Welcome to another post of the ramblings inside of my brain. Haha! I told you that I was going to bring back my thoughts and words!! The first among them is a challenge. A challenge for me. A challenge for you.
To Check your fruit
Jess Connoly, a church planter and an author, is someone I have followed on Instagram for years. She said those words recently. I have had them on my mind every single day since, which has me reading Galatians 5:19-26, just to check my fruit. How’s it looking. Because believe me, it either looks good….or it looks bad.
Galatians 5:19-21 reminds us what the works of the “flesh”, or what our natural inclinations or our natural “fruit” looks like. It looks like “sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar.”
The version that I am reading, the CSB, even says the works of the flesh are obvious. But I’m wondering….are they??? Are they all always obvious to us? I mean, yeah, sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, sorcery, drunkenness, and carousing seem quite obvious. But idolatry?? Is that obvious? Are hatreds, jealousy and selfish ambitions obvious? I mean…I feel like strife and outbursts of anger often just kind of sneak up on me.
I have to fight for the fruit of the Spirit
But the fruit of the Spirit. I have to fight for that. I have to fight for the fruit listed in Galatians 5:22 and 23. The fight for love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control is an ongoing thing for me. It is a purposeful fight. A move towards God.
This is not a passive thing. We have to make a purposeful move towards God to walk in them. Selfishness rises up in me in a moment. Kindness is purposeful. Hurtful words are quick to come out of my mouth. Gentleness and self-control are purposeful. They are fought for.
The fruit is fought for by time spent purposely pursuing a relationship with God. It is fought for when I close down social media apps and turn on some worship music or my Dwell app that reads the Bible to me as I walk around my house and get things done. It is fought for when I wake up a half hour early and read my Bible and pray. When I pray for my day ahead. When I pray for my family and friends. When I pray for our church. For our leaders and our world.
The fruit is fought for when I choose to believe over and over that God’s Word works. That it is worthwhile to fight against the works of the flesh and to fight for the fruit of the spirit. To live my life like I really do believe that the ways of God work. That the abundant life is not just Heaven in the future, but it is Heaven on earth. Right now.
The hard reality right now is that this is a hard season. We are living in a pandemic. People are getting sick. People are being quarantined. Our children are schooling from home. Our country is still reeling from an election that is seemingly unending. On top of all of these things things that we are going through together, many of my friends have lost loved ones or are walking through hard seasons with their families. And on top of all of that, our favorite holidays are coming up. It’s supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year, for the love of all things good!!
So let’s fight for peace, friends. Let’s fight for the joy that is promised. Let’s fight to be kind and gentle with everyone, because, gosh, this is hard for all of us.