Bearing Fruit

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." - Galatians 5:22-23

To see fruit grow from a tree, you have to take care of it. What you don’t have to do is figure out how to turn an apple seed into an apple, creating all of the fibers and weaving them together into a beautiful, red apple. God does that part. You just have to water it consistently, expose it to the sun daily, and protect the roots from harm.

Spiritual fruit works the same way. Often we try to make the fruit of our own efforts, but that’s not the point. We think we can be loving, joyful, peaceful, and all the rest by working hard at it. If we practice enough discipline to change our habits, we can perfectly embody these beautiful character traits.

Wrong.

We're trying to create the apple. Maybe more accurately, we're trying to create an apple from an orange seed. It just doesn't work that way, and it's foolish to think that it does.

The fruit of the Spirit is a byproduct of abiding in the Spirit.

Jesus Himself tells us this:

"Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." John 15:4-5

God has planted the seed, which is the Holy Spirit, in our hearts. It's not our job to figure out how to turn it into fruit. We just have to consistently water it (with the word of God), expose ourselves to the Son (the presence of God), and protect our roots from harm (false teaching and worldly influence). Then we trust God to produce the fruit of His Spirit in us.

And in my experience, the fruit of the Spirit started to bloom in my life almost in spite of me. People would comment on how patient I am in a moment where I wasn't feeling patient at all. But the Spirit in me was acting in victory over the desire of my flesh.

We don't worry about how He does it. We just trust that He will.