Fruit Up

There are so many great things about summertime—vacations, barbeques, sunshine, water parks, farmer’s markets, fireflies, picnics and camping. The list could go on! But one of summer’s simple pleasures is enjoying the season’s fruit. Summertime produces some of the sweetest and juiciest fruits – watermelon, peaches, cantaloupe, strawberries and cherries, just to name a few. Sometimes, nothing is more quenching on a hot summer day than taking a big bite out of a fresh piece of summer fruit! Can you relate?

Indeed, enjoying nature’s bounty of delicious-tasting fruit is one of life’s treasures. Maybe that’s why fruit is used as a metaphor in God’s Word for the likeness of the Spirit of God. The Fruit of the Spirit, as the Apostle Paul describes in Galatians 5:22-23, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Growing in these qualities and living them out through our words and deeds is one of our primary callings as Christians. Jesus himself even said to his disciples that his followers are recognized by their fruit. Check out just some of the highlights from his teaching:

“You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act.”

“A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit.”

“Just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.”

Embodying the Fruit of the Spirit is a crucial part of our identity as children of God. And it’s also a key component for us to live out our best generosity. You see, when we are growing in the Fruit of the Spirit, we will naturally become more generous as a result. If you think about it, how could any of the Fruit of the Spirit not make us more generous too!?

Growing our generosity potential is not just about increased volunteer hours or greater giving rates and percentages. It’s also about our spiritual formation. It’s about cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives so we can be more easily identified as followers of Jesus. This only happens through abiding in Jesus. The more time we spend with Jesus, the more we think and act like him. It’s this internal work that fires up our engine of generosity as well.

Rather than try and measure how we’re doing in representing the Fruit of the Spirit, the real issue is how we’re doing in spending time with Jesus. So, how are you doing this summer in spending time with Jesus? We can be stretched so thin in the summer as we try and pack in all kinds of warm weather and fun activities into a small window of time. Let’s not be too quick to cut corners in blocking off time for Jesus or even in connecting with him continuously throughout our days. Find a way to prioritize this in the second half of summer, and not only will the Fruit of the Spirit come out more in your life, your generosity will too!