Faith Fruit

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“But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”  Galatians 5:22-23

“for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth –”  Ephesians 5:9

 When we come to Christ, believing in who He is and what He’s done for us, putting our faith in Him for our worries and our future, a miraculous change occurs in our spirit. We move from death to life. We were literally dead in our sins and at the moment of trusting God we become alive in Him. Here’s where there isn’t an instantaneous change. When we connect with God, He meets us where we’re at. He doesn’t expect us to clean up our lives or change all our bad behaviors in order to join the family of God. But He loves us enough, that He doesn’t leave us in the place we are when we come to Him. Yes, occasionally people experience miraculous change like being freed from addiction, but that is the exception rather than the rule. The difference is, before we walked with God we were slaves to sin. There was nothing in us that could free us from it’s power in our lives. Once we begin to spend time with Jesus and walk in relationship with Him, we are given power over the sin in our lives through the Holy Spirit. He makes a way where there was no way. 1 Corinthains 10:13 tells us, “No trial has overtaken you that is not faced by others. And God is faithful: He will not let you be tried beyond what you are able to bear, but with the trial will also provide a way out so that you may be able to endure it.” God loves us enough to meet us where we’re at and not leave us there.

 As we grow in our relationship with God, the Holy Spirit begins to make changes in us, changes for the better. In our verses today, we see a list of some of the “fruits of the Spirit.” These are not attributes that we are supposed to get better at, as I once understood it. Thanks to a wonderful Beth Moore study called Living Beyond Yourself: Exploring the Fruit of the Spirit, I learned that these “fruits” are things that the Holy Spirit develops in us, rather than us trying to muster them up on our own. I kept trying to do better at being gentle or loving or kind, but what I really needed to do was draw closer to God and spend more time with Him.

 You see, the more time we spend with Him, the more we become like Him. This goes for other things in our lives as well. If we have a TV show that we watch “religiously” those attributes, thought patterns, and verbiage will be evidenced in our lives. If the people we spend time with are all about partying and drinking, that’s what we will become more and more about. On the other hand, if we spend time with people who are obsessed with finances and financial planning and stocks and CDs, we’re going to have that be more of a focus in our lives. Just like this, if we spend more and more time with God: praying, reading and studying the Bible, worshipping, even just being still before Him and listening; we will be more like Him. These attributes, these fruits of the Spirit, are attributes of God.

 Here’s the Thing: I love the way the devotional put it today, “Just as physical fruit requires time and the right conditions to mature, so does the fruit of the Spirit in our lives.” We can’t expect these things to develop overnight, but when they do, they serve as a powerful testimony. The devotional goes on later to say, “Our lives become a beacon of the Holy Spirit’s transformative power, bringing glory to God and drawing others to Him.”