Fruit Salad

This post is sort of related to the last one. I brushed across the tip of the subject, anyway. I had said that you can tell what your priorities are by looking at where you invest your resources. In the same way you can tell what you are on the inside by what shows up on the outside.
Jesus said "by their fruits you shall know them." In that context, though it is unpopular to say this, Jesus was talking about evaluating teachers as to whether or not they were false. I say it is unpopular because so many people start hollering "JUDGE NOT" when you talk about whether someone is *actually* preaching the gospel or not. However, they never quite finish that verse either. But that's a topic for another day. The point is, you can tell an apple tree by whether it produces apples. If it produces oranges, you can pretty much bank on the fact it is indeed not an apple tree.
Jesus also said in the same passage that good trees bear good fruit and bad trees bear bad fruit.
Then in the Parable of the soils, Jesus speaks of the fertile soil causing the seed to bear fruit.
Oh, and then there's the part where Jesus says that He's the vine and we're the branches and if we abide in Him we'll bear MUCH fruit.
Come to think of it, the Bible talks a lot about fruit. The point is, the fruit of your life is very important. Let's take the aforementioned fruit we bear through Christ, for example. Basically Jesus is saying, if you're a Christian, people are going to be able to take a look at your fruit and say "woah! That guy's a Christian!" It's going to be obvious. If you don't have fruit, it means you're not abiding in the vine. So again, this is the thermometer by which I can guage my life. Am I bearing fruit for the Kingdom of God? If not, maybe I'm not getting sap from the vine.
Now let's look at the fruits of the spirit. In sunday school you learn about the fruits of the spirit. They're cute little fruit characters. Nine of them. A nice little fruit salad, they make. Aside from the fact this caused me to have a distored view of fruits as a child, I also grossly misunderstood how the fruits of the spirit worked. You see, I always learned "You have to be loving, have joy, peace, and patience, be kind" etc. It was all doing and being. But does an apple tree have to *try* to produce apples? Or does it just do so naturally, so long as it is a healthy tree? Does a gardener have to do something special to make the apple tree specifically produce apples rather than, say, bananas? There's no guesswork involved. Apple trees bear apples. Period. You know it's an apple tree because it has apples, you don't have to hang apples on it to make an apple tree. Fruit is the thermometer, not the compass.
That being said, the list of the fruits of the spirit (which, incidentally are preceded by the fruits of the flesh) is *not* an exhaustive list. The preceding list of the fruits of the flesh is not exhuastive list either. But Paul throws out several so you have an idea of what he's talking about. And he's not saying "do these things to stop sinning" or "do these things to be spiritual." He's saying "Do you do these things? That's because you follow after the flesh or spirit respectively."
This all may be a bit of an "of duh" moment for some of you. Or for some of you it may be an "oh wow" moment. For me it was an epiphany the first time I read Galatians through like it was intended to be read. Everything made so much more sense. Instead of trying to do the right things, all I had to do was follow the Spirit. And if I ever wondered whether I was walking in the spirit all I had to do was look at the fruit my life was producing. Amazing! What a relief to not have to worry about following a list of do's and don'ts, and what freedom!
This what God intends for us. Not a list of rules, but an abiding in the vine--a walking in the spirit-- whereby we know in our hearts and by the fruit of our lives that we are doing what God ultimately wants from us. THAT is true relationship. Not the little cliché about religion vs relationship (can you tell I hate clichés?). The real deal.
What does your fruit say about you? Are you abiding in the vine, or are you a sickly branch? Are you bearing good fruit that indicates the spirit root or are you bearing bad fruit that indicates a flesh-focused root? Think about it.

What does it mean?

I grew up the same way as a lot of Americans--in a Christian home where we went to church every Sunday; gave our tithe in the offering; did nice things for the sick, elderly, and poor; and read the Bible and prayed regularly. I'm thankful for that heritage, but one day (or, rather, over a process of days, weeks, months... maybe even years) I realized that I was just going through the motions. I did what I did because I was a good person and I wanted to do right by God so I could go to heaven. After all, who doesn't want to go to heaven? At the very least, it was better than the alternative!
I grew up in Sunday school. We learned that Joy was an orange and peace was an apple; love was a strawberry and gentleness was a banana. We learned that Noah built and ark and stuffed it full of cute little critters like giraffs and zebras in order to save them from a big flood. We learned about men with big muscles and weak senses; we learned about a man who ran away from God and got eaten by a whale. We learned about a man named Jesus who did really good things including dying so we don't have to go to hell--as long as we do what mommy and daddy says, because afterall that's what makes the old man upstairs happy. I was taught the same stories and lessons over and over from preschool to high school. As I got older I learned more of the nitty gritty details (all the scandalous stuff children can't hear--like adultry and murder), but never any meat. What did it all mean? What was the purpose of all those stories? Was there more to life; more to History; more to God?
Christianity was always a list of do's and don'ts. Pray, read some Scripture (or a devotional--it's easier!), give money to the church, do good things for people--oh, and mind those fruits of the spirit! Don't use bad language; don't hate, lie or steal... do, do, do, don't, don't, don't. Yet I always came back to I can't, I can't, I can't. Doing bad stuff was easy, doing good stuff was hard. Especially if you took 20 minutes of devotions instead of 10--it's like the more you learn, the harder it is to do it all. For example, did you know that if you hate a fellow human you're guilty of murder? I'm a murderer!
It all seemed like an endless list that got deeper the more you looked. I was scared. If I didn't know all this stuff, how was I going to be able to make God happy enough that I could go to heaven? Yet the more I learned, the more guilty I felt because I wasn't doing it right! I really didn't want to end up in torturous heat and misery and pain for eternity (in case you didn't know, that's a long time!). Why was I even born? It would be easier if I didn't have to go through all this!
I began searching for answers. I tried asking people--good-willed people who should know the answers. But nobody could answer the deepest questions. It seemed all they knew was these little clichés, half of which were derived from songs rather than scripture anyway. And there are certain questions you can't ask or you'll get told... well, basically nothing!
Then I discovered something. Well, a lot of somethings, really. Firstly, God says that when you seek Him with your whole heart you WILL find Him. Secondly, we come to God by faith, which comes by hearing the Word of God. These two facts became the springboard for my journey. I wanted to know God for real. I had no doubt He existed, because I had seen some pretty crazy things that could never be explained in the natural, and because I know I have felt Him. But I wanted to know His true heart, who He really was, and what He wanted from me. Thus it all began. And though my search has been going on for years, I'm really only beginning. God is so deep, wide, high, and just plain unfathomable--I think if I search every moment of my life, and should I live a million years, I would not even begin to ripple the surface of that vast ocean.
I want to be able to share some of the things I've learned here, and  hope that many will find this blog and be blessed. I certainly don't have all the answers, but I'm committed to searching out truth and deeper meaning. I believe it is time for the Church to wake up. Time to stop telling the same dozen stories over and over. It's time to graduate from the elementary doctrines into the fullness of God. It's time to dive into the depths and discover more. The time has come to illuminate our world with truth!