You will know them by their fruit

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Jesus warns us about false prophets, saying: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.  You will know them by their fruits” (Matt 7:15-16).

But what is that fruit?

Fruit is the outward evidence of the inward seed. So, for instance, if you have the seed for a plum tree, and it grows, it will produce plums.  A banana tree will produce bananas.  You know that it’s a plum tree and not a banana tree by looking at the fruit.

Sometimes this takes a little discernment.  The difference between a plum and a pluot, for instance, isn’t so significant that you could immediately see it unless you were adequately familiar with both.  So, to discern God’s fruit, we need to spend time getting to know Him lest we get caught in something that seems true but isn’t.

And if we want to produce God’s fruit, we must first have His seed (a foundation of intimacy with Him).

It’s not the outward things we do that evidence the seed (you can give to charity, feed the poor, love animals, etc whether or not you know God), but it’s the outward manifestations of the inward things (the deep Joy that can’t help but bubble over, the true Peace regardless of circumstance…) that point out whether our fruit is good or bad.

My husband and I were watching the church sermon of a leader we’d never seen before.  We’d heard really good things about this speaker, but when we heard him speak it was clear that he wasn’t preaching through the fruit of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22-23; Eph 5:9).  Instead of the joy and peace of the Holy Spirit, we distinguished anger, hostility and offense–even though he was quoting the Bible.

You see, it’s not just about what people say–in this case, much of the sermon was from an adequate Biblical perspective.  What matters more is the spirit in which the message is given.  We don’t want to graft ourselves into the wrong tree by allowing ourselves to be mislead by someone who isn’t connected with the Lord’s heart.

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It’s a spiritual battle

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Last night and earlier today I was under intense spiritual attack.  It began after I’d experienced great victory with the Lord, and it was so sudden and unexpected that I was feeling weak, depressed, lonely, physically sick, exhausted, …, all at once and couldn’t quite remember how to deal with it (even though I counsel my good friends on spiritual warfare on a regular basis).

I reached out to a few people for prayer, I considered that I should be praying for strength, or taking authority over the lies of the enemy, and yet I continued to engage negative thoughts and wallow.

Then a friend spoke to me and mentioned something like, “it’s okay, we all feel down sometimes”.  I can’t explain what happened in my spirit, but it was like Truth rose up inside me and my spirit shouted, “No! It’s not true!  It’s a spiritual battle!  I’ve been up against this before and won!”

Too often we give our flesh credit for what is happening in the spiritual realm.  But Ephesians 6:12 says “Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”  When we feel anger, or sadness, or fear, or hopelessness or any other negative thought it is a spiritual thing.  There are deceptive spirits speaking lies to us.  It doesn’t matter how believable those negative thoughts may seem–they are all lies!

But 2 Corinthians 10 encourages us that if we have chosen Jesus Christ as our Lord, then we have spiritual weapons available to us through the Holy Spirit: “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.”

Our job is to “take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:5).  When we hear ourselves thinking a thought that is in any way negative or outside the nature of our Lord, we choose to cast it aside.  We recognize that it’s false, claim the truth, and let the truth sink into our spirits setting us free (Phil 4:8).

This is exactly what I chose to do this evening, and I’ll testify that there is nothing better than the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23), and complete freedom in the Lord.  If you’re a Christian, this is absolutely available to you all the time, no matter the circumstance; but you do have to choose to resist the temptation and lies of the devil!

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