Check Your Fruit 

Imagine going to a fruit tree orchard to gather fruit. As you arrive you see fruit on the trees and you can barely wait. You reach the first tree and every piece of fruit you grab is rotten. Some even look very delicious, but when you turn it over it’s just as rotten as the rest. This happens from tree to tree. You can see that the trees do have good fruit, but it’s so high up you can’t get it. 

The Word says in 1 Corinthians 3:9 ISV For we are God’s co-workers. You are God’s farmland and God’s building.

We are a fruit orchard and we are supposed to bear good fruit. The good fruit of the Spirit. I fear too many times when someone comes to glean something to satisfy their soul though that they only find rotten fruit. Or we are too separated from them that they aren’t able to reach the good fruit. Be it a physical separation or a spiritual because we have lifted ourselves up in our own eyes. Either way the fruit does them no good. 

Now you may be thinking this doesn’t pertain to you. Well let’s take a closer look at the fruit of the Spirit.

Galatians 5:22-23 WEB 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, 23 gentleness, and self-control…

The fruit of the Spirit  

• Love (brotherly love, affection, good will)

Do we truly have brotherly love towards each other? 

• Joy (joy, gladness, cheerfulness, that is, calm delight.)

Are we cheerful? Are we calm or frantic and worried? 

• Peace (state of national tranquillity, exemption from the rage)

Do we have peace? Are we quick to get angry? 

• Patience (patience, endurance, constancy, steadfastness, perseverance, patience, forbearance, longsuffering, slowness in avenging wrongs)

Are we patient and steadfast? Are we quick to avenge wrongs or quick to forgive?

• Kindness ( moral goodness, integrity, tolerance toward others, kindness)

Are we kind towards others? Are we tolerant of other people or impatient? Are we moral?

• Goodness (uprightness of heart and life, goodness, kindness)

Are we upright in our heart and life? 

• Faith ( the conviction that God exists and is the creator and ruler of all things, the provider and bestower of eternal salvation through Christ)

I believe this one most are good on. If you aren’t then you definitely need to fix it. 

• Gentleness (gentleness, mildness, meekness)

Are we meek and mild?

• Self-control (the virtue of one who masters his desires and passions, especially his sensual appetites)

Do we rule our desires or do allow our desires to rule us? 

After reading the fruits of the Spirit here and their definitions self examine your fruit. Is your fruit rotten? If so go to the Master of the vineyard and seek His help. He will gladly help you. 

Luke 6:43-45 ISV 43 “A good tree doesn’t produce rotten fruit, and a rotten tree doesn’t produce good fruit, 44 because every tree is known by its own fruit. People don’t gather figs from thorny plants or pick grapes from a thorn bush. 45 A good person produces good from the good treasure of his heart, and an evil person produces evil from an evil treasure, because the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart.”