To kick off our year of Fruitful living, we’re walking through our Spiritual Seeds Planner.
Time to create our PLANT + CULTIVATE + GROW activity list. This is our list of activities to plan for a month of living filled with the Holy Spirit, growing spiritual Fruit.
Keep in mind, this is not a step by step action plan, created by us, to produce Fruit. That would mean we’re capable and responsible for growing and producing Spiritual Fruit, on our own. Not a chance, utterly impossible! It’s the Holy Spirit living in us that produces the Fruit. That’s why it’s called The Fruit of the Spirit. Wait a minute……If the Holy Spirit produces the Fruit, why are we making the list?
What a great question. Let’s do a little Q&A.
Q – Where do we get the ideas for growing and sharing Spiritual Fruit?
A – The ideas come from seeds planted in our heart
Q – Who planted the seeds?
A – The Holy Spirit
We make the list, with ideas from the Holy Spirit, who plants the seeds in our heart and produces the Fruit. We should have known!
Our list will include an assortment of activities for maturing Fruit in all garden plots.
Some activities will be easy and we’ll want to repeat them, while others will be incredibly challenging, take a long time and require multiple attempts. Remember, the Holy Spirit is our helper too.
As we grow, the Holy Spirit will continue to plant and sprout seeds in our heart, showing us many opportunities for growth. They won’t all be added to our list. As we grow and mature in Christ, our awareness of the Holy Spirit’s presence and leading will increase.
We will find opportunities to love others and grow in Christlikeness more often and in all areas of our life. Often when we least expect it.
This happened to me the other day. I was working in my home office, when my husband shared that he was going to his mother’s house to check on her. She’s usually fairly active and enjoys being social, but she’d been at home alone for several weeks due to social distancing restrictions. As he mentioned where he was going, an idea popped into my head – make some chocolate dipped strawberries for him to give her. I knew it was the Holy Spirit sprouting a seed of kindness in my heart. The question I had to ask myself was, “Am I going to do it?” I was still in my pajamas, plus we didn’t have any strawberries. I would have to go to the store. My flesh said, “you’re too busy” and “she will never know”. But my heart said, “be kind to others, consider them more important than yourself.” We want to live filled with the Holy Spirit, loving others, becoming more like Jesus more than anything else. It’s our greatest desire. So, I went to the store in my sweats.
When the Holy Spirit sprouts a seed in our heart and presents an opportunity to grow and share some Fruit, we simply add water and watch it grow! Even if it’s not on our list.
Fruit grows and ripens over time. Remember, it’s the Holy Spirit that produces the Fruit, we just make the list.
2 Timothy 1:7-8 (ESV)
For God gave me a spirit, not of fear, but of power and love and self-control!
If you are within Christ, He is within you and the Holy Spirit is in you!
