When I read Gal. 5:22 "...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control..." Sometimes (on days that I think deeply about it) I think, there should be a colon there.
Follow me on this. What if when the bible was translated the wrong punctuation was put after love? What if it should have gone something like this.. the fruit of the spirit of love: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
So this is what I think. If you are needing joy, or peace or...... then pursue love. If you consciously love the other things just naturally follow. The greatest commandment is to love the Lord God with all your heart, mind and soul, and the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. God is love (1 Jn 4:8), and it's by the way we love others that people know we are His (Jn 13:35). It is in love that we find peace. It is in love that we find joy. We even find patience in love, isn't easier to be patient with those that we love?
Then if you look at the love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, it almost exactly lines up with the fruit of the spirit. "Love suffers long (patience) and is kind (kindness); love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely (gentleness), does not seek it's own, is not provoked (goodness); thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in truth (joy); bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things (faithfulness), endures all things. Love never fails.." This fits with my theory that joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control are fruits of love.
I overflow with amazement and joy that the love we need to have all these wonderful fruits is just freely and abundantly given to us, it is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5).
Not just on Valentine's Day but everyday loving people is the best thing that we can do not only for others but for ourselves. Honestly, it doesn't really matter whether there is supposed to be a colon there or not, the point of the scriptures are clear-- Love is what we should be pursuing.