Embody the Fruit of the Spirit in your Life

• 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. Trusting that a fruitful life will hold less sinful behavior.
• 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 to move more slowly so that the Fruit may overcome your impulses.
• 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.

The vastness and glory of God is within the one who is. 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.

Together, we expect God to act as we might. We see glimpses of our nature and so easily believe that God is like us. That God should 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]

For God’s every movement is with His Spirit. Everything comes out of the fruit the Spirit. From the heart of God into existence. It animates God and gives life to all of creation. Within God, there is no separation between being and doing. Between His living and moving. 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. Praying that I might see myself cut back, and new fruiting branches grafted into my heart.

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. Done with our own strength. With the best of intentions, we put on works and words of this fruit. Almost as a performance of pretending to be. Where we hope to 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? Praying fervently for our hearts to change our beings. Waiting for the divine to intervene with transformation. To grieve and wait in stillness for change that feels ever further away.

Instead, let us move with awareness and an open heart. Meeting Jesus in His invitation to be transformed and for our hearts to be made clean. Prayerfully holding the inner work that shines a light upon the dark parts of our hearts. A light that shines and illuminates as we move through our world. As we are mindful of the fruit we long to see sprout, grow, and flow naturally from us. Fruit ripening and seen within community. Celebrating it in ourselves and praising it in others.

As we move through our world, we begin to see ripples of darkness overcome by the fruit of the Spirit. Fruit flowing from ourselves and all the children of God. In time our hearts and actions more intimately mingle. They become increasingly effortless expressions with God. In this process of becoming, we embody and emanate the fruit of the Spirit. Today and into tomorrow with greater ease, grace, and hope with our eyes fixed on Jesus. The One who sits upon His throne in the Kingdom of Heaven. A kingdom taking root in our hearts, our midsts, and our minds as we open ourselves to the transforming presence of God.