Fruit

I don't know about you, but I've never enjoyed self-help kinda books. In my opinion I don't know if they really work. On their own they've always felt like another to-do list of behaviors to try to be a better you. So we strive and strive. And if we're honest we can still say we don't measure up.

Do you think we have complicated this enough for ourselves? Read all these books on how to be more patient, how to be more loving, how to have more joy. Just do this better, just do this less. Striving but never fully attaining anything. It's defeating. 

This is especially frustrating as a mom. Millions, if not thousands of books, have been written on how to be a better parent or have better kids. It can be frustrating to realize you are doing it wrong and you don't make the grade. It's proven even deeper to you as you try all the trends and philosophies--and fail, yet again.  

I sought God out for this. I know I don't have all the answers and simply trying to "try harder" is exhausting, defeating, and leaves you more broken over all your failures and shortcomings than when you started. 

We can do this with God. We try harder to meet that list of what we think we should be and do, trying to force the fruit of the Spirit in our lives because that's the self-help of Christianity. "You just need more joy in your life." "You need to be more patient." "Have a little self-control!" and read this or that book to get it. We are frustrated with the question most of us can't bear to mumble but the one our very souls scream: "HOW?!"

We are working at this backwards. God was showing me it's like a tree. We try to take the fruit of His Spirit--the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control--the ones we think we need more of in our lives and place them on the branches of our heart. We hope it sticks this time. 

That fruit can stay for a little bit, sure. But enough wind or rain and it will fall off! Enough sun to scorch the fruit and it will rot! And here we are back where we started, fruitless and frustrated. 

All that fruit doesn't come from simply striving to be better. You can't even pray to have more patience because it doesn't work that way. It comes from having your roots go down deep into all that He is and it blossoms and seeds AS A RESULT of His Holy Spirit at work in your heart and mind. It flourishes as you live in the Spirit and not in your own power. A self-help book is only going to get you so far for so long. Our minds understand the measures it needs to take to be better, we can fathom the A, B, C, and D--but only the Holy Spirit can birth life-giving fruit that lasts. It comes from truly knowing Him and being filled with all that He is!

Fruit is a by-product of being in Him. You can try all you want on your own without His Spirit and it won't matter one bit. It's self-righteousness, and it's worthless. Recite all the scripture you want, wear a tee-shirt with some verse about love, put it on a coffee mug--it won't matter. If you are dead in your sin and living in the flesh you cannot produce the fruit of the Spirit. It is born of Him and through Him and anything else is useless.

Allow God to have His way in your life. Allow Him to fill you with His Holy Spirit. He wants you to have all those good things in your life even more than you do.