BE DIFFERENT; Be Fruitful
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.”
My favourite fruit is mango but I don’t like it getting in between my teeth when I eat it. I love the flavour and juiciness of pineapples but not the spikey bits, and I don’t like cutting them up. I like oranges but they are a pain to peel and very sticky. Cherries. I think they are the best - yummiest plus easiest!
What fruit is your favourite?
What do you think?
Which fruit am I?
I grow on a vine.
I am round and juicy.
I grow in a group of many others, all together on the one bunch.
I am green but sometimes I can grow purple, although the shops call it red.
Which fruit am I?
I am a grape.
Which fruit am I?
I am a tropical fruit.
I have a hard core in the middle and am juicy around the outside.
I have a crown.
My skin is prickly with eyes on it.
I am yellow and green.
I am a pineapple.
What fruit do you like best?
Do you know of any exotic fruits?
Durian? Custard Apple? Dragon Fruit?
Story Time!
I have a veggie patch. I will tell you a few of my failures in there from over the years!
I love herbs and have grown a few herbs well.
We visited a friends holiday house when the kids were really little and they loved collecting the blueberries and cherry tomatoes there every morning, and so I thought it would be a good idea to plant some food they would like.
I bought a couple of strawberry plants and they expanded across the whole patch. They took over my herbs and the kids weren’t very interested in harvesting them. The strawberries would get ripe and then overripe and rot in the garden, hidden underneath the leaves.
I bought a blueberry plant. It grew very slowly over the last 8 years and would give about 20 blueberries each year. Recently I planted a lemon tree next to it and now the blueberry plant has dried up and died.
I planted mint in the patch and it has spread so much and now I can’t get rid of it. The roots are like long snakes under the ground, all connected together. They are everywhere, even where the mint is not growing!
What about a vine? In Jesus day there were a lot of grapevines. Do you have a passionfruit vine?
You need to have a healthy vine if you want fruit. You need to cut off the unhealthy bits off the branch and then more fruit grows there. If a branch doesn’t produce any fruit at all it is a waste on the vine and needs to be cut off entirely.
Jesus talks about us being branches and bearing fruit. We must bear fruit if we are Christians.
Bible Passage: John 15:1-6
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts away every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit. But he trims clean every branch that does produce fruit, so that it will produce even more fruit. You are already clean because of what I have said to you.
Stay joined to me, and I will stay joined to you. Just as a branch cannot produce fruit unless it stays joined to the vine, you cannot produce fruit unless you stay joined to me. I am the vine, and you are the branches. If you stay joined to me, and I stay joined to you, then you will produce lots of fruit. But you cannot do anything without me. If you don’t stay joined to me, you will be thrown away. You will be like dry branches that are gathered up and burned in a fire.”
What does God call this fruit on the vine? It is called the Fruit of the Spirit. This fruit is the most amazing fruit of all - better than cherries and mangoes and dragon fruit!!!
What is this fruit like? Paul describes what this fruit is like in:
Bible Passage: 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.”
Sometimes we can get see some Fruit of the Spirit, and it is loving, kind and patient, but not faithful or gentle or self controlled.
God wants us to bear this fruit. We WILL, if we have the spirit in us. He will prune us, tend to our needs and help us grow to be healthy and fruitful.
Question Time!
Which part of the fruit of the spirit do you find the easiest to do?
Which part of the fruit of the spirit do you find the hardest to do?
Pray together right now, that you can be fruitful branches in God’s vine.
