Read:
Do you ever feel inadequate for the task at hand? Maybe your boss has given you a project that stretches your skills. Maybe marriage and parenting are more challenging than expected. Maybe the temptation to sin is getting harder to resist. Then you read a passage like Galatians 5, and you wish you had more peace, patience, and love but wonder if that can really be the answer.
These are the fruits of the Holy Spirit. In John, Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit will live inside each believer and never leave us. And like an apple tree can only bear apples, so a believer who has the Holy Spirit living inside will produce these fruits.
The peace of the Holy Spirit doesn’t result from an easy life; it’s the peace of God we have through salvation in Christ. The love from the Holy Spirit isn’t the feeling of love; it’s the love of God that sacrifices for others because Christ sacrificed for us. The self-control of the Spirit isn’t the kind that comes from gritting your teeth and running past the temptation as fast as you can; it’s the self-control that grows stronger as the Holy Spirit changes you to be more like Christ.
The Holy Spirit living in us gives us everything we need to live a godly life – the desire to do it and the strength to live it out. But there’s a responsibility that falls to us: to increase our faith, goodness, knowledge of God (through reading the Bible), self-control, perseverance (when the self-control seems lacking), godliness, brotherly affection, and love for everyone. “The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Do you feel inadequate for the task at hand? Trust in the Holy Spirit to make you more like Christ and rely on his power to increase these characteristics in your life.
Prayer: Dear God, thank you for the gift of the Holy Spirit. I thank you that you are doing in me what I cannot do for myself, making me more like Christ. Help me to increase these in my life so that I can love people as you love them and serve them as you serve. Amen.