Week 14 Day 4 Devotions
Look For Fruit
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.” Galatians 5:22-23
Jesus gives us some very encouraging words in the middle of His teaching regarding false prophets. Having warned us that they are out there, having told us that they are wolves but to us they will look like sheep, He reassures us: “By their fruit you will recognize them.” He doesn't say that we will sometimes recognise them, or that we might recognize them. No, He says we will recognise them, and we will recognise them by their fruit. We have already said that the starting point for us in the whole area of responding to the truth that there are false prophets around is to be on the lookout for them. In other words believe that they are a possible threat to your spiritual well-being. Then we went on to say: Be slow to judge, pray for guidance from the Holy Spirit and be prepared to stretch your own understanding. Then we added a strong dose of personal ‘log removing’. Now with clear eyes and a pure heart we look for fruit.
One must always tread very carefully when applying our text verse into our lives and into the lives of others. A sign of impatience, a touch of unkindness, an isolated lack of self control and so on are not necessarily signs of a bad tree good for nothing except the fire! It is probably more helpful to use these two verses and the fruit they mention and ask whether they describe the person's general character. Look for the bigger picture that you may not have seen and be open to biases that you might have which you are perhaps unaware of and which might be clouding your vision.
Wesley's Rules of a Helper can once again guide us as we decide on a course of action:
‘Speak evil of no one else your word, especially, would eat as doth a canker. Keep your thoughts within your own breast till You come to the person concerned. Tell everyone what you think wrong in them, lovingly and plainly and as soon as may be else it will fester in your own heart. Make all haste to cast the fire out of your bosom.’
Let the fruits of grace abound,
Let in us thy bowels sound;
Faith, and love, and joy increase,
Temperance and gentleness;
Plant in us thy humble mind,
Patient, pitiful, and kind;
Meek and lowly let us be
Full of goodness, full of thee. (506)
