A while back I offered a survey to social media friends, asking for input on how they viewed the fruit of the Spirit in their lives. The responses were actually “both/and.” While every single response admitted to being underwhelmed at the fruit production in their lives, they also expressed awe and gratitude for the experience of looking back over their lives and identifying real, God-produced attributes that revealed His character in their lives.
What is the fruit of the Spirit, and how does it grow in our lives?
Look at the words. Just the words.
Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control.
When we focus on the words that compose the classic fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22, we pause. Something stirs inside us. Do we want to be loving? Yes, please! Patient? Absolutely! They’re attractive qualities. We want them in us, and we want to cultivate them in our children. We long for them in our days and our nights and in all the moments in between. But how? They seem impossible and unrealistic to grow in our everyday lives, much less the lives of others.
After all, we’re not Mother Teresa. Compassionate. Giving. Fearless. Sacrificial. Content with possessing nothing. I look at the life she lived, immersing herself in the power of Jesus amidst poverty and offering hope without ceasing. Wow. Then I look at my frustration about how I have to wait in a stack of traffic for an unexpected forty-five minutes while doing errands, about how my husband doesn’t move his snack plates from the sink to the dishwasher. I think about how I can overlook the person with a cardboard sign at an intersection, the way that I dismiss injustices around me as just a part of life. Yuck.
Mother Elisa looks very little like Mother Teresa.
No, we’re not miniature Mother Teresas. Nor does God expect us to be. We’re us. Women. On the run. In the trenches. Under stress. Moms and wives, some of us. Daughters making our way. How can we grow such qualities in ourselves or in those we love?
Growing a fruit-filled life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control seems beyond our grasp.
I think that’s because we stare at these words and get caught up in the “outer peeling” of what they represent to us. We think that growing such fruit is about looking like some cardboard cutout version of Christian. A Sunday morning best of being nice all the time. Plus, we think it’s all up to us to produce. Not true.
Let’s take these assumptions one at a time.
-The fruit of the Spirit is not about being nice. The truth is that the fruit of the Spirit is about being like Jesus. Jesus was always loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, gentle, faithful, and self-controlled. But these qualities didn’t always wear the peeling of “nice” in His interactions. His love was acted out in telling a woman caught in adultery to stop sinning and religious leaders to quit making faith harder than God intended it to be. His kindness led Him to touch an outcast leper during a time when such an action was strictly prohibited. His peace put Him to sleep in a boat with disciples in the middle of a storm out at sea. Such moments don’t define “niceness.” But they were definitely fruit-filled. Fruitful living is not about being nice.
-The fruit of the Spirit is not all up to us. It’s not our job to produce these qualities in our lives or in the lives of those around us. Fruit production is God’s job. The fruit of the Spirit grows when we cooperate with God, when we let Him produce these qualities in us and through us as we grow in our relationship with Him.
-The fruit of the Spirit is honest. We don’t have to dress it up to make it better. It admits, “I really can’t do any more today. I’m bushed. But I’d love to help out tomorrow.” It suggests, “A better time for me to commit would be in the early afternoon because then the kids are in school.” This fruit isn’t 24/7 availability to impossible expectations. But, drawing from a relationship with God, spiritual fruit does try—openly and sincerely.
Growing a life that matters—a life that produces the fruit of the Spirit in cooperation with God—is about getting past the peeling of “nice” Christianity. Fruitful living is about getting down to the honest, simple truth: the fruit of the Spirit is about being like Jesus.
God makes it simple. We make it hard. We want to grow a life that matters; He wants to grow such a life in us. That’s fruit—minus the peeling.
Want a bite?
—Written by Elisa Morgan. Used by permission from the author.
