Embody the Fruit of the Spirit in your Life

Words and actions ripple through our world. Each wave starts in a person’s heart before moving into creation. So give yourself over to God’s refining work. God wants you to naturally embody and emanate the Spirit’s love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

There is only God and everything is held within their vastness and glory. One who called themself: “I am”. God is all that God is, was, and will be. Beyond our grasp and comprehension, God is. Jesus is. The Spirit is. Jesus continues, for thousands of years, to confound the powerful, the privileged, the strong, and the violent.

We expect God to act as we might. We see glimpses of our nature and so easily believe that God is like us. We expect God will intervene to save us from harm, to grant us favor, and to crush those who are against us. Yet, Jesus did not do these things. He was the personification of the hopes and expectations of the voices in scripture. Then He went against those hopes. For the essence and being of Jesus is the fruit of the Spirit.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. For there is no law against such things.
Galatians 5:22-23 [UMB]

Within God, there is no separation between being and doing. For God’s every movement is with His Spirit. Every expression and movement of God is ripe with the fruit of the Spirit. All things emanate from the heart of God into existence. The fruit of the Spirit animates God and gives life to all of creation. His living and moving are one. The fruit of the Spirit is the essence, being, words, and works of God.

Yet this fruit comes so unnaturally to us. Within my heart is a longing for these things because I lack them. I long to desire them. I wish I was more restless in my fruitlessness. I pray that I would long for it. I pray that I might see myself cut back, and new fruiting branches grafted into my heart. May the sun of righteousness shine upon you, as it did for our desert mothers and fathers. Its light bringing forth every virtuous fruit in your life.

This is a perilous place to find oneself. To realize the fruit of the Spirit in our lives can quickly become a work of the flesh. One we do with our own strength. With the best of intentions, we put on works and words of this fruit. It becomes, almost, a performance of us pretending to be. Where we act and pretend while hoping we will become. Yet, we know that Jesus looks to the heart. Out of the overflow of our hearts, our mouths speak. So, do we wait alone in the long, dark silence? Let us pray fervently for our hearts to change within our being. Let us wait in expectation for the divine to intervene with transformation. As we pray, we grieve and wait in stillness for change that feels ever further away.

Instead, let us move with awareness and an open heart. To find and accept Jesus’s invitation to be transformed and for our hearts to be made clean. That we discover Jesus giving us the strength to turn from death and walk in life. We discover a difficult inward journey. We begin prayerfully holding the inner work that shines a light upon the dark parts of our hearts. An inner light that shines and illuminates as we move through our world. We become more mindful of the fruit we long to see sprout, grow, and flow naturally from us. Fruit can be seen ripening within ourselves and within the community. Celebrate it in ourselves. Lavish praise when it is in others.

As we move through our world, we begin to see ripples of darkness overcome by the fruit of the Spirit. Fruit that is flowing from ourselves and all the children of God. In time our hearts and actions more intimately mingle. We find ourselves more effortlessly expressing the Fruit together with God. In this process of becoming, we embody and emanate the fruit of the Spirit. Today we embody it with greater ease, grace, and hope as our eyes are fixed on Jesus. He is the One who sits upon His throne in the Kingdom of Heaven. This kingdom is taking root in our hearts, our midsts, and our minds as we open ourselves to the transforming presence of God.

• Memorize the fruit of the Spirit and meditate on the ways God has expressed each one to you.
• Meditate on a part of the Spirit’s fruit and ask God to more deeply plant it within your heart.
• Ask God in prayer to help shift your focus from avoiding sin towards embodying the Fruit of the Spirit. Trust God to lead you into a fruitful life where sinful behavior loses its appeal.
• Join with God in praising the Fruit of the Spirit as you see it in your life.
• Reflect on your day and ask the Spirit to reveal opportunities that you couldn’t see to embody the Fruit of the Spirit.
• Ask God to show you, with gentleness, when your words or actions do not come from the fruit of the spirit.
• Meditate deeply on the fruit of love (including 1 Corinthians 15) and let it transform your understanding and experience of love.