Blackberries
The other day I went for a walk with a friend. As we meandered down a country lane, we picked blackberries. There were hundreds of them, ready for reaping, and eating!
The fields beyond the lane had also recently been harvested. These signs are nature telling us that summer is over and autumn is on its way.
I’m sure those with allotments or fruit and vegetable garden areas have been busy bringing in this year’s harvest.
We had a fruit and vegetable patch in our garden when I was a child, and my grandparents came over regularly to tend it. We had potatoes, runner beans and an abundance of rhubarb. That meant there were lots of rhubarb crumbles! Not my favourite childhood pudding.
Whilst deciding what to do with the blackberries, I read again about ‘Spiritual fruit’ in one of the New Testament letters in The Bible...
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
In this letter, the author, Paul, encouraged the church to be full of God’s Holy Spirit, and he listed these ‘fruits’ that were the evidence of this in-filling.
The thing is this: fruit is a visible product of the plant. A blackberry bush will produce blackberries. Paul’s expectation was that the Spirit-filled believers would produce these ‘Spiritual fruit’.
How much visible evidence is there of this kind of fruit in my life? Do I show or demonstrate this kind of fruit? What about you?
Here are a couple of ways I think can help:
Focus on your relationship with Jesus, through reading the Bible and prayer
Submit to God and allow Him to shape and form you on the inside
I’m no farmer, but if you and I do these things, with time, I believe the fruit will come!
God bless
Gary Bastin - Hope Community Church leader