You Can Bear Good Fruit
Adapted from Healing the Soul of a Woman
By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.
When we have experienced great pain in our soul, we can hurt other people or spread negativity without meaning to do so. The brokenness that affects our thinking, our choices, and our feelings usually affects the people around us, too. Spiritually speaking, this is called bearing, or producing, “bad fruit.” But God calls us to bear good fruit. As the Lord heals our soul, we become more and more able to bear the fruit He wants us to produce.
God would never ask us to bear or produce anything without giving us what we need to do it. Jesus has everything needed to produce good fruit, and when He is in us and we are in Him, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we have what we need to do anything He asks us to do.
Galatians 5:22–23 lists the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the good qualities we exhibit because He lives in us. They are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”
Let’s look at a few of these individually, thinking about how God has put them in us and now expects us to bear their fruit.
- Love: God is love (1 John 4:8). When He lives in our hearts, our hearts are filled with love. God first loved us, so we have the ability to love others (1 John 4:19).
- Joy: Jesus was a man of joy. Before going to heaven at the end of His earthly ministry, He says to His Father in John 17:13: “But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” Many times in Scripture we are encouraged to rejoice, such as in Philippians 4:4: “Rejoice in the LORD always. Again I will say, rejoice!” (NKJV). Because we trust God, we can rejoice in any situation.
- Peace: According to Ephesians 2:14, Jesus is our peace. When He is in us, we have peace. When Jesus went to heaven after His ministry on earth, He left us His peace (John 14:27). This empowers us to remain calm and peaceful in every situation. It is important to believe you have these things; otherwise, you will never enjoy and walk in them.
- Patience: God is extraordinarily patient and slow to anger, and Scripture teaches us to imitate Him. “The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Ps. 103:8). “The LORD is slow to anger and great in power” (Nah. 1:3). Paul urges us in Romans 12:12 to “rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer,” and in Ephesians 4:2, to act “with patience, bearing with one another in love.”
When we receive Jesus as Lord and Savior, He lives in us, and everything that is in Him is now in us by the Holy Spirit. He gives us what He wants us to produce. Even if your life has produced bad fruit in the past, you can produce good fruit from now on as the Holy Spirit leads you and helps you.
Prayer of the Day: God, help me grow in love, joy, peace, patience, and self-control. Let the fruit of Your Spirit be evident in my life every day, amen.
