What Is Your Life Producing? | The Way of Grace, Part 2
Key Truth | Healthy relationships grow when we stop trying to manage everyone around us and allow the Holy Spirit to change what is happening within us.
Key Scripture | “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” — Galatians 5:22–23 NLT
Relationships have a way of revealing what is happening inside us.
It is easy to believe we are patient until someone tests our patience. We can think we are gentle until someone says something that hurts us. We may believe we have self-control until a conversation does not go the way we expected.
Relationships bring things to the surface.
Galatians 5 gives us two very different pictures of what our lives can produce. One comes from our sinful nature and leads toward things like hostility, jealousy, anger, selfish ambition, dissension, and division. The other comes from the Holy Spirit and produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Notice that Paul calls these things fruit.
Fruit is not manufactured by trying harder. It grows because something healthy is happening at the root.
Sometimes we spend enormous energy trying to fix the fruit in everyone else’s life while God is inviting us to pay attention to our own roots. We think, If they would change, I could have peace. If they would listen, I could be patient. If they would treat me differently, I could respond differently.
But the fruit of the Spirit is not dependent upon another person behaving the way we want.
The Holy Spirit can produce patience in us even when another person is difficult. He can produce gentleness when a conversation is uncomfortable. He can produce self-control when we feel justified in saying everything on our mind. He can produce peace even when someone disagrees with us.
That is one reason the Holy Spirit is so essential to healthy relationships. We cannot consistently love people like Jesus simply through willpower.
We need Him.
When the Spirit is changing us, we become less concerned with choosing sides and more concerned with choosing the way of Christ. We begin asking a different question—not simply, Who is right? but, What response looks most like Jesus right now?
That question can change a relationship.
The next time tension rises in a relationship, resist the urge to immediately focus on what the other person needs to change.
Instead, ask the Holy Spirit, “What fruit are You trying to grow in me here?”
Then give Him room to work.
Reflection
Prayer | Holy Spirit, I need You in every relationship in my life. Reveal anything in me that is producing division, selfishness, anger, or pride. Grow Your fruit in me so that the way I speak, respond, and love looks more like Jesus. Help me focus less on controlling others and more on surrendering myself to You. Amen.
Additional Scripture
Key Scripture | “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” — Galatians 5:22–23 NLT
Relationships have a way of revealing what is happening inside us.
It is easy to believe we are patient until someone tests our patience. We can think we are gentle until someone says something that hurts us. We may believe we have self-control until a conversation does not go the way we expected.
Relationships bring things to the surface.
Galatians 5 gives us two very different pictures of what our lives can produce. One comes from our sinful nature and leads toward things like hostility, jealousy, anger, selfish ambition, dissension, and division. The other comes from the Holy Spirit and produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Notice that Paul calls these things fruit.
Fruit is not manufactured by trying harder. It grows because something healthy is happening at the root.
Sometimes we spend enormous energy trying to fix the fruit in everyone else’s life while God is inviting us to pay attention to our own roots. We think, If they would change, I could have peace. If they would listen, I could be patient. If they would treat me differently, I could respond differently.
But the fruit of the Spirit is not dependent upon another person behaving the way we want.
The Holy Spirit can produce patience in us even when another person is difficult. He can produce gentleness when a conversation is uncomfortable. He can produce self-control when we feel justified in saying everything on our mind. He can produce peace even when someone disagrees with us.
That is one reason the Holy Spirit is so essential to healthy relationships. We cannot consistently love people like Jesus simply through willpower.
We need Him.
When the Spirit is changing us, we become less concerned with choosing sides and more concerned with choosing the way of Christ. We begin asking a different question—not simply, Who is right? but, What response looks most like Jesus right now?
That question can change a relationship.
The next time tension rises in a relationship, resist the urge to immediately focus on what the other person needs to change.
Instead, ask the Holy Spirit, “What fruit are You trying to grow in me here?”
Then give Him room to work.
Reflection
- Which fruit of the Spirit is most difficult for me to demonstrate when relationships become tense?
- When conflict happens, do I focus first on changing the other person or allowing God to change me?
Prayer | Holy Spirit, I need You in every relationship in my life. Reveal anything in me that is producing division, selfishness, anger, or pride. Grow Your fruit in me so that the way I speak, respond, and love looks more like Jesus. Help me focus less on controlling others and more on surrendering myself to You. Amen.
Additional Scripture
- John 15:4–5
- Romans 8:5–6
- Ephesians 4:1–3
- Colossians 3:12–14
- James 3:17–18
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