Is My Fruit Visible and Active?

Today I read something that really made me stop and consider my walk with the Lord and how I was fairing in accomplishing that endeavor. Lately, the Lord has had me revisiting the small but powerful book, The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence.  Brother Lawrence was a 17th century monk who made it his goal in life to include and recognize God in every aspect of his life spending every waking moment in constant communication with Him. He is known and remembered for his intimacy with the Father.  In his book today I read, "Necessity is laid upon us to examine ourselves with diligence to find out what are the virtues, which we chiefly lack, and which are the hardest for us to acquire; we should seek to learn the sins that do most easily beset us, and the times and occasions, when we do most often fall."  While recognizing sin in my life and repenting of it may seem a normal part of the everyday Christian life, the Lord seemed to put a new spin on it for me that caused me to realize I am not where I want to be regarding this area of Christian foundational teaching.  I tend to look at the big things as sin and overlook the everyday small things that quietly and slowly put a wedge between me and God.  I felt the Lord was trying to go deeper with me in this area and show me what was really inside my heart.

First He asked me what the virtues Brother Lawrence was speaking of were.  When the Lord asks you a question, you know it is for your benefit because He already knows the answer.  So I thought about it for a while and realized I really had no idea. Yes, there are many things we can insert into the category of virtuous, but all those things seem to have to do with my actions and it felt like the Lord wanted me to go deeper.  The dictionary defines virtues as, "moral excellence; goodness, righteousness; conformity of one's life and conduct to moral and ethical principles; uprightness; rectitude; chastity; a particular moral excellence.   There are cardinal virtues defined as, "justice, temperance, prudence, and fortitude; natural virtues which the dictionary defines as, "any moral virtue of which humankind is capable; and theological virtues such as, "one of the three graces: faith, hope, or charity, infused into the human intellect and will by a special grace of God.  While this is all good and explains it somewhat, it just didn't seem to get to the meat of the issue for me.

So I asked the Lord just what He was trying to get me to see in this passage from Brother Lawrence's book.  Then it occurred to me that the Lord infused into us His virtues when we received the Holy Spirit.  Galatians 5:22-23 give us the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  I realized that these were the virtues He was getting at.  He was asking me to check my heart and determine how much of these virtues could I see occurring in my daily life.  He showed me that the fruit of the Spirit was sort of a litmus test He had given to us as Christians.

The way we can determine if we are growing in intimacy in our lives is to periodically check the fruit.  As we grow in intimacy with Him the fruit becomes more evident in our lives because we are spending more time with Him. Just like our children tend to "become" like what we have modeled to them, so we "become" what we see modeled in God through our relationship with Him.

It is not about working to be perfect and have the fruit be shinny and bright so everyone will see we are "godly" because we have worked hard to be.  It is about being ourselves, loving Him, being with Him daily, talking to and including Him in our everyday, moment by moment life.  Brother Lawrence puts it like this,"It is the schooling of the soul to find its joy in His Divine Companionship, holding with Him at all times and at every moment humble and loving converse, without set rule or stated method, in all time of our temptation and tribulation, in all time of our dryness of soul and disrelish of God,  yes and even when we fall into unfaithfulness and actual sin."  He goes on to say, "...we ought to cease for one brief moment, as often as we can, to worship God in the depth of our being, to taste Him though it be in passing, to touch Him as it were by stealth."  It is this kind of relationship and intimacy that brings about the fruit of His Spirit being manifested in our daily lives.

So I decided to create a scale of sorts in order to somehow measure the fruit that I see manifested in my life on a regular basis.  It goes something like this: on a scale from 1-10, 1 being "I can't see any visible or active fruit in my life" and 10 being "all I see is visible and active fruit in my life".  I took each fruit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control and rated each of them 1 to 10 with a perfect score being 90.  I am not going to tell you my results because I feel that is between God and I but it did open my eyes up to the realization that God sees things as sin that very often I don't even consider in the running and I am a long way from my 90 point mark.

Taking a daily, weekly, or monthly rating of visible and active fruit in my life will hopefully keep me on track in growing in my intimacy with the Father and result in the manifestation of my life looking more like His heart than mine.  I encourage you to refocus your heart and check on your fruit.  I promise you will not be the same once you do.