Spring has sprung in my yard! The grass is green, the flowers are blooming, and the weeds are continuing their epic struggle to dominate the world. I spend every spare moment I can playing in the dirt.
I find gardening so rewarding! As I clip away dead branches and pull weeds, new life gets that extra surge and my yard grows even more beautiful.
My gardening life has not always been so lovely, though. I currently live in a house in a neighborhood. I have one little yard to tend, with landscaped beds and an in-ground sprinkler system.
But a year ago I was living on a farm, with 48 acres to worry about. The soil was less than optimal, and the sheer volume of insects was the stuff of nightmares. Not to mention scorching heat, drought, goats who break through fences and eat E-VE-RY-THING. Ugh!
I all but gave up on gardening. When you don’t see the fruit of your labor, you become disheartened. I had difficult conditions to work with, and my plants struggled.
You don’t get a good flower or veggie crop by painting flowers and vegetables on your plants! The only way to save the problem of lack of fruit is to improve the plant itself. The right amount of water and sun, good nutrients from the soil or supplements, wise pruning and regular cultivation of weeds… all of these are required to strengthen the integrity of the plant itself. Only then can it bear a healthy crop.
In the same way, the spiritual fruit you and I are able to bear is directly a result of Jesus’ work in us. When Jesus Christ lives in you, your transformation begins inside. Jesus is not in the business of whitewashing your outsides to look good! He changes you from the inside out. The fruit of the Spirit is the evidence of that work within.
This month we are going to take a slow and detailed look at these two “spiritual fruit” verses from Galatians 5:
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
Sometimes in our hurry to be “good Christians” we focus on making fruit appear: “I am going to be more patient! I am determined to have more self-control!” If we could be more patient by sheer force of effort, we wouldn’t need Jesus, would we? The remarkable blessing of belonging to Him is that the closer we stick to Him, the more deeply we abide in Him, the more He makes these things true of us.
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