I cautioned you two weeks ago against seeing the Fruit of the Spirit as something God puts into your life… like we would put gas into a car….

The fruit of the Spirit becomes an outward expression of the Spirit of Christ dwelling within us. The more the character of Christ is allowed to take root and grow in us the more the fruit of that growth begins to spill outside into our attitudes and actions.

I preached, here on the Fruit of the Spirit exactly ten years ago. That's kind of a handy tool because if you were here, then, you have the opportunity to think back exactly one decade in your life and ask yourself: How has the Fruit of Christ living in me changed me in the last decade?

Tracy Jensen led devotions one morning in Jamaica, last week, and I couldn't help but remember her coming to this church just before I started preaching on this subject last time… I listened to her openness about the transformation taking place in her and what yet needed to be changed… It was a very different Tracy than sat in these seats ten years ago.

It's not that God has been putting more and more of the fruits of love, gentleness, kindness, self-control into Tracy. Her yielding to God living inside her is allowing Christ characteristics to replace the sinful characteristics that used to define her on the outside.

We all need to look at our lives through those same lenses. If you are a Christian today… How has the Fruit of Christ living within you changed who you are on the outside? How has your walking in the Spirit caused you to no longer follow your former sinful patterns?

And… even though you are fully aware that the Spirit of Christ, in you, is available to bring transformation and change…. In what ways have you resisted the change God wants to bring on the inside of you and allowed the works of the flesh?.. If that is true… what are you prepared to do about it?

I shared with the team in Jamaica last week that after being a Christian for 45 years and a pastor for almost thirty… God has been deeply dealing with me, the last two months, about attitudes on the inside and actions on the outside, of me, that, desperately, need changed. If we are listening, clearly, to God that process will go on until the day we die…. But what God is prodding us to change, now, is not supposed to be the same thing he was speaking to us about ten years ago.

Illustration: I think it is true that the Fruit of the Spirit might develop like this pod of grapes. Notice some of the grapes are big and full and some are much smaller. In some cases some of the smaller grapes are not even perfectly shaped because the bigger, more developed grapes have squeezed past them as they grew.

Could it be possible to have big full fruits of peace and kindness and lack growth in patience and self-control? (That's, actually, a fair description of me!)…

All things being equal…this pod of grapes, with exactly the same amount of nutrients coming from the vine, should have produced a pod of equally full, perfectly rounded, perfectly sweet, grapes….but… I might taste this one grape and find it juicy and sweet and I might taste this smaller grape beside it and find it harder and more sour.

Every one of the Fruit of the Spirit should be feeding into the growth of all the others so that all come out equally plump, sweet, and juicy but that isn't what we often see.

Since, the pressure cooker time that the hurricanes brought on us… my fruit of gentleness has become harder and less sweet… If it is true that the fruit of gentleness comes from the Spirit of Christ dwelling within… then the only way I could be less gentle now than I was three years ago would be if I was resisting the work of Christ within me? Right?

Walking in the Spirit…growing the Fruit of the Spirit… means becoming more and more, on the outside, a reflection of our Savior who is dwelling on the inside.

Illustration: I went to a Pastors meeting a couple of weeks ago and was not at all pleased with some of what was said. On the way home I was spouting off to another Pastor and he told me I was "cynical". I wasn't sure whether to take that as a compliment or a criticism so when I got home I looked it up in the dictionary.

Cynicism: Denying the sincerity of people's motives or actions: believing that people are motivated in all their actions by selfishness; a contemptuous disbelief in human sincerity…

Sure enough…He was right! After you've done what I do for thirty years and you've heard every excuse in the book a hundred times over for why people can't live righteous lives…. And you've looked in the mirror and told yourself the same excuses…. You tend to get cynical.

I have earned the right to be cynical!… it is a vocational byproduct of those who work closely with the public…it is not a spiritual deficiency! Right?

…Right…. up until I compare that attitude with the attitude of Jesus Christ who's Spirit lives within me waiting to transform my attitudes to match his own…

If anyone, ever, had the right to be cynical about human nature… it was Jesus. He knew exactly how self-centered we were. He knows every lame excuse of every single person on the face of the earth because he is reading every thought of our minds…. Yet his passionate love for us drove him to sacrifice everything of himself for those who deserved nothing!

LOVE: there it is… the first of the Spirit's fruit. The fruit of the Spirit of Christ within overwhelms and snuffs out the fruit of self-centeredness and sinfulness.

Your attitudes and actions aren't supposed to look like what your life experiences deserve them to be… they are supposed to look like the attitudes and actions of the Spirit who lives within you.

If you were here last WED evening Geof Hoge shared with you that the Greek word for LOVE in Galatians 5:22 is singular…not plural. It's as if God is saying: The fruit of the Spirit is LOVE… then he gives you eight sub-points of how God's divine love manifests itself in daily life. This "love is the most important trait" theme shows up over and over in Scripture:

If you were looking for a passage of Scripture to define what Divine love looks like in our daily lives…where would you look?

Let me show you something in that chapter that I had never seen before the last two weeks…

Now let me re-arrange these characteristics, of love, alongside another familiar list:

It is so important to understand that when I am jealous, rude, or arrogant… when I demand my own way or hold a grudge…. I am demonstrating my lack of the Spirit's fruit

and, in effect declaring myself not to be under the control of the Spirit of Love who lives in me.

The only way the Source of Love can live in me and His characteristics not shine out through me…. is if I am resisting him by purposely walking in the flesh rather than purposely walking in His Spirit.

It is our spiritual heritage as children of God to both have the Holy Spirit in us…and for the fruit of His love to shine out through us!

Romans 5:5 … For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

As we allow the Spirit in us to choke the life out of the sinful nature… the fruit of love begins to take center stage. As divine love swells in us the fruit of that love begins to show up on the inside and then the outside..

Like: The Fruit of Joy!

How much of the fruit of Joy is showing on the outside of your life?

Maybe you are not sure… because you are not completely sure what the fruit of joy looks like. What is the fruit of joy and how do you know if you are experiencing it? Is this a true statement?

Joy and happiness are not, at all, the same thing…. And if you get caught in the trap of believing that you, as a Christian, have been promised a life of delirious happiness you are going to be very confused.

The world around you is fixated on offering you "things" designed to, supposedly, increase your level of happiness.

The word "happy" is only used six times in the New Testament and always to describe how you feel when your outward circumstances are going well.

How often does that actually happen in real life?

My happiness is totally dependant on the behavior of other people… the sequence of events in my life… or the circumstances I find myself in.

If my circumstance are moving along the way I want them to I am "happy" When my circumstances become unpleasant for any reason, I become "unhappy"

Happiness is "worldly"…. Comes from and is dependant on the world around me.

Joy is not, in any way dependant on the world around me… where does it source from:

The idea of joy, being joyful, rejoicing fills the pages of the Bible. The "Joy of the Lord" is not dependant on the people around me, the course of events in my life, or the circumstances I find myself in.

The Fruit of Joy grows out of the presence of God in my life.

Perfect joy comes from the knowledge that God is in control and all the ravages of sin are temporary and will suddenly end; and what comes next will be an eternity not one second of which is like what we are experiencing now.

And who is the most joyful being in the universe? God himself! Scripture paints God as bubbling over with joy. God isn't even remotely concerned that the world is controlled by sin or that our tomorrows are careening out of control. He already exists a week from now, and a thousand years in the future. There isn't even one bead of sweat on God's forehead. He is full of enthusiasm, vitality, energy, and deep delight as he plans what is coming ahead for the universe and for his children.

His greatest source of joy is watching the fruit of his implanted Spirit grow inside each one of us. The idea that God is all ticked off every time we display pride or jealousy is not the picture painted by Scripture.

The opposite is true… When we say not to sin and submit ourselves to the transforming grace of God's Spirit within and the fruit of God's character begins to replace our sinfulness…. God joy… his rejoicing goes off the charts.

Philippians 2:13 For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.(brings him joy)

The same exuberance for life that God is made up of, regardless of daily circumstances is the fruit that he wants to show up in us. Remember… the fruit of joy is already in us, because he is in us, and he is the very source of all joy. As we learn to submit to the Spirit of Christ in us, the inner enthusiasm of divine JOY will begin to bleed through our "inerds" and will eventually bubble over on the outside.

Of course we can stop the Joy of the Lord by simply walking in the flesh instead of walking in the Spirit.