Wednesday, October 16, 2013

When you combine all the various aspects of both spiritual fruit and the fruits of the Spirit found in lifestyle fruit, service fruit, doctrinal fruit and trait fruit what emerges is three overwhelming passions characteristic of the hardcore spiritually uncompromising Devoted Follower of Jesus. These individual have found the Center of what, all of life is truly about. The merging of all aspects of spiritual fruit collides in one spiritually passionate child of God.

Those three overwhelming passions, also a form of spiritual fruit, are as follows. 1 – A quest to make Truth known, understood, and accepted. 2 – A desire to know and do the Will of God. 3 – A willingness to expose sin.

Ephesians 5:8–13 (NKJV)

Walk in Light

⁸ For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light ⁹ (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), ¹⁰ finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. ¹¹ And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. ¹² For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. ¹³ But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light.

The fruit of Truth is found within the deeply committed Follower of Christ. They wish the Truth of God’s Word to be known and properly understood. That Truth is the primary guiding force of their life for within that Truth is all the answers to life and all godly wisdom. These individual have come to realize that Truth is the final authority on all matters and the only real spiritual power. You can be in a group of people ranging from the youngest person in the Lord to the godliest spiritual leader who has served Christ for years and within that group, the individual who holds the spiritual authority is the individual who is speaking spiritual Truth because Spiritual Truth is the ultimate authority. Spiritual Truth makes Christ known, Truth is Christ – Truth is not just a principle, concept, or thing it is a person, Jesus the Christ. – – John 14:6 (NKJV) – ^“ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

When a person has truly surrendered to Christ, and His lordship over their lives they exhibit the fruit of desiring to both know and do His Will. A deep transformation has taken place in the individual where a level of spiritual understanding and trust has conquered all personal resistance. Individuals who bear this fruit know that God’s Will far surpasses in goodness and satisfaction anything they can dream of or conceive on their own. They trust that their Lord, their God, knows them better than they know themselves and what He directs them to do or not do is in their very best interest in life. Beyond the person, these people burn with a yearning for others to know and desire to do God’s Will above their own. For some individuals it is even hard to imagine why people would want their own will over God’s Will. The Will of God brings true life, hope, rest, purpose, fulfillment, and so much more to life – desiring it cannot and will never fail you.

A spiritual fruit, which seems in short supply these days, is the distain for and abhorring of sin, both personal sin and sin on other peoples part. To abhor sin is not to condemn or judge a person; it is however, using spiritual discernment to recognize sin as sin. We are required as a people of God to have no fellowship with darkness partaking in its sin[s], we are rather to expose it for what it is – sin. Our mere presence in the environment of sin and darkness puts our stamps of approval on what is taking place. The sold-out type of individuals I referred to earlier are not going to endure the environment of sin for long. If they have personal sin in their lives, they will loath themselves to some degree until that sin is dealt with and removed. If they are around sin being committed by others, they are very uncomfortable and usually feel intensely compelled to speak out against the sin, which is exactly what the Scripture above tells us to do. Vanilla Christians and/or religious people often call these Dedicated Spiritual Remnant intolerant – well, they are to some degree, intolerant of sin, sin not people. People have greatly misappropriated the Scripture about ‘love covering a multitude of sin’ [1 Peter 4:8], which has more to with not becoming easily offended by your brothers and sisters in Christ and less to do with actually overlooking, covering up, or not addressing sin in your or another person’s life. We do not lavish or reward “sin” with misappropriated spiritual fruit we instead expose it thus bearing true spiritual fruit.

Spiritual/Political Disclaimer:

This blog will not be for the faint of heart or the easily offended. It will not be in any way politically correct. It will make every effort to share the truth in love, [Ephesians 4:11-16], to a decaying and dying society and church. I share what I share not to hurt, harm, or offend any person[s] or group; I do it because Christ’s Standard and Truth is not being represented by enough of His Followers and I do it out of love. I love enough to tell His Truth.

Ephesians 4:11-16 NKJV

¹¹And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, ¹²for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, ¹³till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; ¹⁴that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, ¹⁵but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— ¹⁶from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.