Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Fruit baskets anyone?

John Wesley often taught, preached, about Galatians 5: 22-23. He thought it gave (and it does) a pretty darn good look at what it means to have a life filled with and run by the third person of the
Trinity, the Holy Spirit. The passage makes it fairly clear that you know an apple tree by its fruit, an orange tree by its fruit, a lemon ... well, you get the idea.
The scripture (from the Living Bible today) says, "But the Spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. There is no law against such things as these."

There. Two sentences, two verses, one life, exceedingly well-lived.

Wesley called these things "emotions or tempers or affections." They embody Christianity. They are what one "receives" when one is led by the Holy Spirit. If one lives with the Spirit as a guide, one lives a visibly different life.

Wesley taught that "when people give their time to re-roof a grumpy neighbor's house in the sweltering summer heat, chances were that they were not filled with feelings of love as they fought dehydration and fatigue." Everyone would agree, though, they were filled the Spirit, that they were loving this neighbor. The fruits are best demonstrated in the "quality" of our relationships, not how often we are consciously aware of feeling them.

Love your neighbor as yourself and live by the Spirit. If one is able to do that, to any small degree, one is living a vastly different life. Today let us pray that we will be changed not by our own efforts, as positive and sure they might be, but by His Spirit, which we grasp as our hope. Bear fruit ... my friends. Bear fruit.

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