Honey From The Rock

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Honey From The Rock
Psalm 81:16

"Sweet Stuff From God's Word"

A daily Bible study with Victor Knowles
Copyright 2007

THE FRUIT BEARER

This entry was posted on 11-06-2009 and is filed under HOLY SPIRIT.

Do you want to be more fruitful in your life? I do and I think you do too. We want to be faithful to God and we want to be fruitful for God. We want to make our life count for Christ. This is especially true of those of us who are getting older (I shall turn 64 in a few more days). So, how do we do that? We don't! I am not trying to be cute here. I am trying to be biblical in my thinking and speech. So let's turn to the Word of God for the answer.

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law" (Gal. 5:22-23 NKJV). Notice that it is "fruit" (singular) and not "fruits" (plural). It is not natural for one tree to bear nine different kinds of fruit. This is a supernatural thing. That's why it is called the fruit of the Spirit and not the fruit of man or even the fruit of a Christian. Notice, too, that there is no law against such. There are laws against the "works of the flesh" (see Gal. 5:19-21), but there is no law against the fruit of the Spirit. That means we can overflow with love, joy, peace, etc., and never worry about manifesting too much fruit of the Holy Spirit. A Christian should not be defined by negatives but by positives. Look again at this robust cluster of nine-fold fruit. There is not one negative thing about them. They are all positive. And they are all positively the fruit of the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. When you cooperate with the promptings and work of the Holy Spirit you will manifest this lovely nine-fold fruit. I am thinking right now of people whom I have known who exhibited longsuffering, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and the like. They lived by the Spirit. They walked in the Spirit. They are my heroes. I want to be like them, don't you? And you can ...

Hymn: "When we walk with the Lord in the light of His Word, What a glory He sheds on our way! While we do His good will He abides with us still, And with all who will trust and obey" (John H. Sammis).