Fruit of the Spirit
Fruit of the Spirit
When it comes to the Holy Spirit, Christians have a tendency to either over emphasize Him or minimize Him.
We talk about God as the Father, God as the Son and God as the Holy Spirit; one God in three persons, but we find it very difficult to describe who the Spirit is and the role He plays in our lives.
Jesus used the illustration of the Spirit of God as the wind, John 3. We can’t see the wind, but we can see the effects of the wind upon us. What are there evidences of the Spirit of God in the life of the believer? Paul uses the term “fruit of the Spirit” even as he calls us to “walk by the Spirit.”
What is the fruit of the Spirit and what are the evidences in our life that we are walking by the Spirit? Let’s look at the fruit of the Spirit in our study of Galatians 5.
Many of us thank God for creating amazing things in nature such as colorful sunsets, beautiful flowers, and cute little bunny rabbits. God made all these things (and everything else) to help us grasp some more profound and meaningful concepts that go beyond “warm and fuzzy.”
The Holy Spirit was producing fruit in the lives of the early church in Acts. By looking at the early church, we will be able to see how God’s Spirit can still work in our church community today.
Self-control is a hard thing whether you’re a child or an adult, but the Holy Spirit gives us the ability to display self-control. Join us Sunday to hear what God has to say about self-control and putting Christ first.
Gentleness is a part of the Fruit of the Spirit, but what does it actually mean to be gentle? Is it stepping around on eggshells? Is it a weakness in battle? This morning we will look at the different contexts of gentleness in Scripture and how we can apply this very well exemplified fruit to our daily lives.
God is faithful and calls us to be faithful, but it doesn’t have to be in the big things or the world-changing glamorous things. God calls us to be faithful even in the little things.
Some movies have heroes that give great examples of what it looks like to fight for and defend what is good, but the Bible gives us an ultimate example of goodness by looking at the character of God. Join us as we explore God’s example of ultimate goodness and how we as Christians are called toward goodness.
God gave us the ultimate example of kindness and then calls us to show kindness to others. What does it look like to show kindness and who are we supposed to be showing kindness to? What does God’s Word say to us about what this kindness looks like and are we putting it into practice?
Patience…it’s something we all need more of, don’t we? One of the most terrible four letter words for us is spelled W-A-I-T. If Patience is part of the Fruit of the Spirit, how do we as Christians become more patient?
All of us worry and some of us get stressed out to such a degree that it paralyzes us from doing anything at all. Yet, God promises His Peace in the midst of our worries and anxieties.
The Bible talks a lot about joy. But really, what is joy? We often think of it as being happy, but joy is so much more than that! As Christians, how do we find joy in both the good situations and the hard situations?
Love is the first fruit (character quality) that Paul mentions in the list of the fruit of the Spirit. This signifies love’s priority over the other fruit listed after it. But why is love at the top of the list? And what exactly is love anyway?
For many years it seems that conservative churches have ignored or minimized the Person and work of the Holy Spirit. We begin our summer series on “The Fruit of the Spirit” by looking more closely about what it means to “Walk by the Spirit.”