Tuesday 18 March 2014

Simple fruit

 (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. – Ephesians 5.9-10

There are other places where the fruit of the Spirit is more fully described. But here we see three things that should mark out the Christian. I we are to be known by our fruit we ought to know what kind of fruit we should be bearing. 

Here we have goodness, and righteousness, and truth. 

I like how the word of God is able to take complicated things and make them simple and understandable. We don't have a whole lot to remember here. We are to be good, do right, and be truthful. That is a wonderful summary of the fruit of the Spirit. 

So, according to this verse, how do we show the fruit of the Holy Spirit?

Be good
Do right
Be true

Big lists scare me, but little lists make a goal seem achievable. 

Saturday I took AJ and Hudson to a rugby training programme for young kids. The coaches were brilliant. They broke everything down into simple steps with simple words. There are three simple instructiosn for scoring a try, for example. They are knee, ball, hip. go to your knee, touch the ball down, and roll on your hip. Simple but complete. Understandable, but precise. When I drop AJ at school I say ‘Be good, obey your teacher, be nice to your friends.’ Again, simple but clear.

So we have three little things to do. 

This is a good place to start. We can all be good, do right, and be true can't we? In fact, we don't even have to do it - all we really have to do it let the Holy Spirit produce that fruit in us. 

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