Rev. Richard Skinner/Jefferson First Assembly of God
Summertime often revolves around tasty food, especially summer fruits. Everyone has their favorite. I like peaches, blueberries, and watermelon. Even as I write, I can savor the taste of homemade peach ice cream, blueberry pie and sweet watermelons. We all know what they should taste like. We are disappointed when the watermelons are not ripe, or blueberries/peaches are tart.
The scriptures tell us that Christians are to bear spiritual fruit. Whether you are a disciple of Jesus or not, we intuitively have expectations for how Christians should behave. We do not want people to experience a bad taste in our fruit. Christian means “a little Christ”, so our model is Jesus. A serious look at the Gospels reveals that people were amazed at the compassion Jesus showed people and they were in awe about the way Jesus spoke. He spoke with authority and was humble enough to come and serve. Even going as far as to die for our sins.
What Jesus and the world desperately long to see, is the life of Christ in Christians. Jesus spoke about this in John 15:4-5 ESV “4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
The secret to producing spiritual fruit, Jesus says, is to abide in him. The vine (Jesus) provides all that the branch needs to produce fruit. Apart from Jesus we can do nothing. When we are abiding in Jesus the world can quickly tell. As we spend time in the presence of God, reading the Bible, praying, worshipping, God will transform our hearts and minds. His grace will empower us to walk and talk like Jesus. Paul describes what that might look like in Galatians 5:22-23, “22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” In the future, I hope to share my thoughts on the various aspects of the Fruit of the Spirit. It is my hope to encourage us to abide in Christ so that the Fruit of the Spirit might be produced in us. This is not just a selfish desire, but a hope that others would partake of the fruit seen in disciples of Christ and that the seed of Gospel would produce fruit in them as well. As Bob Buford said, “I desire to see my fruit grow on other people’s trees.”