Smorgasbord Tuesday: Fruit of the Spirit Goodness

Pulasan by the bunch by goosmurf

So how was patience exhibited in you this past week? I was satisfied with my week and found myself intentionally looking to the Holy Spirit when I needed patience. I often thanked Him when I got it. My sister Wendy, checked in on me too during the week and asked me how I was doing in the patience category. She mentioned that the topic of patience had been brought up in her home already 2-3 times early in the week. I love how the Holy Spirit will run through an open door to help bring light to a topic. If you have a minute let me know how patience operated in your life last week.

This week's topic is goodness. I realized as I was getting ready for the post this week that I don't recall ever hearing a sermon on this subject. In addition, I've never really contemplated what goodness actually means or tried specifically to ask the Holy Spirit for more of it in my life. Love, patience, joy ~ those are all things I've thought and heard a lot about. So I'm excited to spotlight this fruit this week. What I have to share in this post comes from what I've already started learning with the Holy Spirit.

I started out by typing "goodness" in the keyword search at Biblegateway.com and was able to see all the times it was used in the Bible. When the word shows up in the OT it is only used in reference to God not man. Then I was reminded of what Jesus said to the rich young ruler, "Why do you call me good? No one is good - except God alone (Mark 10:18)." After contemplating these two thoughts, I was then very humbled that the Holy Spirit offers us the opportunity to have goodness in our life. What I am continually astounded by as we are studying the fruits of the Spirit, is that the fruits are pieces of God, who He is as a person (comes through relationship not religion:). As Jesus said, only God is good, yet because of Jesus we are offered the gift to have goodness in our life. We not only benefit personally by having goodness in our life, but we also benefit others by offering them the goodness of God through our lives (check out How Do You Taste? for more on this topic).

My prayer for this week is rooted in Psalm 139:23-24:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me

and lead me in the way everlasting.

Goodness in our lives will only exist because of God and because He offers Himself to us. We need to submit our hearts to God on a daily basis. We learn from Galatians 5 that the fruit of the Spirit is our way to experience freedom in Christ. We have a daily battle occurring between our flesh man and our Spirit man. Just like exercise, it is not enough to know what to do. You can fill your brain with knowledge but at some point if you want to see results you need to apply what you have learned to your life. If you don't apply it you won't see the results. The same is true of our walk with God, it is not enough to know about the fruits, we need to put them into action when we come across a situation where the fruits need to be applied:

Romans 2:13

For it is not those who hear the law

who are righteous in God's sight,

but it is those who obey the law

who will be declared righteous.

So I encourage you to look to God this week to learn more about what His goodness in your life means and how it will look. Remember that:

Ephesians 2:10 says,

For we are God's workmanship,

created in Christ Jesus to do good works,

which God prepared in advance for us to do.

You are God's workmanship, He loves you and has offered all of His goodness to you. He has good works for you to do this week. Keep your eyes open and see how you can bless others on behalf of your Father.