“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control” (Gal 5v22-23).
I find it so easy to skip through these, reeling them off my tongue as though it’s some sort of ditty. Uh uh 😐 Love, joy, peace etc or so forth! Whatever! ... let’s get to patience and think about that for a while, or gentleness ...
Each one of these fruit are golden nuggets of truth and expressions from the heart of God. The fact that they are ‘listed’ in one sentence should not give us license to flippantly rush through them in an over-view type of way.
They are virtues of the highest standard and I’d like to think that if we were to attain a constant living out of every one of them, the world would be a very different place. You see, if I and you were to live out gentleness and self control for example, there would be no violence or aggression in us. To live out true joy there would be no bitterness in us and so it could go on.
There are 9 fruit / virtues given. If we decided to concentrate on each one, really focus on it and pray that we imbibe it into our very being, we would live out transformed lives and most certainly be more Christ like. Let’s suggest a 3 year period ... that would give you and I 4 months to work on each virtue! Am thinking as I write ... I may put them on my calendar and see if a friend could join me in this venture. At the top of each month, just write the virtue / fruit so that it focuses my mind to think about it for that period of time.
Note though, that this isn’t something doable on our own or in our own strength. No matter how hard we may focus and will these virtues to become apparent in our daily lives, it is only the Holy Spirit who can produce them.
To me that suggests a lot of prayer and conviction, an open heart willing to listen and be molded so that the ‘soil’ within me is perfectly suited and ready to help nourish roots when the implantation of truth takes place through the Holy Spirits work. He will form them in our lives.
As we abide in the True Vine, we will most definitely bear fruit. May our lives be living evidence to anyone we meet that the Holy Spirit has most definitely been at work within us ... they may not necessarily know that to begin with, but they will notice fruit and be blessed by it.
Ingrid x
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