Nurturing Your Spirit: Recognizing Abundance – Living an Abundant Life, part 2
Are you settling for less than God’s abundant plan for you? In today’s message, learn what abundance looks like, and what true, Godly love is.
In this series, we’ll learn about where abundance comes from and what abundance looks like. We’ll look at different states of the heart and what we can do to cultivate a healthy heart for God. Then we’ll learn about the connection between the fruit of the Spirit and abundance; and what that means for living an abundant life God’s way. When we’re done, we’ll see how abundance comes through us; and that abundance is about what we give.
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About the Speaker
Joel Wolski has been a passionate follower of Christ for over 30 years and serves on the Board of Faith Chapel. He is dedicated to living and sharing a Christ-filled life. Through the years, he has also been both a student and leader in Bible studies. His greatest desire is to help others grow in their identity in Christ. Also an avid photographer, you can follow Joel on Instagram or his website.
Nurturing Your Spirit: What Abundance Looks Like
We started a two-part series, Living an Abundant Life, and we talked about where abundance comes from. Abundance comes from a heart, cultivated by the Holy Spirit to receive the word of God who is Christ Jesus. We talked about the four conditions of our hearts that the seed of God’s word is planted in.
Four Conditions of the Heart When Seed Is Planted:
The hard heart – where the enemy takes it away.
The shallow heart – where the seed dies and we fall away.
The distracted heart – where we don’t mature, and our fruitfulness is destroyed.
The open heart – abundantly fruitful life.
In John 10:10 Jesus describes it this way, “the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy (these are the opposite of fruitfulness); I have come so that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.” So, we are to have abundantly fruitful lives.
But what does abundance actually look like? Today’s message will help us understand what abundance looks like.
When I was 11, I moved from Northern California in the bay area to southern California with my mother. Near our house, all along the hills overlooking the river valley, on land that hadn’t yet been developed into homes, were groves of trees in nice, neat rows. And what type of trees do you think they were? They were citrus. Orange? I thought so too, until the fruit ripened into a bright lemon yellow. They were lemon trees, and I was disappointed. Who doesn’t like a freshly picked, tree ripened orange? But there’s only so much lemonade you can drink.
The moral of my story? Don’t judge a tree by its leaves.
Jesus said it this way:
“For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from brambles. 45 The good person out of the good treasury of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasury produces evil, for his mouth speaks from what fills his heart” (Luke 6:43-45, NET).
So, we are known by our fruit, and that fruit comes from what fills the heart, and Jesus came that it might be abundant.
Abundance vs. Fruitfulness
Why do I keep using the word abundance when the bible uses the word fruit? 2,000 years ago, or even 200 years ago, fruitfulness and abundance were more closely associated than they are today. Today, the idea of “fruitfulness” has become more distilled down into a spiritual metaphor and, I feel, it loses some of its impact that way. Abundance however, still has very “worldly” connotations associated with it.
I’m using fruitfulness and abundance interchangeably to make the point that God’s view of abundance is very different from ours.
One Spirit, One Fruit
So, what does this fruitful abundance that Jesus came to bring look like?
God has planted his word in our hearts. What is the result? Paul tells us in Galatians 5.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23).
The Greek word translated fruit here is singular; these are not the fruits of the spirit. One spirit, one fruit.
The Works of The Flesh
Immediately preceding the fruit of the spirit, Paul lists the “works of the flesh.”
“Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, depravity, 20 idolatry, sorcery, hostilities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish rivalries, dissensions, factions, 21 envying, murder, drunkenness, carousing, and similar things” (Galatians 5:19-21a).
Works here is plural. He’s contrasting the singular fruit of the spirit with the multitude of things we do, out of our own desires and through our own power. But this fruit is the result of what the spirit of God does inside us; they are not things we do.
One Fruit, Many Characteristics
In studying for this message, one of the study notes in the new English translation suggested that adding a simple colon after “love” reveals another way to understand Galatians 5:22-23: “Love: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” In this perspective, the other eight fruits define love.
Consider what it means if the other eight characteristic describe love.
Let’s consider the orange as an example. The fruit of the orange tree is an orange: round, citrus, thick peal, sweet, orange in color.
This is important, because:
An apple is round, but it’s not an orange.
A watermelon has a thick peal, but it isn’t an orange.
A lemon is citrus, but it comes from a different tree.
If a fruit doesn’t have all the characteristics of an orange, it didn’t come from an orange tree.
Fruit of a Different Spirit?
So too, if we don’t exhibit all these traits that Paul is listing, then it’s quite possibly the fruit of a false spirit.
A few years after writing to the Galatian church, Paul wrote another letter to the church in Corinth and told them:
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but I do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away everything I own, and if I give over my body in order to boast, but do not have love, I receive no benefit” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).
Paul is saying that no matter what skills or “gifts” we possess, and regardless of what great things we do, or act of service we perform, if we don’t have love, we are nothing. We can do all the right things, but without love, it’s all fruit from a different spirit, not the spirit of God.
So, we’re going to look at this list like “adjectives,” describing what the fruit of the spirit looks like, not things we do.
Love – What Does True, Godly Love Look Like?
Love is characterized by joy: a revelatory love revealed by God’s love for us and brings with it a lightness of spirit. It comes with an eagerness to share the love that is the source of such joy.
Love is characterized by peace: a reconciling love in the midst of conflict and not contributing to strife. A love that brings together and does not drive apart.
Love is characterized by patience: sometimes called “long-suffering,” it’s a willingness to love the “unlovely.” People are only “unlovely” while no one is willing to love them. This is a love that “bares all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7).
Love is characterized by kindness: this is a love that seeks others’ good, and does not provoke. It should always be demonstrated when “sharing the truth in love.” This is love that is correcting, not accusatory.
Love is characterized by goodness: a generous love, free of expectation or guile. It’s a love that’s freely shared without anticipating any love in return.
Love is characterized by faithfulness: a love that is reliable and can be depended upon to do what’s right. It’s a love that sticks it out when things get hard. This is a sacrificial love that sets aside its own desires for the sake of another.
Love is characterized by gentleness: a love that expresses humility, holding others before self. It’s an edifying love that seeks to build people up.
Love is characterized by self-control: this is a love that’s not manipulative or self-gratifying. It’s a genuine love, that’s not resentful of “having to love.”
Nurturing Your Spirit
In part 1 of this series, we learned that God cultivates our hearts. So now, how do we nurture our spirits and live an abundant life? In community.
“I give you a new commandment—to love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples—if you have love for one another” (John 13:34).
We can’t love one another, if we aren’t with one another. “But people are hard.” That’s why it’s the fruit of the spirit, and not the fruit of us.
What does Jesus say? “Just as I have loved you.” How did Jesus love us? Do you think it was “hard?”
How “hard” do you think it was for Jesus to die for you? But he did it because he loved you that much.
I can guarantee, unless you’re 2,000 years old, it was the abundance of the fruit of the spirit in someone else’s life that introduced you to Jesus. And it’s the fruit of the spirit in our lives that will introduce others to Jesus.
The fruit isn’t for the tree, but for a world that is dying of hunger. Abundance isn’t about what we get; it’s about what we give. We can’t live an abundant life if there’s nowhere for the abundance to go; if there’s no one around to receive it.
Abundance comes through us; not to us.
“Love is patient, love is kind, it is not envious. Love does not brag, it is not puffed up. 5 It is not rude, it is not self-serving, it is not easily angered or resentful. 6 It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But if there are prophecies, they will be set aside; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be set aside. 9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, 10 but when what is perfect comes, the partial will be set aside. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:4-13).
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