Matthew 22:34 – 39

Love is our natural birthright as a Christian – it’s an internal evidence of the Spirit within us. But the doing is external evidence for the world to see. That is the Fruit of the Spirit. We have love in us because God is Love; it’s getting it out that’s the problem.

Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to love God with all our hearts, mind and strength and the second is to love others like we love ourselves. Sound easy? Oh no. There’s one big obstacle to that kind of love: our selves. To love like this means we have to put aside our own needs, wants and comforts for the sake of others. With a natural instinct for self-preservation built into us, that’s a hard thing to do.

That kind of love costs. If you want to know how much, look at what Jesus did on the cross. He considered our needs above his own – and it killed him! That’s pretty potent love.

Starting small

But did you notice that the first command is to love God? That’s because we cannot hope to love others unless we love God first and allow his love to flow through us. Love is a choice not a feeling, but you may find that the more you choose to put others first, the more you actually feel like doing it. Start small: leave the biggest slice of cake for someone else. Then work your way up to giving away things that really hurt. For me it’s time. If I’m resentful of it, I know that I’m not really acting out of God’s love in me. Are you?

Prayer: Dear God, help me to love as you love. Help me not to be content with mere feelings of love but to act upon them. Show me ways to put love into action and consider other people’s needs before my own. Thank you for your amazing love that cost you everything. Amen

This meditation is taken from a series in Faith Station. Published by King’s Cross Training.

Galatians 5:16-26

Manifesting the Fruit of the Spirit is something all Christians can and should do. It is not dependent upon our personalities. As someone who is socially confident and obviously gifted in creative and spiritual things, I used to believe that the opposite of me is what a Christian should be. Surely quiet, ‘background’ people are naturally more gentle, faithful, patient and self-controlled.
 

Performance

For many years I suffered with the belief that my overt giftedness was a curse that kept me from being a better Christian. Wasn’t ‘performance’ showing off? Didn’t it lead to pride?
But after some misguided attempts to deny that part of me, by refusing to exercise my gifts in public, I accepted that to do so was to deny who God had created me to be. I realised that if anyone else thought I was showing off, it was their issue not mine.

Free to be me

I’m finally free to see that the Fruit of the Spirit is not personality dependent. Because that wouldn’t be fair, would it? God created some of us with bright colours and others with pastels and he loves us both.

So what is the Fruit? In verse 22 it is referred to in the singular although there are multiple aspects of it (love, joy, peace etc.). This is because the Holy Spirit is an individual and the Fruit comes from one source. It also means that unlike the Gifts of the Spirit (eg I Cor 12) we should manifest all of the fruit – although different aspects may develop at different rates. Over the next weeks we will look at each of these in more detail.

This meditation is taken from a series in Faith Station. Published by King’s Cross Training.

Matthew 15:1-17

The cantelope pepper I told you about yesterday turned out to be a bit of a one hit wonder. It bore one gorgeous, tasty, fleshy red fruit, but that was it. Meanwhile, the little chilli took its time and finally produced a small, but significant crop. I had to decide between keeping the flashy pepper or the faithful chilli as the latter was slowly being strangled by the former. One needed to be cut back so the other could grow.
 
After nearly 30 years of being a Christian I’ve come to realise that real fruit takes a long time to grow. In fact it will take a life time. Now there’s nothing wrong with new Christians showing fruit early on, but the really good stuff often takes longer to mature. The fruit of the Spirit is God-grown. These are the things that reveal our true selves as God moulds us into the people he wants us to be.

Pruning through difficulties and trials

 
Often they grow out of difficulties, conflicts and trials. This is the pruning that Jesus talks about in today’s passage in Matthew 15:1-17. I must ask myself: Am I loving, joyful peaceful and kind? Am I gentle, patient, faithful and self-controlled? Are these the things that emerge in a stressful situation; when people and circumstances put me under pressure? If not, and often it’s not, then God’s got a bit more work to do with me. This garden is still a work in progress.

This meditation is taken from a series in Faith Station. Published by King’s Cross Training.

I once had a chilli plant growing in my kitchen. Year after year it produced the hottest little chillis you could imagine. And it was beautiful too. I loved my chilli plant and actually shed a tear when it died after my housesitter forgot to water it when I was away on a month-long holiday. Fortunately I had dried some of the chillis so I used them to replant. I prepared the soil with the best compost I could find, planted the seeds, watered them and put them on a sunny window sill.

About a month later the chillis began to grow. But one plant outdid its siblings: the shoots were greener, the leaves bigger and the first flower was enormous. It was only when the fruit began to form and became round and bulbous that I realised this wasn’t a chilli but a cantelope pepper. I now have a scrawny chilli plant in the same pot as this high achiever but because their root balls are so entwined I can’t separate them.

In Matthew 7:15 – 23 Jesus warns people about the fruit of false prophets. They appeared to be one thing but turned out to be something else. However, this principle can be applied more broadly to all people and all Christians. We will be judged not by our potential or what we claim to be, but what, in the end, we finally produce.  By their fruit you will know them.

This meditation is taken from a series in Faith Station. Published by King’s Cross Training.