A Season for Gifts - week 1 of 2 (The fruit of the Spirit) by Ps Jim Jung

A Season for Gifts – week 1 of 2 (The fruit of the Spirit)

1 Corinthians 12: 1 says in part “Concerning spiritual gifts... I don’t want you to be ignorant”. There are many misconceptions and misunderstandings about the gifts that the Holy Spirit brings to our lives often causing us to have a tendency to cloud Him in a shroud of mystery or negate His importance altogether.

The Holy Spirit comes into our lives at salvation; and makes our spirit come alive to the message of Christ. The bible says that we become dead to the world (Gal 2: 20 “It’s no longer I that lives but Christ lives in me...) not dead physically or else we would need to be buried; but dead to the sinful desires of this world; resurrected in Christ with a renewed spirit and a mind that is being transformed daily. The Holy Spirit helps us to now to see things the way Jesus would see them.

He does this through: The fruit of the Spirit

(Galatians 5: 22) “But the fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Goodness, Kindness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self Control. Against such things there is no law”

The fruit of the Holy Spirit living in you builds the character foundations of your life. The outcome of the Holy Spirit living in your life is found in the ongoing development of the foundations of your character. He can only do this with our co-operation – He leads, we co-operate. The outcome of the Holy Spirit living in your life is to produce fruit. If I co-operate it delights Him, if I refuse it grieves Him.

So in our daily lives He is teaching us to be loving; to be patient; to have self-control. He’s working through these 9 characteristics of His nature (the fruit of His being) and applying them to our nature (remembering that our sinful nature Gal 5: 19-21 keeps trying to wrestle us back). He’s doing this to build a strong foundational, godly, character in us. One that will bring balance and integrity to the expression of the gifts He graces us with.

We easily recognise when this hasn’t been the case. For example:

Tiger Woods – postured as a gifted, perhaps even the greatest golfer in history (and he probably is – the gift he has is real) but what has let him down has been a flawed character. He lacked self-control. He lacked faithfulness. This wasn’t just a slip up but a systematic failure in his life that probably began when he was a teenager. An unformed, faulty character foundation.

Wessel Johannes "Hansie" Cronje - A devout Christian, who impressed as much with his demeanor off the field as his ability on it, came as a great shock to the cricketing world when, in April 2000, he confessed to being involved with the largest match fixing scandal yet uncovered, receiving gifts and money from bookmakers to influence the results of games. Convicted by the King Commission, he was banned from playing or coaching cricket. Hansie admitted himself that he had never dealt properly with greed in his life.

Internationally renowned Christian ministries – often with powerful manifestations of God working through their ministry – then collapse into immorality, greed, self-aggrandisement – why? A flawed character foundation.

If we build on anything less than Godly character foundations (taught to us through the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives) we run the risk of major imbalances. In some of our church traditions (i.e. some Pentecostal churches would be a great example of this) the gifts of the spirit are the first thing sought without the balance of the fruit of the spirit developing godly character. So we see the gifts being expressed but the person’s life is a train wreck. The gifts given are real but the vessel containing the gifts can be flawed. We run the risk of emotionalism being connected to the gifts, or fanaticism, mysticism, or cultish behaviours without the fruit of the Spirit expressing themselves through our lives.

Remember that one of the Holy Spirit’s tasks is to produce fruit in us: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Goodness, Kindness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self Control.

As we co-operate with the Spirit of God, as we yield to His ways, the first things we begin to develop in our lives is found in the effects of the fruit of the Spirit, the character foundation that the supernatural gifts are able to be soundly built upon.