But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control.  Against such things there is no law.  Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.  Since we live by the Spirit, we must also follow the Spirit.  We must not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Galatians 5:22-26 NIV

I have a six year old great niece who is as bossy as she is adorable and she’s pretty adorable.  I may be biased but I have a lot of other people that are not related to her that agree.  My sister is her grandmother and usually does Sunday lunch at her house.  One Sunday, a while back, my niece had her cousin (from her mom’s side)  over who is a couple years older.  It was the day before his birthday and his family was taking him to Disney World.  They were leaving the next day.  He is shy and doesn’t talk a lot, but once I asked about his birthday and Disney World we struck up a pretty good conversation.  Now my niece decided that she wanted to go for a walk and instructed us to join her.  Apparently, we were falling behind because we were talking about his upcoming birthday and trip.  My niece, turned around, gave us a harsh look and said, “less talking, more walking!”.  Needless to say, our conversation then turned to how bossy my niece is.  My niece has no problem conveying her desires to others.  In this particular incident she made it abundantly clear that she wanted leg action, not lip action.  We were supposed to be walking and our talking was getting in the way of that.

As Christians, we are often told that our walk should match our talk.  Simply put, it means that if your mouth professes that you are a Christian, your actions should do likewise.  For example, you don’t want to invite someone to church and then turn around later, in a moment of anger and take the Lord’s name in vain.

If you have established a good solid relationship with Jesus Christ, then you need to help others to do the same.  You need to lead them to salvation.  If nothing else, you need to at least plant the seed or give them something to think about.  Perhaps you will talk to them and someone else will come along and lead them to salvation.  Either way, we need to get as many people to heaven as we can.

Now one excuse that unsaved people always use for not turning to God, is hypocrites.  Many times I have invited someone who is unsaved to church and I have gotten this response,  “There’s nothing but a bunch of hypocrites at church”.  My former pastor used to say, “yes, but there is always room for one more”.  I’m saying this to emphasize the fact that when we profess to be saved, the unsaved are always watching.  They are waiting for us to mess up so they can say, “See I told you, just another hypocrite.”  When our walk and our talk don’t match up, we are labeled as hypocrites.

When we are saved, God sends His Holy Spirit to dwell on the inside of us.  The problem is that we need constant refilling because the world tries to drain us.  We need to pray for God to fill us with his Holy Spirit.  Today’s scripture passage gives us the fruits of the Spirit.  Our former pastor used to also say that we are not supposed to judge, but we are supposed to inspect the fruit.

If we walk in the fruit of the Spirit, we can lead others to Christ through our actions.  It is much easier to explain to someone why you have this Spirit of kindness and joy or this peace that passes all understanding, than it is to sit down and start witnessing to them.  When someone asks me how I can be calm when there is chaos all around me, that’s easy.  I can simply tell them that it’s because I trust in Jesus.  I know God’s got my back and then I can give them countless examples of times that God has come through for me.  There were even times in my life when I thought He was letting me down, only to find out later that He was lifting me up (Romans 8:28)

If you take nothing else from today’s blog, I ask you to consider this.  If you are saved, you have a duty to share what you have found in Jesus with others.  You have a duty to do all you can do to not let your friends and family go to hell. If you destroy your witness, it will be nearly impossible.  The devil loves to destroy our witness.  If he can’t get us back, then he certainly doesn’t want us drawing any others close to God. Don’t let him destroy your witness.  Pray daily for God to fill you with His Holy Spirit.  Pray for God to help you to walk in the fruit of the Spirit.  It’s not only good for your witness, it’s good for you!

Have a great day!