Fruit Produced By The Spirit

Fruit Produced By The Spirit

When the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. –Galatians 5:22-23

I’ve been making an unofficial list for a while now—a list of songs I can go my whole life without ever hearing or singing again. At the top of the list is “For Those Tears I Died” (sorry if you wrote it or love it). Although I’m not sure it is officially on the list, another song I grew to dislike from overuse in youth ministry settings was “Peace like a River.”

At church one Sunday about ten years ago, I looked over the order of worship and saw we were going to sing the familiar chorus. I wondered why we had to drag that meaningless oldie out. But then we began to sing. Tears come even now as I remember. The preceding months had brought about significant change in my life. I was studying the Bible for myself as I never had before, and it was doing its work; it was changing me. And it felt great! As the Holy Spirit spoke to me through the pages of Scripture to convict me of sin, I began to repent—not just feel bad, but to really turn away from my old ways and welcome the fresh air of the Spirit of God into new areas of my life.

That morning, as I began to sing, “I’ve got peace like a river, I’ve got peace like a river in my soul . . . I’ve got joy like a fountain,” I began to weep because I realized that it was true! No longer was I simply going through the motions of religion as I had done for so long. I had a peace I had not known before, a joy that was fresh and new, and I was falling in love with Jesus in a way I never had before.

That’s fruitfulness. It’s not simply a work he wants you to do. It is a work he wants to do in you, in the interior of your life, in the transformation of your character. It is not a matter of working harder to be more loving or more joyful. The fruit of the Spirit is not a to-do list; neither is it a menu of options. It is more like a portrait that shows us what a life looks like when God is at work. We can never expect to be perfectly patient or exercise perfect self-control, but isn’t this fruit of the Spirit what we want to see growing in our lives? Isn’t this the kind of fruit you want to see flourish?

Cultivator of peace and joy, how I want to see your Spirit at work in the barrenness and brokenness of my life, blossoming forth in beauty. I’m tired of trying to change on my own. I want to give you control and let you do your work.

DIGGING DEEPER