My 'Take-Aways' from The Forgotten Fruit

I just finished a 6-week sermon series called "The Forgotten Fruit" based on the Fruit of the Spirit beyond Love, Joy & Peace.  Everyone wants all the love, joy and peace they can get in their lives, but it is the other qualities that we often forget about as being something from God, that He brings into our lives.  From the context, these qualities are intended to distinguish us from the rest of the world.

Gal 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.

I don't really finish a sermon often until sometime on Monday, after preaching it on Sunday.  My mind and heart don't really let go of it for sometime.   It seems often that that is when God 'preaches it to me' and the richness of those insights are quite valuable to me personally.

There were several things I took from this series of messages that was important to me.

- These are qualities God's Spirit brings into my life, not character qualities I have to work at building into my life.  Not that they don't take effort, but the primary effort is whether I am willing to yield my life to the Spirit to allow His righteousness to work its way into and through my life.  When I think I have to work harder at being patient or faithful then can it really be as a result of God's Spirit bringing His fruit into my life? 

- God's Spirit is always bringing all of these qualities into my life.  It is not like I have gentleness when I need gentleness.  These are the evidence of His presence in my life and these qualities are always present.  These are not qualities I turn on and off, but are the ongoing evidence of Him.  He is always in my life, or He is not there at all.  The evidence of God's Spirit at work in my life is as a result of the crucifixion of Jesus where He put to death my sin and sinful nature.  Now He brings His new life into me so I can live looking like Jesus living in the world today, in my body.


- These fruit are to reveal Him at work in our world through my life and that intensifies the significance of each of these qualities.  When the world can see the level of self-control or goodness in my life and it should be at a level that goes beyond my normal human experience.  Everyone can demonstrate patience on occasion but God brings a supernatural ability to demonstrate patience and kindness and each of these qualities.  When God does something, He seems to always do it in a way that will draw our attention to Him, when His fruit are being demonstrated in my life, do they point to Him or Me?

God is not interested in making me into a nicer person but a holier one.  The fruit of His Spirit are intended to work His sanctification out in my life and connect my fleshly life with His Spirit.

- When I stop looking for the Fruit of His Spirit to be at work in my life then I am in danger of  sanctifying myself and relying on my own character to make me look good instead of yielding my life to Him, day in and day out and allowing His goodness to be at work through my life.  But, when I am able to be  relying on His Spirit to be at work through my life which look like the fruit of the Spirit, then I am in a place to let Him reveal Himself through my life.

If you want to listen to the messages on the qualities of The Forgotten Fruit, you can do it from the "Recent Sermons" on the right side of this post.