Essential 100

Bearing Fruit

             But the Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. Galatians: 5:22

 We are gifted with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit when we place our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. In our E100 readings this week we are challenged by the Apostle Paul to be disciples that bear fruit. As I reflect upon the list above, I wonder how spiritual fruit develops and is ripe for the picking. Doing some internet research, I came up with this checklist on the growing cycle of grapes in a vineyard.

Note that fruit bearing is a cycle. The cycle includes the application of the right environmental conditions, and time. It also includes the necessity of pruning and monitoring. I am wondering if this is also the case with bearing the fruits of the Spirit. Spiritual life like physical life is for sure cyclical. We go from a sense of barrenness to fruitfulness. We have to have the correct environmental conditions to bear these spiritual fruit, i.e., worship, prayer, study, service, community. Heat needs to be applied to the vines to produce fruit. Often for us the heat of renewed passion or the heat that comes with trials and suffering is applied to us. As with the grapes our fruitfulness takes time. It also takes careful pruning and monitoring which is the work of the  Lord within us.

 Jesus says to us, “I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful, … remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself, it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remain in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit.” John 15:1-5

 God the Father as our Gardener, prunes us, and is ever watchful of our growth process, providing all the nourishment we need through the strength we receive by His Son as empowered by the work of the Spirit within us. All we need to do is cooperate with the process. This is what makes us radically different from the grapes. They do not have the freewill to say no to the cycle or take matters into their own hands, or get impatient and try to do it their own way. That is why Jesus says to us, “remain in me.” Basically He says cooperate with me.

 So where are you in your cycle of growth? Are you in the barrenness of winter that follows some pruning? In the blossoms of Spring? Maybe you are at the glorious sugar sweet growing stage of Summer? Or your fruit might be ready to Harvest. Where ever you are in the process of bearing the fruit of the Spirit in your life, I would encourage you to let the Gardner do His work in you. Allow the strength and love of the Son feed and sustain you, and the Holy Spirit have full reign in your life.