How many servings of fruit have you eaten today? Are you attentive to the nutritional needs of your body, such as following a food plan, or are you just hoping for the best outcome regardless of what you consume? For many of us currently living in the United States, food scarcity is not an issue that we have to address. We have numerous selections available to us in the aisles of our grocery stores. We are blessed with the economic status to freely choose from those many options provided, yet statistics from the government inform us that only 1-in-10 adults “meet the federal fruit or vegetable recommendations.” Even when we have the knowledge, “Eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables daily can help reduce the risk of many leading causes of illness and death, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, some cancers, and obesity,” we still opt to remain nutritionally deficient.

As detrimental to our physical health as a nutritional deficiency can be, I wonder, if we approach our spiritual health in the same manner. Rather than following the guidelines outlined in Galatians 5 for our spiritual health, we choose to remain spiritually deficient in the development of our character. Instead of following an intentional plan to be more like Christ, such as cultivating the Flourishing Fruit of the Spirit, we just go about our lives aimlessly, hoping for the best outcome, without thought to what we might be producing. Why is it so hard, especially when we are informed about the benefits, to make wise choices regarding our physical and spiritual health?

In Galatians 5, the apostle Paul provides us guidance for becoming more Christlike by developing spiritual fruit just as Health and Human Services recommends dietary guidelines to develop our physical health. “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” (Galatians 5:22-23 NLT). In Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit, Christopher Wright shares this perspective on this passage, “…the nine-fold fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 is a beautiful picture of Jesus. For of course Jesus himself was filled with the Spirit of God, and it is Christ who dwells within us through the Spirit. So the more we are filled with God’s Spirit, and the more the Spirit ripens his fruit within us, the more we will become like Christ.”

Is this not a challenge we should aspire to accomplish? Is there anyone who reads through this list of characteristics and thinks to themselves, “I don’t care to model any of those nine fruits in my life! I don’t want to produce any Flourishing Fruit!”? Wright continues, “So what Paul is saying with his list of beautiful qualities is this: these are the qualities that God himself will produce in a person’s everyday, ordinary human life because the life of God himself is at work within them. The life of God (by his Spirit) will bear fruit in the tree of a person’s life, simply because this is what God is like and this is what God produces.”

In my mind, the people who model what it means to live a flourishing life, regardless of circumstances, will produce Flourishing Fruit. It becomes such an outflow of their lives that is a natural part of their character. “What Paul is talking about here is Christian character. Character is, sadly, greatly undervalued today in so much church life and activity…But look at the qualities in Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit. They do not focus on what kind of performance we can achieve, but what kind of person we are.”

Achieving the character of Christ, exhibiting the Flourishing Fruit of the Spirit takes a lifetime. “Fruit takes time. Character takes time—a lifetime, in fact. John Stott was praying that prayer daily throughout his life. So, let us then take the time to study the fruit in the orchard of God’s Spirit, and then take the time to let that fruit ripen in our own lives, through all the time God gives us.” In all Seasons of Life we have an opportunity to intentionally cultivate these fruits which will then impact the generations that follow us. What can we do today to begin to nourish the soil where Flourishing Fruit can grow? Please feel free to share in the comments below.

References:

Wright, C.J.H. (2017). Cultivating the fruit of the Spirit: Growing in Christlikeness. IVP Books.

US Department of Health and Human Services. (2017, November 16). One 1 in 10 Adults Get Enough Fruits and Vegetables. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p1116-fruit-vegetable-consumption.html