Spiritual Growth and The Fruit of the Holy Spirit
One benefit of spiritual growth is experiencing the fruit of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, the spirit of God himself. God gives the Holy Spirit to every Christian. Once you become a Christian, the Holy Spirit dwells inside of you for the remainder of your life.
One of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to work in your life to produce what the Bible calls “the fruit of the Spirit.” The Fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). As you experience spiritual growth you also experience these nine fruits in your life to a greater degree.
The problem with the average follower of Jesus today is that many are not experiencing the fruit of the Holy Spirit to the level they desire. As you read this, you may feel this way. Do you really love others? Are you really feeling joy or peace? Are you patient and kind? You’d probably answer, not as much as I’d like to be. If you want an honest assessment, ask your spouse, your children, your friends, or your co-workers.
Experiencing the fruit of the Holy Spirit to a greater degree only occurs as we experience ongoing and sustained spiritual growth. Think of your life like a coffee cup. Until the cup is completely full, the coffee does not pour over the side into the saucer. In the same way, until your life is completely filled with God through your spiritual growth, the fruit of the Spirit will not pour out of you. You will not experience or demonstrate the fruit in your life to the degree you desire.
However, if the Holy Spirit is really in us, why are we struggling to demonstrate the fruits of the Holy Spirit? One idea is that the problem is the Holy Spirit. Maybe he is not really in there. Or perhaps he is napping, distracted, on vacation. Maybe he is not powerful enough. Another thought is that the problem is with us. Maybe there are certain areas of our lives that are so messed up, that no power in the universe can fix them.
The good news is that neither of those answers are true. If you are a follower of Jesus, the Holy Spirit is really inside you, and is active. He is also powerful enough to get the job done and produce the fruit of the Spirit within you. There is no area of our lives that the Holy Spirit does not have the power to change.
So, we are back to the question, why don’t we experience the completeness of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in the way we desire? In actuality, the reason is very simple. The power of the Holy Spirit practically applied to our lives ebbs and flows with the level of our spiritual growth.
It is not that the absolute power of the Holy Spirit changes. It is that the amount of power of the Holy Spirit being applied to our lives at any given moment changes. As we grow spiritually, more and more power of the Holy Spirit is applied to our lives helping us experience more and more of the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
