Serve God with Your Fruits
Other Posts in this Series
- Serve God
- Serve God as a Foot Washer
- Serve God with Your Fruits
- Serve God with Justice
One of my favorite passages is Galatians 5:22-23.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
I think I like this passage because these simple words give me a concrete way to serve God. God desires that I live a life of love, of joy, of peace, etc. I can make this my To Do list checking off what I’ve accomplished and what I have yet to do.
Let’s see. . . . Have I been kind today? Check.
Have I been patient today? Check.
Have I maintained control of myself in every situation and temptation? Oops. No check there today.
What I’ve learned and continue to learn is that pleasing God is not a check list. The list Paul shares here I would liken to names of dances or names of concertos. Later in the Galatians passage, Paul says, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.” These “fruits” are dances we dance with the Spirit of God. They involve a partner. They are dynamic, fluid, and full of complex activity.
Although I am not a dancer, nor do I typically watch, “Dancing with the Stars” on television, but I’ve seen enough dancing to know that someone can dance the “Tango” or the “Texas Two Step” and do it poorly, but they have still danced. Beautiful dancing takes practice and hard work with one’s partner–in this case the Spirit of God.
I would also liken this list of “fruits” to a musical concert. Again, I am not very musical, but I have been to numerous concerts. Typically, the program lists several musical pieces that will be performed. These written words mean little to me until the music begins and I experience the music itself. Like the dance, these musicians have practiced long and hard with each other under the direction of the conductor to produce the music that has its own personality and life.
Serving God with our fruits is a dance. It’s a concert in which we practice daily to follow the lead of God’s Spirit. We show our love for the Master Dancer or the Master Conductor by learning the Spirit’s rhythm and allowing it to be our rhythm.
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