Why I am Self-Important

is gentleness a disability?

Gentleness does not come naturally to me. Brutal honesty is much more in my wheelhouse. My nature is not to tread lightly or to be mild in personality. I was born opinionated and boisterous, and, for most of my life, I considered gentleness to be reserved for a few gifted people who, through some natural-born favor, were made gentle for a very specific purpose, which I would never, ever serve. I’ve always considered gentleness a bit of a disability: something that would get in the way of my telling people they were complete idiots, of calling them on their sin, proving them wrong, or showing them how cool I was.

This confession is hard to write, but it must be written. For years, I walked through life like a bull in a china shop, leaving broken hearts and shattered emotions behind me. When people would come to me for spiritual advice, I would quickly open them up for major surgery with the skill of a savage rather than of a surgeon and start hacking away at their major organs.

Anesthesia was for sissies.

I can remember telling one friend who wanted me to stop correcting her that I guessed I couldn’t be her friend then because there was too much I needed to correct about her. Ugh! Can you imagine? I could tell stories like these for pages. I am by nature the very opposite of gentle. I am self-interested, harsh, intrusive, and loud.

So, how can I come to write this chapter on the fruit of the Spirit called gentleness? How can I speak of such a thing that comes so unnaturally to me? It’s only through the power of the Holy Spirit, who has been rewriting my DNA; He is daily changing me from a harsh, obnoxious soul to a more gentle and quiet one. This gentleness that I am inheriting from my Savior is completely changing my life, and I hope that it will change yours as well. So, take a look with me at the fruit of gentleness, and see what it might do for your life.

What Is Gentleness?

The fruit of the Spirit, gentleness, comes from the Greek word prautes (prah-ot’-ace), which has two directions: up and out. It firstly refers to your relationship with God (up) and then secondly to your relationships with other humans (out). When the fruit of gentleness grows in your life, there is a sense of calm, and you become less and less prone to getting upset about or stressed over your circumstances. The Spirit’s gentleness gives you an easiness, a carefreeness that reveals a heart that is, in meekness, set on nothing but the will of the Father.

Nowhere is this seen more beautifully than in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus went to plead the anguish of His heart with the Father in true gentleness by saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done” (see Matt. 26:39). Christ had the power to stop the crucifixion, but in the spirit of prautes, He did not. He gently and humbly accepted the Father’s will with all its anguish.

When your heart is beating deeply with the gentleness of the Spirit, pain, distraction, frustration, and trials lose their hold on you because you know that everything that happens is in His will, or it wouldn’t have come to pass. After all, John 3:27 tells us that “a person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.” Gentleness helps make this a reality to your soul and gives you the freedom to trust God even when the pain seems too much to bear.

Another word for gentleness is meekness

We don’t use meekness much, as it kind of leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth when you say it. In English, meekness makes you think of its rhyming cousin, weakness—an inability to do anything for yourself, a doormat, a wimp. But in the Greek, there is no taste of weakness in meekness. It is more correct to say that meekness is ‘strength and courage under control, coupled with kindness.’^⁠

Christ was never weak; He was never a wimp, never a victim, yet He is described as meek. He even says it about Himself when He says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Matthew 11:29, NAB).

The gift of gentleness allows your soul to rest in the knowledge that God has everything under control and that nothing is outside of His sight or righteousness. Vine’s Dictionary calls meekness a calmness of spirit “that is neither elated nor cast down, simply because it is not occupied with self at all.”^⁠⁠ Which is really the foundation of all righteousness, not being occupied with yourself at all, which then leads us to an outward flowing of the Spirit as we use His gentleness to feed those around us.

When the Spirit Bears Gentleness in You

When gentleness is not something you actively seek to have in your life, you end up with its opposite—self-importance. And self-importance is far more subtle, and far more destructive, than we like to admit.

(This post is adapted from chapter 8 of Fruitful.)