September 21
that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain.”
-JOHN 15:16
When we allow the Holy Spirit to increase Christ, and when we allow the Cross to do its work of decreasing Self, the fruit will come forth in abundance. This makes everything we experience worthwhile. What is the fruit of the Spirit? It is the reward, the prize, the end result of all those seasons of increasing and decreasing: the character and nature of Christ reproduced in a person. It is the precious Seed finally coming into maturity.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control. Against such there is no law (Galatians 5:22,23). Fruit is not how much work we can accomplish or how many things we can do for God. Fruit is, “How much of Christ can be seen in me instead of me?” The fruit of the Spirit is found in the transformed character of someone who walks with Jesus in the Difficult Path.
