What if there isn’t any fruit?

Watch the complete sermon here: https://www.bridges.church/messages/the-fruit-of-gods-spirit-galatians-5-16-25/

Hey, everyone, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons and messages. This last week we began a series on the fruit of God’s spirit, developing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self control in our lives. How God does that, how this fruit grows. So, question comes in this week a concern. What if we notice this fruit isn’t really growing in our lives?

What if we look back last year, it seemed like we were more loving last year than we are this year. And the year before that, we had more joy than we do now. We used to have more patience, more self control than we do in this season. And there’s a couple of responses to this question. One, of course, we want to see these things grow.

We all want to grow in the fruit of God’s spirit. And God promises that he’ll complete the work that he began in us. We speak about this a lot, Philippians one six. So we can expect over time that we will develop more of God’s spirit in our lives. It’s one of the things that gives us confidence in our salvation.

However, we also know, you know, John 15, Jesus prunes us from time to time. And so just because we’re not growing right now doesn’t mean that we won’t be growing in the future. Just because we’re not growing right now doesn’t mean we need to freak out and worry if we’re really saved or something like that. We could be having a season of pruning right now where he’s cutting something back in order to have more growth in the future. But we shouldn’t let ourselves completely off the hook and say, oh, well, maybe God will do something more in the future.

I don’t need to think about it whatsoever, because in our fruit of the spirit passage, Paul gives a warning. He says what the acts of the sinful nature are. And then he says, I warned you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. He gives a warning. And so if we’re looking back, you know, how we were last year to how we are now, and it seems like, you know, we have a lot more acts of the sinful nature in our life now than we did before, and we have a lot less fruit of God’s spirit in our life.

Red flags should go up. We should be concerned. We should seek God, ask that he would grant us repentance and lead us and his way everlasting, right? That we would turn from what’s happening in our lives. We don’t want to throw our hands up and say, oh, well, we want to use this as an opportunity to realign ourselves with him.

That warning is there as a real warning to keep us from real danger and to point us back to God, as an encouragement, I would say even if we’re asking this question, it means there’s some percentage of us that really cares, that really wants to step away from sin, that really wants to step into the fruit of God’s spirit. And so if you’re really concerned about your life and if it is aligned enough with God, then I would say you’re okay. And God has already been working in you to grant you repentance and bring you to him.

It’s the people who don’t care at all who are, who, you know, acts of the sinful nature who are increasing in their life like crazy. And they’re like, oh, well, I guess God’s got me.

Okay, if that’s you, then that warning is definitely for you. Paul would say, I warn you, as I did before, that if you’re, if you’re living like this, you will not inherit the kingdom of God. And he’s serious about that. And so we should be, too, while also not losing our confidence. So thanks for the question.

We’ll see you next time.