One Spirit, One Fruit
Peyton Johnston
May 15th, 2018
Galatians 5:23-26
Have you ever felt like you are constantly at war within yourself? Like you desire to do what’s right and follow God’s Word, but there’s always this part of you that wants to go your own way? Don’t worry, we can ALL relate. Our human nature – our flesh – is drawn to sin. It urges us to ignore God’s voice and doesn’t particularly like to submit.
So how do you battle this? Easy answer, friend.
God has gifted us the most precious treasure – His ACTUAL Spirit. So when we receive His Spirit with the evidence of speaking in another tongue, the love, guidance, and pure essence of the almighty, everlasting Creator of the entire universe and beyond is able to dwell inside our very own hearts!
*mind blown*
The Holy Spirit convicts us, corrects us, and comforts us. And with it, we are able to better understand and imitate the character of Christ, which allows us to fight against our fleshly desires and make decisions through Godly wisdom. When we make the choice to consistently walk in the Spirit, the Bible says that we will display the nature of God through what it calls the “Fruit of the Spirit”, which includes the characteristics of: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance.
Many will misquote this scripture and call it the fruits of the Spirit – plural – as in there are many fruits to be produced. But the scripture is clear in that there is one fruit that bears many qualities. This means that we cannot pick and choose which traits to display based on preference or convenience. Just like a tree cannot produce only part of a fruit, we also cannot say that we produce the fruit of the Spirit if we do not strive to display every quality it encompasses. We either have it all, or we have none of it. The love we show means nothing if we have a hot temper. Our faith is for naught if we are not peacemakers. The gentleness we show others will lose its value if we are not also showing them the joy of the Lord. And the list goes on.
Just as there is one Spirit, there is one fruit. The fruit of the Spirit is a byproduct of submission to God – we can’t obtain it without His help. If we really want to grow the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, we must be willing to join our life to His. We must love Him, obey Him, reverence Him, and imitate Him. And we must live our lives in an effort to show every beautiful quality of God’s being – to produce the entire fruit. And it’s through His Spirit that we nurture in us and allow to shine out of us that we will find the strength to overcome our flesh – Every. Single. Time.
Pray: God, I want to walk in Your Spirit so that my life portrays the likeness of You, not the sinful nature of me. And I know that without producing the whole fruit of the Spirit, I am not truly eminanting who You are and who I want to be. So help me to fully submit and fully encompass every part of the fruit.