Fruit Bearing

But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives we will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." Galations 5:22-23 (NIV)

The fruit of the spirit has always been something that I have wondered about. What does it mean to bear fruit, how do we bear fruit and is our fruit bearing limited. 

I read this the other day when I started thinking about it; "How do we bear this fruit? It will be surprising to many Christians that it isn’t by trying harder, going to church, or any other works. Your fruit comes from spiritual wisdom and understanding given by the Spirit." - Anonymous 

I think from this quote that we "bear fruit" when we actively give the Holy Spirit room to work in out lives. I don't think it's possible for us to bear fruit without the Holy Spirit in our lives.  When we're not allowing God to move in us, we become joyless and less enthusiastic about things.  We also don't show the fruit of kindness or love as much as we would if we as open to God as we should be. The only way that we can really bear good fruit is if we are in Jesus. It says in John 5:19 "Jesus replied, "I assure you the son can do nothing by himself. He does only what the sees the father doing...: Jesus lived a life where he showed every single on of the fruits and he only did that because he was watching and doing what God was doing, thus enabling him to bear fruit. 

Matthew 13:23 says; "But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown"  Christians hear the word at church, they read the word and they pray. I think that even though we hear it, we need to absorb it and then let God transform us. As we allow God to transform us, we start living more like Jesus and we will then start showing more characteristics of him, therefore bearing more fruit. 

I also think that to bear fruit we also need to be spending time with God, John 15:5 says; “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing."  We need to be growing in Jesus, just like a plant gets nutrients to grow, we get nutrients to grow spiritually with Jesus, our vine. With out this we won;t grow or bear fruit.  

I don't think that it's possible to bear fruit and grow spiritually if you are not deeply rooted in Jesus. We need to be open to him working, we need to be allowing him to shape and mold us to be more like him. We also need to be tapping into Him to renew and fill us. 

xKx