In episode 192, “Fruit of the Spirit”, Brooke & Faren discuss the meaning of Galatians 5:22-23 in the Bible. Hear how to tap into what the Holy Spirit has given you to grow yourself and others. Learn how to pray about it, talk about with others, and live out how this scripture applies to everyday life. The Galatians mini series begins on episode 189 and goes through episode 193 of the Witty & Gritty podcast.
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Read About these Characteristics
If you want to hear Brooke sing the fruit of the spirit while doing the hand jive, make sure you scroll back up and press play. We all know that memorizing scripture is important, so if you like singing, dancing, and remembering things that way (or if you have wiggly kids), the technique discussed is for you! CLICK HERE to see all 12 of our featured memorization techniques.
If you’re playing along at home and started with episode 189, we hope you’ve read Galatians chapters 1-4. If not, no worries! Try to knock that out in the next few days for some context. As we walk through Galatians 5:22-23, let’s remember that if we’re in Christ, He’s sent His helper the Holy Spirit to dwell within us. This divine power gives us the ability to live out the fruits of the spirit in everyday life.
“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!”
Galatians 5:22-23
After living some decades, it’s easy to see that these fruits of the spirit do not come easy. In fact, some are just downright never going to happen without the help of the Holy Spirit. Thank you, Lord for helping us! The Holy Spirit dwells within us, guides us, and equips us along the way. It’s all there, we just need to tap into it.
Pray to Grow and Improve
Now that we know that God equips us with the fruit of the spirit, it’s our turn to act on it and put it into. This is where we can take the time to pray for growth and improvement in each of these areas. Take some time today and ask God to show you your strengths and weaknesses as far as fruits of the spirits go. Ask God to specifically equip you for every circumstance. An example could be if you know that you’ve got a crazy day ahead of you, pray for peace to pour out from within you. Let’s list out the fruits of the spirit again:
- Love
- Joy
- Peace
- Patience
- Kindness
- Goodness
- Faithfulness
- Gentleness
- Self Control
Real life reaction: Admit when you’re not being **insert fruit of the spirit** in that moment. An example could be if you snapped at your kid, you could apologize for not being as patient as you should have been.
Take a look at the list above once again. As you think on them, you can begin to see how they all intertwine and feed off one another. If we haven’t been kind to others during the day, we can struggle to love well that evening on our family. As exercise you and god could talk about would be ranking your fruits of the spirit in order from best to worst. Find pockets of life to take those baby steps of improvement. Involved God in this process.
Talk Through This Exercise
After you and God have talked, pray and work on those rankings. Then, let’s have some fun with your home group! Next time you’re all together, go around and call out the fruits of the spirit they excel in. We model this activity in episode 192, so scroll back up and tune into how this works in real time. Here are some tips for this:
- Be specific by giving examples
- Speak life into each other
- List synonyms along with the fruit
- Be intentional with your conversation
If you can’t gather together, you can call, text, or leave a note somewhere they’ll find it. You can say it in passing or dive deep into how much their fruit of the spirit mean to you. Again, we walk through this in the episode, so you can see how to do this with your crew too!
Tell, Model, and Finding Good Friends
Friendly reminder: If you are a Christian, the Holy Spirit is in you and active. Tap into your God-given potential with the fruit of the spirit. Trust us, God will help you with these, just ask and follow His promptings.
As we walk through the fruit of the spirit with our kids, we can do the same activity as above, or you can tweak as needed depending on your situation. Here are some first steps to teaching the fruit of the spirit to your kids:
- Define each of the fruits
- Give good/bad examples
- Ask them to tell you what they mean
- Brainstorm ways you can demonstrate them
BONUS: The more you talk about the fruits of the spirit with your kids, the more they will be able to identify people who are good for them. Think about finding friends, dating, looking for a spouse, etc… Your kids will always need to know how the fruits of the spirit are acting in others in order to determine if those are people they should spend intentional, significant time.
We hope you enjoyed episode 192, “Fruits of the Spirit”, with our read, pray, talk, tell insight. Now it’s up to you to work through the Bible chapter discussed, pray about this verse using the prompts given, have biblical community around this verse, and go point others to Christ with the tips we give. Remember, when you read, pray, talk, tell consistently, you’ll grow your faith in God more deeply. Tune in next week to hear another breakdown of a Bible verse!
Links From the Show
- 12 Methods of Memorizing Scripture
- Fruit of the Spirit 30 Day Bible Reading Plan
- Daily Audio Bible
- The Bible Project
- The Bible Recap
- Witty & Gritty Youtube
- Washi Tape
- Lisa’s episode
- Melissa’s Christmas Makeover
- I Am Rahab Seasons episode
- Jon Gordon’s Energy Bus
