Welcome to the feminine podcast. This is Nancy Wilson. Thanks so much for joining me today.

The topic today is motherly love as a fruit of the spirit. So mothers

naturally have a God-given, creaturely affection for their own children.

Mother's love is proverbial.

It's in a class of its own.

It's entirely unnatural, though we do see it a lot in our culture today but it's entirely unnatural to reject your own child

and have no pity or love for your own child. I mean even the animals or most of them show a maternal affection and

sacrificial love for their offspring. Now I had such a wonderful time bringing up

my kids. I love being a mother. Our children have been and still

are our dearest friends. And it was a great privilege to bring them up. But let's be real. I needed more than just natural

love bringing those little ones up. They were a handful, a really good

handful. Now God requires more of us Christian mothers than just

mere natural affection for our children. We need something more if we want to do well. If we want to give them what they should

have in the Lord, we have to get something that is outside ourselves and outside our own natural impulses.

And that is, we need supernatural love.

Natural love won't cut it.

It's fun, it's nice to have natural love of course, but it cannot hold firm like supernatural love,

fruit of the spirit love.

This is a much higher calling than just natural motherly affection.

Love is that first fruit mentioned in the list of the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 522.

But the fruit of the spirit is love. Joy, peace, long suffering, kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. But without that love at the front there, where would patience and kindness and gentleness come from.

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