The church I grew up in had several worship teams throughout the decades I spend there. One worship leader’s name was Dolores. She only lead very occasionally, when there was a rare gap in worship leaders’ schedules, but when she did, she was always on an acoustic guitar. 

Dolores is a genuine flower child, saved after her wild days in the 60s, but her style of worship was still very “Stevie Nicks found the joy of the Lord.” She always sang songs that no one else did. One of them was this exact scripture, and there weren’t too many other words than that. But I cannot hear that scripture without hearing her singing it with that strummy guitar behind her.

So what does it mean? It’s obviously metaphorical about the strength and protection of the Lord towards His people, but how is it practically applied?

Okay, so surely gentleness is a redundant fruit of kindness and goodness. If that’s what you’re thinking coming into this devotion, I’d like to challenge you with this idea: for the past 8 weeks, we’ve been unpacking different facets of God’s character that are leant to us through the Holy Spirit. As Christians, when we find God’s character within us, we can be assured that we have lived a life closely with Him, because it is impossible for God’s Spirit to dwell where practices of the flesh are allowed to flourish. Ergo, the more we commit ourselves to a life lived in sacrifice to our Savior and allow Him to take more and more control of our lives, the less we will see of the world within us.