Jessica Thompson | How God Loves You, 173 -

Jessica Thompson | How God Loves Us, 173

Jessica Thompson | How God Loves Us,

JESSICA THOMPSON is an author of several books including Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Christ and frequent conference speaker.

She is part of the podcast Front Porch with the Fitzes, and is the director of church life at RISEN Church in San Diego, California.

Join the Grace Enough community HERE!

Jessica Thompson and Amber discuss the heart behind Jessica’s devotional, How God Loves Us: 40 Days to Discovering His Character in the Fruit of the Spirit.

How God Loves Us Questions Discussed:

(5:26) Share a little about your faith journey. When did you begin walking with Jesus?
(12:01) If you grew up in the church you can probably sing, “And the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace..” but in “How God Loves Us” you write about the fruit of the Spirit being the characteristics of God. Let’s begin with how Christians typically think and talk about the fruit of the Spirit.
(16:34) What are some places in the Word where we see a fruit of the Spirit displayed in God?
(20:59) What are some ways you would encourage someone who’s just constantly finding themselves going back to that, “Oh, I do this to earn God’s favor”?
(26:17) Why you choose to write a devotional vs. a trade book and what your hope is for the book?

Quotes to Remember from How God Loves Us:

“I was like what Jesus described, the whitewashed tomb, it looks clean on the outside, inside is just dead rotting bones. All of my goodness wasn’t good enough.”

“What made me love God was the realization that He was good in my place, that Jesus Christ was that goodness that I needed.”

“I didn’t have to act anymore. I didn’t have to prove myself anymore. I didn’t have to attain to some level of outward spirituality that everybody would praise me for. I was free and forgiven and loved because of who he is not because of who I am.”

“The problem with setting up the fruit of the Spirit as a list is we end up in one of two places. We either end up proud and looking down on everybody else who isn’t doing the fruit of the spirit….or we end up depressed…I can’t do it. I fail constantly.”

“God demonstrates His love for us in the fruit of the Spirit. And so I believe that we’ve taken the fruit of the Spirit, we’ve made it into a to do list for ourselves. It’s changed into self focus instead of what I think really engenders and makes the fruit of the Spirit grow in our hearts, which is a look at God. A look at how he’s loved us, how he’s patient, how he’s kind, how he’s good, we look at him and how he’s displayed all of these fruit of the spirit towards us. And when we do that, it melts our heart, it softens our hard hearts. And you can’t help but feel like oh, if he’s been so patient with me, surely, I can be patient with others.”

“Not to say that horrible hard things don’t happen, they have and my heart is broken. But at the same time, I know his faithful love is pursuing me and his goodness is after me.”

“The only way that we have real growth in our life is as we behold Him, we become more like Him.”

“To some extent, there are practical things you can do to be a more patient person outwardly. But that inward change of heart where you actually want to be patient….that has its genesis in what he’s done for us. We love because he first loved us.”