Spiritual Fruit Defined
I would describe spiritual fruit as the tangible evidence of good things – either external changes that everyone can see or priorities changing within – that God is working out in your life as a result of an internal spiritual heart change. PS: I wouldn’t try to look that up in any spiritual dictionary…I just created that definition, but I think it’ll work for our purposes here.
Colossians 1
“And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worth of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” (Colossians 1:9-10)
Have you ever thought about the process that God uses to produce good things out of our lives? Do we just have to try harder? Do we need to just stop trying all together, sit back in our chairs and let God do all the work? What do we do??? In the context of the entire 1st chapter, there are at least 4 principles that we an learn about bearing spiritual fruit:
4 Princples:
#1: God is the initiator. No growth would be possible without God the Father sending God the Son to earth for the purpose of redeeming us from the bondage of sin.
#2: The natural progression of the Gospel taking root in our lives is for us to grow in knowledge of Jesus Christ and produce good works. We really can’t have one without the other without becoming unbalanced.
#3: Even the strength we have to grow in knowledge and works is directly given to us by God, so we really can’t take any credit.
#4: Based on the first 3 principles, we need to respond and start living like a person delivered from the dominion of darkness! In the next post of this series, we’ll look at some of the the tools, aka spiritual disciplines, that God provides so that we can become more like Jesus!
