I love it when God speaks through other people in our lives. This week a friend reminded me of a passage in Galatians. Chapter five and verses 22 and 23 to be exact:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control….”
In John chapter 15, Jesus talks about us being the branches connected to Him who is the tree, the vine. Through Him we get our “nourishment”, our “roots”, our “foundation”. There is no life in the branch without its source – the vine. To survive and flourish we need to be completely attached to Him.
I bought flowers this week to plant in the pots on my porches. In the way home, a couple of blossoms got bent and broken, and so their food supply from the roots was cut off. I wanted to keep them and pretend that the beautiful flower could survive without the rest of the plant. It was, after all, still pretty and colorful. But within hours, all life was sapped from the disengaged bloom and it drooped, wilted, and eventually shriveled up and died. It had lost its connection to the source of life.
John 15:5 says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in Him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Like the flower, the branch can’t live on it’s own, let alone produce fruit. BUT…..if the branch IS fully connected to its source of life, it WILL produce fruit. Lots of it. “…Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control….” The flavorful fruit that draws people to the “tree”.
But how does it produce fruit? Does the branch struggle and fight and work with all its might to do this? Do we need to wrestle and strain and strive to live out the list of things that are listed above as “the fruit of the Spirit”? I don’t think so.
If we are connected to Jesus through relationship, through conversation with Him, through listening to and for His voice in our lives, that “fruit” will be a natural overflow of what is going on inside us. Basically, the “you are what you eat” philosophy. What we are taking in from the Source, the “vine”, Jesus, is what we will produce. Not because of great effort, but because of great relationship.
And if we aren’t taking anything in, no nourishment, no relationship, no communication, then there is no source from which to produce fruit. Being detached from the vine (as with my flower analogy), we can pretend that the fruit is real and we can work and strive and fight to produce our own version of fruit. But there is no real life in it and eventually it, like the flower, will shrivel up and blow away. There will be no lasting effect, no aroma for others to enjoy, no sweetness for others to taste. No honor for the tree from whom the real fruit should have come.
And that honor, after all, is the whole purpose of our “fruit”. John 15:8 – “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”
May we all be dripping with delectable fruit in our lives. Not the fake type that we create on our own. But the real, rich, natural fruit that comes from an intimate connection to the life-giving vine….Delish!
