The Fruit Of The Spirit

The Fruit of the Spirit

The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Galatians 5:22-23

A woman who had just moved to the country wanted to grow an orchard full of apple trees. She didn’t know much about cultivating trees, so in early spring she took several dozen twigs from an apple tree and stuck them in the ground twenty feet apart. She carefully watered and sprinkled fertilizer all around those sticks. She watched and waited. But in the fall, she was disappointed because she had no apples to pick. Why were there no apples? Those twigs couldn’t mature because they were not rooted in the tree they came from. There was no living sap to nourish them.

The same is true with our spiritual lives. It is only as we abide in Christ, which means that we live in close union with him and are yielded to his Spirit, that the virtues or “fruit” listed in Galatians will be produced. Self-effort won’t bring true goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. Good intentions won’t produce love, joy, peace, patience, or kindness. This fruit is produced only when Jesus lives and moves freely through us. It is his love touching others through our lives. His gentleness responding to children, his patience forbearing with difficult people we encounter. His faithfulness expressed as we keep our commitments in marriage and in our everyday lives, his goodness and kindness blessing others. —CHERI

Holy Spirit, realizing that none of the fruit or virtues named in your Word reside within my flesh, I humble myself and ask you to help me to rely wholly on you.

I have a glove here in my hand. The glove cannot do anything by itself, but when my hand is in it, it can do many things. True, it is not the glove, but my hand in the glove that acts. We are gloves. It is the Holy Spirit in us who is the hand, who does the job. We have to make room for the hand so that every finger is filled.

—CORRIE TEN BOOM (1892–1983), HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR, AUTHOR