The Fruit of the Spirit

     The works of the flesh are manifest; they are obvious everywhere.  That which is opposed to God, the strong desires of the depraved heart of man, are evident everywhere you look.  You can't miss them.  In the daily conflict between the old man and the new, every aspect of our life is affected.  There are moral sins, religious sins, selfish sins, social sins, and "excessive" sins.  In each of these areas, we are liable to fail.  Our only chance of victory is to give control of our lives moment by moment to the Holy Spirit.
     The proof of the Spirit's indwelling is the display of the fruit of the Spirit.  "By their fruit you shall know them."  We must understand that we cannot pick and choose--take love, joy, and peace but not gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.  It is all one life, the life of the Spirit, manifested in my life.  We must understand too what it is not.  It is not orthodoxy.  As someone has said, "You can be clear as ice and just as cold."  Orthodoxy is not a fruit of the Spirit.  I am not saying that you do not need to know and believe the truth and be able to defend your faith.  I am saying that it is not what we know that reveals what we are, but how we live--how we manifest to others the life of God that indwells us.  The fruit of the Spirit is to be continuously, spontaneously, and fully evident every moment of my life wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, whomever I'm with.
     In addition, I must understand that I am not the producer of the fruit, only the distributor.  It is not my definition of love, gentleness, faithfulness, joy, and peace, but God's.  It is not the spiritualization of the natural man that is to take place, but the replacing of the natural man with the Holy Spirit's transforming power.  The world must see His love, not my love; His goodness, not my goodness; His joy, not my joy.  That is the reality of the fruit that the Holy Spirit will produce in the life of the saint that is walking as a habit of life "in the Spirit," under His control.  My only other choice is to walk in the flesh and manifest those self-destructing sins which it so readily produces.
     The problem:  "the works of the flesh are manifest."  The solution:  "walk in the Spirit and not fulfill the lust of the flesh."  Demonstrate instead the life of the Spirit to those around me.  The choice:  How will I walk?  Whom will I follow?  How much control of my life will I give to the Holy Spirit?  To whom will I devote every moment of my life, everything that I am?  Will I like Paul choose to die daily that the life of Christ might live in and through me?  Whichever choice I make, the result will be readily manifested to those around me.  No one will be in doubt for long.