January 18th

January 18th

One more thing on faithfulness…briefly mentioned in the sermon last week. Faithfulness is a fruit of the Spirit!

Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, FAITHFULNESS, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Now we have to circle back and remind ourselves of a few things. Remember, we should not be trying to muster up the fruit of the Spirit, all we need to do is NOT suppress the Holy Spirit. We can’t muster up the fruit. We have the Holy Spirit in us, we just need to give Him permission to have free reign in us and do what we can to get out of the way and the fruit will flow. The fruit of the Spirit depend on the Spirit, -not on us.

So we don’t chase the fruit, we just need more Jesus. We need to yield more and more to the Holy Spirit. We need to take the cap off the water bottle so to speak and let it all flow out of us. We quench the Spirit by our selfishness and the fruit won’t flow. But we can’t muster up the fruit, we have to just surrender to the Spirit and let Him do the work. His very presence in us includes every fruit of the Spirit, readily available if we just surrender. Surrender, complete surrender will result in transformation of ourselves back into Imago Dei and we will see the fruit flow out of us.

Love is another Fruit of the Spirit. We are talking about leaving a legacy of love. Reading 1 Corinthians 13 seems overwhelming. It is easy to read that and apply it to God’s love for us, but it can be hard to apply it to our love for anyone. But again we don’t need to, the Holy Spirit in us already loves the way we need to love. We can’t muster up love for anyone, all we need to do is not quench the Spirit and that fruit will flow out of us.

It is crucial that we get this in our hearts and minds. We waste so much time and energy “trying” to do a better job at loving others or being faithful, or being patient, or whatever by thinking about it, feeling guilty, making an effort, really meaning to, but in short time we fail. It is like holiness, we think it means to focus getting rid of sin, but instead we should be focused on getting more of Jesus in our lives. If our focus was on surrendering to the Holy Spirit more and more, then we would see better results than if we tried to muster up the fruit by will power. So next time you realize or feel the Holy Spirit convict you, about needing more of a particular fruit of the Spirit, stop and pray and ask Him for help, ask Him to show you how to pray about that fruit and how to surrender in that area. If you can learn surrender in that area, you WILL leave a legacy!

Jesus, I need to be more faithful and more loving but help me to realize that really means I need to surrender more to the Holy Spirit rather than just trying harder. Help me to really understand this concept. Help me to know how to pray about this and help me to see myself and my situation through your eyes. Holy Spirit, I don’t want to suppress you, I want you to reign freely in my life. Help me to surrender to you more and more each day. Thank you for your patience and thank you that you bring with you ALL of the fruit of the Spirit, so it is all available to me.