That title is NOT a typo. It’s a clarion call to a church that is riddled with works.
(You know it’s serious when I use a word like clarion. I’ll wait here while you go look it up. It’s fine, I had to check the meaning before I used it to make sure I wasn’t referencing a hair spray product. That’s Clairol, by the way.)
A clarion call is a message that is loud and clear. It’s the opposite of a fear-driven whisper or an intimidated stutter. I want to be absolutely crystal clear about what the Lord spoke to my spirit early this morning.
Did I hear His audible voice? No. Did I have any doubt that it was Him? Again, no. Did He stutter? Not. At. All.
“It’s time for the Church to stop trying to produce the fruit of the Spirit.”
That got my attention, and led to a follow-up question. “But Lord, aren’t we supposed to produce the fruit of the Spirit? I mean, I would rather not explain Your own word to You, but isn’t that what it says in Galatians 5?”
Can I give you a life lesson? I think questions are a wonderful way to learn, and I find that God often teaches me in a way that forces me to ask Him in order for Him to reveal something I may have missed or overlooked. Don’t act like a Biblical know-it-all, especially when you’re chatting with the Author.
“Is that what it says?” His question to my question had me going to Galatians faster than a teenage boy driving home after missing curfew.
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! (Galatians 5:22-23 NLT, emphasis mine)
Did you catch it? I was so thankful that the Father took the time to teach me that I’m not the one responsible for the fruit production! Have you ever asked God for patience, thinking that He would flip a switch, and you’d no longer get angry at slow drivers?
That’s not how it works. He doesn’t give us patience; He produces patience in us. That’s why you found yourself behind the slow drivers! God is using them to produce the fruit of patience in your life. The obstacle doesn’t mean He didn’t answer your prayer, but it may mean He did.
This is revolutionary for many in the Western church, who are working themselves to death trying to produce the things that only the Holy Spirit can.
Where the Spirit is, there is freedom, and when we read the entire fifth chapter of Galatians, we find that freedom is the theme, even more than fruit. When we are abiding in the vine, the Spirit is free to flow to us and produce fruit through us.
When we learn to abide in Christ, we’ll stop praying for God to give us the fruit that is supernaturally produced when we’re connected.
When we learn to abide in Christ, we’ll stop praying for God to give us the fruit that is supernaturally produced when we’re connected. Share on XOur job is to abide; His job is to produce.
So let me end this the same way I began: with a loud, clear, clarion call to the believer…
It’s time to get out of the way, and let the Spirit take care of producing His fruit in our lives.
And any time we see a drop-off in the fruit production, the answer isn’t trying harder to make more fruit, but rather checking the connection between us and the vine. When that’s in place, the fruit will come.
Photo by Rohit Tandon on Unsplash
