Fruits Of The Spirit (Introductionary Message) Series

Fruit Intro Message

PPT 1 Message Title

The Fruit of the Spirit; are you Son ripened?

PPT 2 Text & Pic

Pr 27:23 Know well the condition of your flocks, [And] pay attention to your herds;

A smart apple farmer is not only concerned with the size of his harvest, but also the health of his trees.

So his two great concerns are the size and quality of his harvest, and the shape and condition of the tree.

In this new series we will be talking about the size and quality of our spiritual fruit, and the shape and condition of our spiritual tree.

Today I want to start with a short video I made, it is about the need to be sure that we have balance in our lives between the fruit of the Spirit and the Gifts of the Spirit.

PPT 3 Video

PPT 4 Pic

How are you doing in regards to the fruit of the Spirit?

2. The fruits of the Spirit should be most manifest in our most personal relationships.

Sometimes when I preach people will think about someone else who needs to hear this message, may I challenge you with the idea of listening to this message on how it applies to you personally.

With your spouse. How are you doing, not how is your spouse doing. Not does he/she need patience but do YOU need to show patience.

With your children. How are you doing, not how are your children doing. Not do they need to show you respect, but how YOU need to show them respect.

With your coworkers. How are you doing not how are they doing.

I read a story of a counselor who lived next door to a family that had a difficult child to raise. Often he would hear the dad yelling at the child, and when he would be near he would gently say you need to love your child, not punish him.

One day the counselor was having some repair work done on his concrete driveway. Just after it was completed the neighbors difficult child stepped in the freshly poured concrete. The child's dad happened to drive up at the very moment the counselor got to the youth, rolled down his window and said, "you need to love not punish." Often it is easier to preach to others, than to live it ourselves.

Bearing the fruit of the Spirit, is not always easy, but it is always right. Let's do a better job church.

Rather than just tell you that we should be bearing spiritual fruit, let me try to help you move more in that area.

Here is a good verse to help:

PPT 5 text

Joh 15:16 "You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and [that] your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give to you.

God wants us to bear fruit, but He doesn't simply command us to do it, but boldly declares that He has appointed us to do it. The Greek word translated appointed (ordained - KJV) is tithaymee (phonetic) and means to fix it so that it will happen. So it is not simply that God is saying you must bear fruit, He is also saying that He will do His part to see to it that we bear fruit, that remains.

I want to just give a couple of basic ideas about fruit and then we will close:

There are different kinds of fruits, different kinds of the same fruit, and there are different ways of gathering fruits.

1, There are different kinds of fruits and we need them all

PPT 6 text

Ga 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

Ga 5:23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Jas 1:4 And let endurance have [its] perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

The word translated endurance is just the ongoing form of the word patience found in Galations 5:22. Do you see the word complete there in that verse? It means complete in all parts, fully assembled.

Vitamin C is good for you, but it is not the only vitamin you need. The rest of them usually taste nasty, so we tend to neglect them. Big ugly pills, and we burp and they are nasty twice on us.

Some fruits we like more than others, love we like but patience we tend to avoid. Strawberries or prunes exemplifies the difference in the natural. God wants us to be complete, and to have all the fruits in our life. We tend to pick our favorites, so God tends to put us in situations were we will have to bear fruits we don't normally like.