By the power of God bestowed through Christ Jesus, we may resist patty-cake with the enemy of God. Hang onto hate long enough and it will overtake like a weed allowed to run rampant in an unpruned or unattended garden. Forgiveness is neither about nor for the other person.

Only natural love or phileo (conditional affection) demands like return for that which is given when it is given. When divine love or agape (God’s kind of unconditional love) is sown, the harvest thereof will manifest, ‘though not necessarily from the exact point sown. The harvest of good fruit leaves scant concern from whence comes its manifestation.

“A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. . . . Yes, the way to identify a tree or a person is by the kind of fruit that is produced” Matthew 7:18,20 (NLT). Thought, word, and deed bespeaks the evidence as to which is what.

All who are branches on the true vine Who is Christ Jesus (John 15:1-8) are called to be producers of good fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-discipline (Galatians 5:22), for the glory of God the Father.

Notice that the harvest of good fruit begins with divine love that has been poured into each re-created or reborn spirit by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). Joy is of love, peace is of joy, patience is of peace, so forth and so on. May the peace of Jehovah Shalom be with you, this I ask/pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.