the fruit of the Spirit

"But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh."

- Galatians 5:16

In my previous post, I shared how I am utterly hopeless without Christ because I fall short physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually even according to human standards. But what does it look like to live your life as a transformed person in Christ?

Every Sunday evening, my family and I have what we call "family altar", which is essentially family Bible study. My dad chooses a book in the Bible to study for the month or so, and we study a chapter each week. We have been studying the book of Galatians lately. Tonight's focus was on Galatians chapter 5, and the timing could not have been more perfect!

After going around the table, reading a verse out loud, we spend some time in quiet, picking out a verse from the chapter that was significant to us. The one I chose tonight was verse 16: "Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh." When I read this verse, I felt like I found the answer that would free me from my anxieties and hopelessness! Who wouldn't want to live a life free from the shackles of their fleshly desires?

What are these desires? "Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these" (Galatians 5:19-21). Although I am not guilty of all of these fleshly desires, I admit that I am guilty of many of them. In fact, sometimes they become so strong that I hardly put up a fight. If this were not bad enough, I rarely take complete ownership of my wrongdoings.

However, as my professor said last Thursday, when you sin, you sin because you choose to sin. You cannot shift the blame. No matter what my parents have done wrong while raising me, no matter what kind of day I was having, no matter what my significant other said (or failed to say), and so on, I must take full responsibility for everything I say and do.

So if those are the fleshly desires, what is the opposite of that? "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law" (Galatians 5:22, 23). The reason why the word "fruit" in the phrase "fruit of the Spirit" is singular is that the fruit of the Spirit is incomplete if any of these attributes is missing. In other words, if I had love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control, but I were critical and insensitive (lacking kindness and gentleness), the fruit of my Spirit would be incomplete.

As you may recall from my first entry, I have committed this year to the LORD by not dating. Furthermore, as you may have gathered by now, I am in no shape to date in the immediate future because I need God to heal me and renew me in Christ, or I will hurt the person I date when it is time. Although there are times when I get lonely, I want to wait on God because that is the only way I know that when I date again, I will be equipped to be his best friend and greatest supporter.