Fruits of the spirit

 Scripture tells us that if God‘s Spirit lives in us, that we will manifest certain characteristics because of that fact. These are referred to as the fruits of the spirit. They are:   Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,gentleness, respect, and self-control. Way too frequently Christians today ignore or demean these things or sacrifing them on the altar of self.

Love gets twisted in to license
Joy gets demeaned into merely feeling “happy”
Peace is submerged either in infighting or the epidemic of depression and anxiety that is growing
Patience is lost in a culture of immediate self gratification
Kindness is reserved for those on “our side” or those who can befefit us
Gentleness only applies to those who agree with you
Respect is more and more conditional
Self control is simply ridiculed and dismissed as unrealistic


Basically we’ve entered a time when way to many who claim to be Christian, say “Fxxx” all these things.    It’s all about what I think is best for me, not what’s best for others or for the Body of Christ.

The great thing about these, is how counterintuitive and countercultureal they are.   When the culture says, it’s OK to attack those with whom you disagree, and the fruits of the spirit indicate otherwise. Just like “Love your enemies” runs counter to what our society tells us.   There is not a list of people, or groups of people, that these things don’t apply to. There Aren’t any exceptions, or excuses.

 The only reason that any of us fail to demonstrate the fruits of the spirit is that we decide we know better. We decide that we don’t have to be gentle to those people, because those people aren’t gentle to us or to others.  Or we think that we don’t have to exercise self-control because we live in an age of instant gratification and anything that makes us wait must be bad. It’s our natural ,sinful desire to assert that we know better than God.