We all know the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5: ”love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this fruit recently, wanting to see more of it. So I started really working on one or another at different times. One a given day, I might determine to be patient. On another, to be good. On I would go, acting like a pinball, careening from one item to another. In the end, I think I looked like one of those people who twirl plates on sticks. Once he gets up to nine or so, he’s madly dashing from one nearly falling plate to another with no rest.
This is no way to live the Christian life. I realized yesterday that fruit of the spirit is more like a warning system. If the Holy Spirit is being allowed to live and flourish in your life, these fruit are just going to be there. You don’t have to put forth some superhuman effort to manufacture them. They’ll simply rise up and come out of you. It’s when I DON’T see patience that I need to be aware that I’m not letting the spirit function in my life the way I should. When I’m not being gentle, it’s because I am living in my own power rather than God’s.
The ‘alert’ of a lack in any of those listed fruit is like my computer giving me an error if I try to get to a certain website. My network connection to that site has been disrupted; and until that connection has been restored, that website is not available.