There Is No Fruit of the Spirit without Holy Spirit
Ah, the humble mushroom. There are approximately 20,000 classified varieties, with more being catalogued all the time. They come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. These colorful and often strange-looking organisms have been used in cooking and traditional medicine for millennia.
This morning’s pic is a puffball mushroom, one of several varieties. Actually, that isn’t quite accurate. This is the fruit of a puffball mushroom.
The puffy bodies of mushrooms that we are familiar with are only a small part of the mushroom. The larger portion of the fungus is its extensive mycelium, hidden beneath the earth or other substrates.
The mycelium can be massive. According to one source, “The largest known living organism on earth is a fungus – an underground mycelial mat of the honey fungus in the Blue Mountains of Oregon, covering an incredible 2,385 acres.”
If there is no mycelium, there is no mushroom fruit.
The same holds true in the spiritual realm. If there is no Holy Spirit at work in us, there can never be fruit of the Spirit.
For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 1 Corinthians 2:11-14
The Holy Spirit allows us to discern things of the Spirit. It gives us the seed to grow spiritually. We nurture those seeds through spiritual disciplines such as reading Scripture, prayer, worship, serving, fasting, confession of sin, and more.
All the spiritual disciplines in the world cannot grow the fruit of the Spirit if we don’t have Him. People of many faiths practice spiritual disciplines, in truth, often putting Christians to shame with their devotion and faithfulness. Yet, in the end, their efforts will prove fruitless because they don’t have Him.
Are you seeing the fruit of the Spirit in your life? Certainly, fruit is seasonal, and some fruit takes longer to mature than others, but if there is none, there is a problem.
You may need to stop and ensure you are right with the Lord. Then you need to nurture what He has provided.
My prayer is that you become increasingly conformed into the image of Jesus and bear a vast harvest of the fruit of the Spirit. May your life reflect Him well.
Be blessed
Hallelu Yah / Praise God
Kevin
Gleanings From The Word – Experience an extraordinary God in ordinary life.
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