This is Not That

Start by identifying the fruit of the Spirit

love,

joy,

peace,

patience,

kindness,

goodness,

faithfulness,

gentleness,

self-control

The believer who is mature in the Holy Spirit should be abundant in the items as mentioned in Galatians 5:22

Galatians 5:22–23 NLT

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

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However, we need to understand that these attributes are FRUIT.

Karpos - indicitive of a product of harvest process.

The Spirit-filled believer is not automatically a person who is loving, joyous, patient, peaceful, good.

They are a person who has potential through process to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

__________ The gifts of the Spirit that we often focus on are found in 1 Corinthians 12

1 Corinthians 12:8–10 NLT

To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another the same Spirit gives a message of special knowledge. The same Spirit gives great faith to another, and to someone else the one Spirit gives the gift of healing. He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to discern whether a message is from the Spirit of God or from another spirit. Still another person is given the ability to speak in unknown languages, while another is given the ability to interpret what is being said.

These are the areas we settle on and celebrate within pentecostal circles…missing what Paul would go on to say just a few paragraphs later in the same letter.

1 Corinthians 13:1 NLT

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

Let’s take this statement in stride…Paul essentially says if I could have the gifts of the Spirit in operation but do not produce the fruit of the Spirit I’m nothing more than an annoying noise.

THE CHURCH HAS BECOME AN ANNOYING NOISE TO THE WORLD AROUND US.