display. It’s the way God loves us!

Every Christian cherishes the famous passage in Galatians 5:22–23 that lists the fruit of the Spirit. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. And self-control. These are the marks of godly character that we strive to display.

But has it ever occurred to you that these are also the characteristics of God? Can it be that God loves us with the fruit of the Spirit? And only when we are secure in that love can we display it to others?

Jessica Thompson wants to take you deeper into the love that your Heavenly Father has for you. Focusing on the majority of the fruit of the Spirit, she shows how God Himself has these attributes and lavishes them on us. In 40 readings designed for daily devotions, Jessica takes you across the whole arc of the Bible to reveal the character of the triune God. This journey will surely bless you. For the more you behold who He is and the nature of his love, the more you will, by the work of the Spirit, become like Him.

“My hope is that the readers will come away from this book more aware of what a magnificent God we serve. My hope is that the readers will remember their first love. My hope is that the readers will come back to this book again and again when they’re looking for a place of healing and hope.” – Jessica Thompson

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moody Publishers
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9780802499974

Jessica Thompson

Jessica Thompson is the author of Exploring Grace Together: 40 Devotionals for the Family and the coauthor (with Elyse Fitzpatrick) of Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus. She is a wife, a mother of three, and a member of an Acts 29 church.

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Motherly Love

The LORD passed in front of him and proclaimed: The LORD—the LORD is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth.

EXODUS 34:6

Have you ever seen a first-time parent completely smitten with a baby? You know that mom must be utterly exhausted, sleep-deprived, and hormonal, but the way she looks at her little one exudes dedication and love. I remember feeling so in love with my firstborn that I would tear up just holding him close, rubbing his chubby little hands. I remember not wanting to be apart from him, even when he was asleep. Those feelings were there with my other two, but by then I was so busy that I wasn’t afforded the luxury of reveling in my emotions.

Think of that tender, motherly type of love and read our verse again. The LORD is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth. The word for love in these verses is also sometimes translated tender mercies or compassions, from the word womb to connote a motherly type of love. We are accustomed to thinking about God in terms of Father, but how often do we think of His love for us as tender or motherly? Isaiah 49:15 says this: Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the child of her womb? Even if these forget, yet I will not forget you. One of the most compassionate and devoted types of love that we know here on earth is between a mother and her child. God is saying that His love is so compassionate, devoted, sacrificial, and committed that it makes a mother’s love look like one that is