Fruits of the Spirit

^{Galatians 5:
22} But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,²³ Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

Early on in my life as a Christian, I got told somewhere along the line that the fruits of the spirit are the souls that one wins to Jesus.  If you were not winning souls to Jesus, you were not bearing fruit and were in danger of being pruned from the vine.  This put a lot of pressure on the believer to go out and evangelize.  Not there is anything wrong with evangelizing, but, when your eternal soul is based upon your evangelical performance?  You have then become trapped in a works based salvation which can never be achieved.

At first everything seems great.  You go and tell your friends, your family, coworkers, whoever you can to share the gospel message with.  That’s a great thing and we should share, but when your fruit is how many souls you are bringing into the church… there comes a time where the sales start getting thin.  You reach out further and further, trying to make yourself still feel like you are bearing the fruit you need to bear that shows you are in good standing in your salvation.  Each rejection soon begins to feel like a chop on your vine.

Soon you find yourself with little joy, little peace, as you begin wondering where you were going wrong.  Your longsuffering and gentleness go out the window as you begin thumping your message to the unrepentant.  Your frustration builds and steals your goodness and temperance causing you to lash out against unbelievers rather than love them.  Your fear of not bearing fruit actually becomes the mechanism for your not bearing the rue fruit of the spirit listed in the Galatians passage at the top.
Your fruit is not measured by how many souls you brought to Jesus, because in reality, you cannot save anyone.  It is God that does all of the saving.  He may use us to that end, but it is not we who do anything.

Finding out the true fruit of the spirit was a very wonderful thing.  The true fruit of the spirit has nothing to do with works, or numbers or goals; they are all conditions of the heart.  Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance are all things that start on the inside of a person and then extend outward. 

 
Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, the person acts.   This is how we know the tree, by its fruit.  We can use that Galatians verse to help show us where we are at in our walk, or where others are standing.  If we are being short tempered and impatient, for example, those are not fruits of the spirit and warnings to us that something isn’t right.  If someone we know is always depressed, we can see they lack joy and peace, letting us know something is not right in them.

When we exhibit those fruits of the spirit, those are the greatest witnesses we can have for Jesus.  We could go out and evangelize all over the world, and if we are not exhibiting the fruit traits, who will be drawn to it?  We are merely reflecting Jesus when we bear fruit.