Growing Fruit

Today's post is the opening of my upcoming book. Hope you enjoy!

It would have been wonderful if the moment we accepted Jesus as our Savior our whole beings were changed into loving, Christ minded, God obeying creatures. However, this was not the case. Our sinful desires and tendencies remained with us after we said the Sinners Prayer. We were just empowered to overcome those desires if we chose to fight against them with the Lord’s help.

Many of us ignored the call to arms.


Simply because our souls have been saved from hell does not give us a ‘pass’ to continue on in the same behavior that we engaged in prior to being saved. It became our responsibility to transform ourselves into the image of Christ in our thoughts, attitude, and behavior.

In other words, it was time for us to start growing fruit.

Developing fruit requires sacrifice on our part. Many of us have lived with wrong behavior so long, it’s second nature to us. We are quick to catch an attitude when something doesn’t go our way. We’ve perfected the lies we tell to cover our errors. If someone crosses us, we relish in retaliating and putting them back in their place. Insert your sin here.

Yet these kinds of actions grieve the heart of the One who saved and delivered us. It is His will that we live a loving life showing mercy, humility, and peace to others. As He has shown us love, it is only right that we show Him love in return by following His will.

Our desires should take second place to His desires. If God doesn’t like it, it should be crossed off of our lifestyle list.

The Bible says that we can make the necessary changes by renewing our minds. Renewing here means that we have to retrain ourselves to think along the lines of the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God. We have to kick out every thought that’s not acceptable to God and actively sacrifice our will and replace it with His will. (Romans 12:1, 2)

Sacrificing our fleshly will and renewing our minds will be all the more easier as we actively follow after God. He has already given us His Holy Spirit to help guide us in the right way to go. We just have to make the effort to listen and obey Him instead of ignoring His gentle tugs to do better.

This is a process that takes time. It requires dedication, discipline, and resolve. Yet going through the process will result in our becoming more like Him.

Verse of the Day: So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. Galatians 5: 16, 17 (NLT)