I have a confession to make...I'm not too fond of fruit cake. If you’re from the South and were raised in the 70s, 80s, or 90s, you know what fruit cake is. Some of my fondest childhood Christmas memories are watching my Ma and aunts make homemade Christmas candy. The smells of coconut, chocolate, and peanut butter would fill our kitchen along with the sound of sweet laughter and my little tastebuds were always ready to devour all the delicious sweets! If your mother makes homemade candy too you know just how fortunate we still are!
One Christmas, I remember seeing a beautiful fruit cake creation on the counter and dreaming about what it would taste like with its dark cake exterior and colorful inside. And then I remember the realization I had of what it tasted like in contrast to what I was preparing for, and I guess my little tastebuds were confused. Now, I’m not here to bring anyone down who loves fruit cake. It’s beautiful to look at and the lovely hands that make it are very talented, but I just couldn’t seem to get a taste for the jellied candies that I imagined would taste like pieces of fresh fruit but seemed to pale in comparison. I am proud to say that fruit cake is the only Christmas candy I have that feeling about though!
You may be wondering why I am bringing up this Christmas dessert that so many people love from generation to generation. It’s simply because fruit cake always reminds me of the fruits of the Spirit and, just like the intricacies and practice it takes to make homemade cakes and candy from a family recipe, the fruits of the Spirit need to be practiced over and over again to stick to our souls. Since some of the fruits of the Spirit may come more naturally to us than others, it’s always a good idea to refresh your knowledge of them and practice.
Let’s journey through a few daily choices that can help us develop good fruit in our lives and relationships:
One of the most famous references to fruit in the Bible is that of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that Eve and Adam took a bite of. It was there that Satan started his fight against the goodness of God and tempted Eve to doubt God’s honesty and His provision. “The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.” (Genesis 3:2-7)
Eve gave into temptation, believing the serpent over God’s direction, and we know the truth and the lasting effects that her decision cost us all. Now grateful for grace and Jesus, we can see how easy it is to fall for counterfeit lies when we don’t have the truth ingrained in us. Developing the fruit of the Spirit means we must make deliberate choices every day to follow God’s direction and lead in all of our decisions. When we become Christians and Christ followers, we have the Holy Spirit housed in us. It is then that the fruit of the Spirit can flourish in our lives.
As outlined in Galatians 5:22-26, “...the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.” Will you serve the flesh or the Spirit? If you haven't already, will you choose today to whom you will serve? I promise choosing our Savior will make all the difference.
This world feels like it keeps getting heavier the longer we live. Even though we are reminded in Ecclesiastes 1:9 that “there is nothing new under the sun,” it still feels as though with the rise of technology the pressure of the pain and bad news is at an ever-rising strength. So what do we do with this pressure and temptation that seems to come at us from every angle, pressuring us to live and react to the world around us in a flesh-led cycle? We have to choose how we will receive our day - whether it’s good or bad.
The fruit of the Spirit has always felt internal to me and rightly so since the Holy Spirit is within us. For example, the fruits, while they can be described and exemplified in many ways, look a lot like how we love others, cultivate joy in our hearts, feel peace in our souls, kindness in our countenance, goodness in our thoughts, faithfulness in our beliefs, gentleness in our demeanor, and self-controlled in our thoughts. These are all controlled on our interior but they can also be displayed on the exterior. For example, in how we love our family, bring joy to our neighbor, act peacefully in strife, remain patient with a difficult person, offer kindness in our words towards someone rude to us, do the right things towards another, stay faithful to fulfill a task, act gently with other’s feelings, and control our tongue when in a difficult conversation.
The key in all of this is choosing beforehand how we will try to respond and receive all that comes towards us in a day, choosing that morning not to let our feelings or how someone else acts dictate how we interact with the world. Is it easy? By no means. It will require constant checking in with our Spirit, the Word, and Jesus in prayer. It will take practice and discernment and little mistakes here and there to let the importance of our reception of the world become clear to us. Will you work on how you receive the world and others in it by practicing the fruits along with me?
So as I stated above, developing the good fruits of the Holy Spirit is a daily choice and practice. I could go through all of the fruits and every possible good and bad scenario that could make up our day with examples of how to react to them but there wouldn’t be enough space on the internet, and I truly don’t have all the answers anyway. I’ve had a pressing this past year to think more about the fruit of the Spirit and how each one works in our lives. I’ve gone with the practice of focusing on one at a time and seeing how it interacts with the day and its work on my heart and mind. I’ve witnessed people I love and care about reacting to the harshness of this world and have taken notes on how I respect how they use the fruits of the Spirit to guide their actions and responses as well.
We will never get it all 100% perfectly because we are fallen and sinful humans but we can make deliberate choices every day, week, month, and year to become a “closer to Jesus” version of ourselves. Maybe there are old habits of getting heated when discussing certain topics of conversation with others that you can begin to untangle. Could that be an opportunity where you could develop more peace, gentleness, and self-control in your speech? Maybe you’ve become tired of doing the “right thing” all the time and you need a reminder that developing more goodness and faithfulness internally is the best place for your heart to live and that it is not a means to an end.
No matter where you sit with each fruit of the Spirit, the good news is that we have the wellspring of each in our reach at all times. Sit with the Lord this upcoming week and see where He leads you to become more sensitive. He may unveil a fruit that you’ve tucked away that could be a huge blessing to you and those around you if you worked on developing and growing it more in your day-to-day life. He has the recipe and ingredients we just have to follow His lead in the kitchen of our hearts, minds, and souls until it sticks.
Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/Reza Shayestehpour