The Transformer

Morning, you guys. Thanks for being here. If you're new and I haven't met you, my name's Clint. I'm the pastor here at Midtown. I'm really glad you're joining. My friends, we live in an insta-culture, and you just have to do one thing to realize this is true. Sit near a vending machine. Yeah, true story. During the semesters, I teach at GCU. My office is adjacent to the lobby of our building, and there are two vending machines there. And so oftentimes, I'm working in my office, peaceably studying, reading, just like a space of zen in many ways in my office. And then all of a sudden, I hear from the lobby a giant,

I'm like, what is going on? I step outside, and without fail, there's often someone kicking or punching or shaking the vending machine because their Doritos got stuck on the way down. They were so bent on getting this instant gratification for the craving of saltiness and maybe some dust on their fingers from Doritos that they couldn't handle waiting a couple more seconds. They couldn't handle that it didn't come to them on the terms they wanted. And this is so common, this sort of treatment of vending machines. They put labels on vending machines. I don't know if you guys have noticed this. Have you seen these labels before? This is on every vending machine that you go to. You can't see it from where you're at. Tipping or rocking may cause serious injury or death. That warning label is on there, and people are like, no, but I'm still going to go ahead and try. I'm still going to do what I want to do. And this is the thing about warning labels. They only exist because this has actually happened. Warning labels are there because this has actually happened to people. I went and did research. There is a Wikipedia page called Death by Vending Machine. This is a real thing. Which, other than being a great name for, like, an indie band, is also a fascinating corner of the Internet. Death by Vending Machine. Some stats I found. 13 people die each year due to falling vending machines. That is the same number of people who die each year from shark bites. I'll let you decide what that tells you about sharks or vending machines. That's just a fascinating statistic. The majority of vending machine deaths since the 1970s have been men, which just makes a lot of sense to me, I think. We are such an insta-cultural. So conditioned to instant gratification, getting what we want, when we want, how we want it, that we become people who will angrily demand instant Doritos at the risk of our literal lives. I see it every week at GCU. But this goes well beyond our snack cravings, friends. It's not just about chips. Every part of our culture is built to produce instant gratification in us. We have delivery services that get us the exact thing we want on our doorstep at the click of a button within 24 hours. And if it's not there, we get mad. Our social media and streaming sites are fine-tuned by computers to give us the exact dopamine hit we want, precisely when we want it, and to give us non-stop content that would take multiple lifetimes to consume so that we never have to be bored or wait. We can listen to any song in the world in any language at the press of a button. I remember the days of that ancient form of technology called CDs. Do you guys remember those? CDs, where you actually had like a little plastic disc and you had to buy 14 songs you didn't care about just so you could listen to all of them. All Star by Smash Mouth, right?

You actually had to make sacrifices in your life. Not anymore. Just Spotify that sucker and you get your game on and go play, right? Come on. Smash Mouth fans in the room. We live in an Insta culture, and over the last few decades especially, that expectation of instant gratification has leaked into our spiritual lives. We have become people who are constantly looking for shortcuts to maturity and wholeness. Just give me one inspiring verse of the day. Give me one. Give me one piece of self-help advice that can solve my problems. Give me one mindfulness app that I can listen to on 1.5 speed in my car. Give me one emotionally stirring song or sermon or breathing practice. Our Insta culture has produced shortcut spirituality. I mean, think about how people often discuss and evaluate church after they leave in our culture. There's usually two questions people ask. Did I like the sermon? Did I like the music? Those are the two questions people typically ask. Translation. Did the consumerist. And then this is a holistic production on a Sunday morning giving me the short-term fix that I was looking for. To give me the feeling that I was looking for. Notice how we don't often ask questions like, Is this a community that can mature me and change me into a person more like Jesus? In the long term. Or questions like is this a community that's holistically committed to loving God and loving their neighbors in every part of their lives? The value of church for most people is located in its ability to provide a convenient, short-term, spiritual high because that's how we've been trained in every part of our culture. There's a great minister and scholar named Robert Mulholland, who put it this way. He said, we have generally come to expect immediate returns on our investments of time and resources. If we have a need, we have only to find the right place, product, or procedure, and our needs will be met. It's not surprising, then, that we become impatient with any process of development that requires of us more than a limited involvement of time and energy. Often, our spiritual quest becomes the search for the right technique, the proper method, the perfect program that can immediately deliver the desired results of maturity and wholeness. If we can only find the right trick, or book, or guru, or retreat, instantly we will be transformed into the new person at a new level of spirituality and wholeness. But here's the problem, friends. It's not working. Instead of speeding up our healthy maturity and wholeness, our Insta-culture is stunting it. Study after study shows that in our Insta-culture, we are more distracted and more bored. And more captive to anxiety and hopelessness and loneliness than we've ever been. And that's all because real, deep, lasting change and transformation in our lives is an instant. Real growth doesn't happen in a moment. And it never has. I mean, parents in the room, imagine tonight you lay your child down to bed in a crib, and you wake up tomorrow morning, and they are fully dressed, business casual adult with a full financial portfolio. Not a chance, right? That just doesn't happen. Many parents in the room are like, that's not possible. That's not possible. That's not possible. That's not possible. That sounds great. How do I get that, right? Imagine going to the gym once and walking out just jacked. Most of us want the gym to be that way. That's not how the gym works. It's not how any form of growth works. The experience of true, lasting maturity and wholeness is an ongoing process of formation. It's one in which we're continuously being formed into a certain type of person in the long term. And here's the truth. No matter who you are, no matter where you spend your time, you are always being formed by someone or something. There's no neutral part of life. Every moment is a formation moment. And so the stories you believe about God or yourself or others, the habits you build into your life, the relationships you cultivate, the environments in which you spend time, the thoughts you embrace, all of those things are forming you into a certain type of being, little by little. We are either becoming people who look and sound and act more like Jesus and live as agents of his life and flourishing in the world, or we're becoming people who live in and out of brokenness and destruction. And so the question for us is really, really simple. How do we become formed into the first type of person, the Jesus person, and not the second type? How do we experience lasting deep transformation into Christ-like wholeness and maturity? And that's actually not a new question. It's one that much of Jesus' ministry was focused on. His life, death, and resurrection is meant to answer that question for us. See, so often we focus on how Jesus has saved us from things, how he came to seek and save the lost from brokenness or addiction or selfishness or pride. And that's true and good. Yes and amen. Thank Jesus for saving us from things. But we often neglect to talk about how Jesus has saved us to things. That is, to become certain types of people in the world, to become transformed people. And much of his words, when you reflect on the Gospels, speak that. He talks about how he came to bring abundant life, overflowing life, not just save us from stuff. He spoke about how his presence in our lives would shape us into people. Like we read in John 12, we read in John 12, we read in John 12, we read in John 15, who would experience his joy, deep abundant joy. He talked about living water, this vitality that would well up in us and extend from us to the world. That's transformed life he came to bring us. His Sermon on the Mount is giving us a picture of what that sort of life looks like. And it's why in that last meal with his disciples, with his parting words, he shared how we'd experience that transformation, how it would come into our lives. He said it would come through God's personal, empowering presence, the Holy Spirit. In and amidst and around and through us. That's how wholeness comes in to our life. We're continuing in this teaching series here at Midtown called God Let Loose. Each week we've been looking at a different passage that speaks about the person of the Holy Spirit and the different characteristics of that spirit that's at work in our lives. And today, we get to talk about the Holy Spirit as transformer, the one who is transforming us from the inside out, making us into mature and whole people, people that our vapid insta-culture will never produce. And there's maybe no clearer picture of what this transformation looks like than the words of Paul in Galatians 5. So if you have a Bible, you can open it up with me to the book of Galatians. It's near the back of your Bible. Galatians 5, 16 is where we're going to start. This passage reveals two things to us, two aspects of the transforming work of the Spirit in our lives. It shows us the nature of transformation and the way to transformation. The nature of it and the way to it. So friends, Galatians 5, starting in verse 16, is where we're going to be. If you don't have a Bible, that's okay. The words are going to be behind me on the screen, so you can follow along there. Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh. For these are opposed to each other to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you're led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now, the works of the flesh are obvious. Fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissension, and so on. But the works of the flesh are obvious. Did you wander the world without placing a price on your character? Not

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Logists jeśli Jew there is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. I think it's noteworthy in this passage when describing what this transformed life of wholeness looks like, like Paul uses a metaphor. He doesn't just say the traits of the Spirit or the characteristics of the Spirit. Did you catch that? He says it's the fruit of the Spirit. And we've gotten used to that in our Christian subculture, like that language. We put it up on our Hobby Lobby signs and hang it in our homes or make cheesy t-shirts with the fruit of the Spirit on it. And I think we've actually missed the significance of the metaphor that Paul is using here. He could have said characteristics or traits or virtues. He didn't. Why does he say fruit? Why does he use that metaphor? Because he wants us to see something important about the nature of the Spirit's transformation. He wants us to see that it's agricultural in nature. And that's actually something that the scriptures have talked about all through their pages. Psalm 1, the book of Psalms begins this way. It says that those who embrace the way of God in their life, they're like trees planted by streams of water which yield their fruit in season. Their leaves do not wither. Something about life with God, something about the transformation that God brings into our life is agricultural in nature. Jesus picks up. He picks up on it. John 15, he says he's the vine that in entrusting ourselves to him we become branches who bear fruit. And later on that fruit is described using some of the language here. Joy, love being extended to the world. First Peter puts it plainly. He says you were born by the imperishable seed of the word of God. The seed. Over and over again, agricultural metaphors are used to describe what God's transformation of us looks like. And I think we need to tap into what that metaphor is telling us about the nature of this transformation. There's a few different things. I think it's teaching us. The first thing I think it's teaching us is that the transformation of the spirit is gradual, not all at once. Anybody in this room tried to garden before or trying to garden right now? Yeah, we got a few. So you guys understand. Does fruit come quickly? No, not a chance. No, it takes a long time. Years and years and years. And even when it does come, it's slow. There's a neighbor friend of mine not long ago who was trying to grow tomatoes in their backyard. We walk our dogs together many mornings. And so he's telling me about all this work he's doing. He's pouring all this energy into the soil. He's pouring water on it every day. And it takes months. But after three months of real, real intensive work here, he comes to me and says, Clint, I have a tomato. Ah, one. One tomato after months of work. He's like, would you share this tomato with me? I'm like, this is a sacred moment. This is really, really important to you. And so I'm like, yes, I'd love to share your tomato. And guys, it was the most miserable looking tomato I've ever seen. It was like this big, but I split it in half and it was delicious. It was good. And that's how fruit works. It's gradual.

Transformation into wholeness. Becoming people who look and sound and act like Jesus is like growing tomatoes. It's gradual. It's ongoing. It takes time. I've never met anyone who came to me and said, Clint, last night I prayed for patience and today, oh, I'm like Jesus the second. No red lights bothered me. That person in front of me who took 12 minutes to order their coffee, I just love them so much. And that person slowing down the project at work, I had so much grace. That's not how patience works. It takes time. It's gradual. And that's hard for us to hear. But the reason that's true is because the fruit of the Spirit, all of this stuff that we're seeking to cultivate in our lives, the Spirit wants to grow in us. It can only develop in the midst of the consistent messiness of the real world. For instance, how can you know or test if you're becoming more patient? By being around situations and people who would make you impatient and recognizing where you're at. There's no other way to know if you've been patient. You can only know if you're growing in kindness by being around people who make you want to be unkind to them. The only way this fruit can develop is in the crucible of daily life. James Cofield and Richard Plass put it this way in their book. They said, the truth about significant soul transformation is this. Change is possible, but it's harder than we want and it takes longer than we expect.

And I think while Paul did not write these words specifically to us as Americans in the 21st century, his metaphor, I think, couldn't be more convicting to us today. Because we live in an industrial, culture, not an agricultural one. We don't grow things slowly anymore. The tomato neighbor is a rarity in our culture. We make things happen in America. We impose our will upon the world to make things happen. And it's even in our language. You thought about this? We don't grow a baby. What do we do? We make a baby. We don't grow friends. We make friends. We don't grow space in our lives. We make time. Right? It's all industrial. It's the language we use. We are people who want to control and impose our will on the world to make things happen. And the result is that from the earliest part of our lives, we are trained to control everything. Wholeness. We are trained to bring into our lives through our own doing and effort and control. As children, we want to play our way and we want to play with the things we want to play with. And if anybody stops us, we lose our minds. As teenagers, we anxiously resist our parents' control. We try to wrestle it. And as adults, we just are better at hiding the same sorts of things. We try to control our lives in such a way that it will make us safe or comfortable or fulfill us. If you want to see how embedded control is in your life, just pay attention to your response when someone interrupts your plan for the day. When someone disrupts your plan for the day. How do you respond? What's that do in you? We've been conditioned to make things happen. Industrial growth. And so this agricultural thing is something we need to hear desperately, friends. A life of wholeness and a life of fullness and a life of transformation. It's gradual. It's It's ongoing formation. And this is an important point to bring up too. And I think this is the second part of this food analogy we need to see. It starts with being, not doing. It starts with being, not doing. When a plant grows, does it grow by its own strenuous effort? Does a plant squeeze its little plant buns together and then boop, like pop out a fruit? That's not how plants work. Right? Plants grow and fruit grows not because of their own doing but by being. They don't control the process. They grow by existing in conditions that can produce life. So they're planted in an area with the right amount of sunlight or the right amount of moisture or the right type of soil conditions and then growth happens. It's a gift from a source outside of them and all the plant does is exist in the right conditions. And that being versus doing tension that exists in our world and that we see here that Paul is kind of bringing out, it actually was in his context at the time he wrote this. This letter was written back in the day when people used to fight over religious and social differences. Back in the day that happened. And it's super weird and primitive stuff but at this point there were two groups in the early church in an area called Galatia and these two groups were fighting over things about what this new faith in Jesus would look like. And one of the groups has historically been referred to as the Judaizers. They were Jewish first century Christians. And those people, it makes sense that they were Jewish. Jesus was Jewish. Jesus said he was the Messiah from the Jewish scriptures. And Jesus claimed that this message would expand beyond the confines of just the Jewish people. That this message was for all people in all places. And so immediately when Christians started to spread this news to the world it went beyond the nation of Israel. It went to places that were completely unexpected to others who had been outsided, who had been othered in some way. And there were a group of Jewish Christians who were like, hold on, hold on, hold on. That seems a little reckless. Are we sure we're just throwing this out to anybody? Are we sure anybody can come into this? Because it seems like God really cares about the law. It seems like God really cares about certain practices in our lives. And so this group started to develop and say, you know what? In these early churches you still have to hold on to certain things. You still have to do certain religious practices if you want to follow Jesus. You still have to do stuff. So you have to keep this festival a holy day. You have to eat a certain way. You have to get circumcised. You can't cut that part out. And then, yeah, nice. Jordan's paying attention. The Judaizers, this group of people, they went around churches telling Christians that they needed to do religious stuff in order to have a life of fullness and wholeness in Jesus. That was the Judaizer group. And then there was another group that rose up that didn't love what the Judaizers were doing. And that group said, you know what? No, Jesus came to tear down all that religiosity and that means we can just kind of do whatever we want. We can kind of live however we want. Follow your heart because Jesus has forgiven you and God loves you. Do whatever it is you want. And at first that sounds more freeing but do you see they're doing the same thing? They're saying that wholeness and fullness can come into your life if you do whatever you want. One group says do the right religious thing and wholeness will come to you. One group says do what your heart says and wholeness will come to you. And Paul looks at both of them and does the face palm emoji. He's like, this is, guys, you've missed it. You could summarize most of Paul's letters with those words. Guys, you've missed it. Because both groups assume that doing will lead to a certain way of being. Doing certain religious things, doing whatever we want will lead us to a certain way of being. And Paul says that's not how the gospel works. That's not what Jesus came for. The whole point of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is that in order to receive it we don't do anything because Jesus has done all the doing. Instead, in Christ we are gifted an entirely new identity. We are gifted an identity of belovedness. People forgiven. Children of God made to love God and love others. And so transformation comes into our lives not when we grasp at it by our own control but when we receive the gift of that new identity in Christ and allow it to shape our being.

That's what Christians mean by grace. It's the gift of God that frees us from needing to find identity or wholeness in any of our doing. And that's radical in our world. There's never been another religious framework that's like this. Every other religious framework in the world says you do the right religious things. Meditate a certain way, behave a certain way, and God will approve you. In our culture, our American culture says you just gotta do what you want and then you'll find life. And the gospel says you start by being. That's what fruit, that's where fruit comes from. Being in the right soil, being in the right space and allowing that space to shape you. And that doesn't mean we have nothing to do, friends. That doesn't mean that we only be and sit on our hands. We do have a role to play but our role is not to make change happen. Our role is to cultivate the spaces in which the Spirit can start to change us. That's our role. Our role is to make sure the soil is good. Our role is to make sure that we're planted in the right place. Our role is to make sure that we have a right view of the sun. That's our role in this transformation. And when we do that we find that the Holy Spirit does something in us. Our being in the right place makes us people who now do differently.

There's a guy named M. Robert Mulholland that guy I mentioned earlier who puts it this way. He said, our spiritual journey is not our setting out by gathering information and applying it correctly to find God as an object out there to be grasped and controlled by us. It is a journey of learning to yield ourselves to God. And discovering where God will take us. being before doing. And when we do that, friends, what we learn is a third thing about this sort of growth. It's invisible, not immediately obvious. It's invisible, not immediately obvious. The first fall after Emily and I bought our home back in 2018, we were putting new winter grass in our front and back yards. And this was the first time I had ever done this. And any of you that know me know that I want to just win at everything. So I said, we're going to have the best freaking grass on the block. I'm going to make this grass grow. You can hear the industrial American Enneagram 3 part of me just like leaking out in every way. We're going to make this grass grow. And so I mowed the lawn down real low. I made sure that all the old grass was pulled out where it needed to be so that we had space for the new grass. We put in new seed. And then every morning I would wake up. I'd go straight to grab my glass of water, not my glass of coffee because I'm not part of the culturally addicted group of people who drink coffee. Yeah. I'm just kidding. Coffee's fine. I'm married. Somebody who loves coffee. Sorry, millennials and Gen Zers. I know that strikes deep in many ways. I grab my glass of water and I go and stand at the window and I stare at my yard. I sip my water. I look like a crazy person. When I wake up, my hair is crazy. I don't ordinarily wear a shirt. I'm half naked just like staring at my yard. And nothing's happening. And then some birds come in and try to take the seed. And so I crazily run outside. Get out of here. Just go back to staring. Make that stuff grow.

Guys, I never saw it grow. Never saw it once. Never on any morning did I see grass grow. And at one point I'm like, Em, this ain't working. It's clear. Look, it's not working. And she's like, just keep watering it. So we do. I stopped looking. Eventually I gave up because I looked like a crazy person. And two and a half weeks later there was grass to mow. Two and a half weeks later a ton of grass that I needed to mow down. I never saw it grow once but after two and a half weeks there it was. It was invisible. Growth, like this, friends, is not something you're going to be able to look at every morning and say, man, ah, the patience that I feel, the love that I feel. That's not how growth works. In our spiritual lives we can't see or feel exactly when it happens but over time it does. Over time you can look back and say, man, two years ago I would not have been able to respond the way that I did. Right now there's something in me that's enabled me to respond that way. Something in me that enabled me to do that without thinking. That happens over time.

Francois Fenelon, a great theologian in the mid-centuries, he said, God hides his work in the spiritual order as in the natural order under an unnoticeable sequence of events. You don't always notice it. It's not immediately obvious but it's happening there. So a couple different things that means for us. One, it means we should expect growth in our lives to come in seasons like fruit comes in seasons. Fruit trees are not perpetually produced there are winter seasons. And just because it's winter doesn't mean nothing's happening. We can't see what's happening but winter is an essential thing for spring. For spring to happen you need winter. You need things to die. You need cycles. That's often how our spiritual lives look. So if it feels like nothing is happening, if it feels like it's winter in your lives and everyone else is growing and you're stuck, it might actually be there that God is most at work you just don't see it right now. In a couple years you might see it. So we need to know there's seasons of growth. The second thing, it means we need to trust the process. So often in our spiritual lives we just give up too quickly. We get really hyped about some practice, right? A prayer practice we really love or showing up to church or reading our scripture, doing some spiritual practice and then after three weeks we're like, does this make a difference at all? And then we give up. We are stop and start sort of people because, well, it's invisible and we're not seeing it right away. But that fundamentally misunderstands growth. It's never something you can see in the immediate. It's only something you can look back on after long stretches and say, oh, look at who I'm becoming. Look at who God is making me into. So Christian transformation, it's gradual. It's not something we receive by doing. It's something we receive by being. It's often invisible. We also see in this passage, though, that it's integrated. There's a fascinating detail to Paul's language when he says the fruit of the spirit. He says fruit singular, but then he lists a bunch of different things, plural. It's not fruits of the spirit. It's fruit. English teachers in the room are like, Paul, terrible writer, right? Like, what's he doing? Come on, man. No, this is intentional. Fruit of the spirit. He's saying all of these things, when this fruit shows up in our lives, it will grow together. That you don't get love without patience. If you do, that's false love. God's work is not something that cultivates impatient love or joyless self-control or peace that's unkind. Paul doesn't give us this list so we can look at it and say, well, I got three of those pretty nailed down. That's not the point. The point is that this whole picture is who we are becoming. Who God is making us into. It is all of it integrated together, not just one. And if we see one of these popping up and we say, man, I'm just incredibly patient, but we don't see the rest of them, it's probably a counterfeit version of that thing. Tim Keller uses a good example to illustrate this. He said growing up, he, like many other boys, was told not to cry because girls cry. you don't want to be like a girl. And so he learned self-control. Was that healthy self-control? Was that self-control that was kind or loving? No. It was ugly. And so he was incredibly self-controlled. We've got a whole culture of men who are apparently very self-controlled, but who don't know how to feel, who don't know how to love, who don't know how to compassionately enter in with kindness to their neighbor's life. That's a problem. The fruit of the Spirit is not one of these. It's all of them integrated, friends. And so if we want to test if God is really at work in our lives, we should look for the ways that these are growing up together. It doesn't mean you're going to have them all perfectly right away, but we should look for the ways that, oh, is my patience loving? Is my self-control full of joy? That's how we know it's God at work. It's integrated. And then finally, friends, when we see all of this come together, the other promise here in this passage is that this sort of growth is guaranteed, not just potential. Notice, what's the seed for this fruit in the passage? What's the seed? What's the thing that gets planted to produce the fruit? The Spirit. The Spirit is the seed. That Spirit is the same Spirit that empowered Jesus to do and say everything He did and say. It was the same Spirit that could not be stopped even by death in the grave. It was the same Spirit that resurrects the literal dead. And that Spirit, Jesus is saying, is at work in you. That Spirit that cannot be stopped by anything is at work in you. This is a guaranteed growth. When you cultivate the space for the Spirit in your life, this is the sort of person you will become. Loving, joyful, patient, kind, good, generous, self-control.

There's a minister named G. Campbell Morgan who talks about this. He tells a story of walking in Italy behind this church that had this centuries-old graveyard. He was perusing around and he found this massive marble slab, like multiple thousands of pounds, this massive marble gravesite. But he also saw that an acorn had fallen into that gravesite about 100 years earlier, he estimated. He knew how acorn trees would grow. And over time, that acorn grew and grew and grew in the right conditions to the point where it broke this marble slab. He was looking at this slab and it was shattered in half. Now, if you had just taken an acorn and taken a marble slab and put those together, what would you think would win? The marble slab would win, right? Nope. Acorn every time. Acorn every time in the right conditions will shatter death, will shatter all of us. All of the things that decay us will shatter all of the bad habits, will shatter all of the list of things that Paul mentions in 19 through 21. This anxious grasping at a life that never fulfills us goes away when we allow this spirit to plant itself in us. When we cultivate the space for the spirit of God to work in us, this is a guaranteed growth. You become this sort of person. And ask anyone in this room, friends, who's done this for decades, they will tell you. It's taken a little while. But they will look back and say, man, 30 years ago, I never could have seen this sort of growth in my life. I never could have seen this happen. I never would have had the strength to do this. Get to know folks who are down the road a bit. Because I know for me, it can seem like nothing's happening, right? It can seem like there's no way that I could overcome this part of my life, this impatience, this anger, this competitiveness, whatever it is. Pay attention to someone who's done it for a long time. And they will tell you, they will show you. Look at their life. You will see this growth. It's guaranteed when you create the space for the spirit. So those are the five. Those are the five things we see about the fruit here, what it does in us. It is gradual. It's about being, not doing. It's invisible. It's integrated. And it's guaranteed. As Paul puts it in Philippians 1, I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

And the product of that sort of fruit, the product of this work of the spirit in our lives, is someone who loves in a deeply sacrificial way. But someone who loves with exuberance and excitement and serenity, not with stoicism. It's the type of person who is committed to that kind of love, so much so that they will stick with people and situations even when it costs them dearly. Because they have a deep well of compassion in their heart. It'll be the type of person who lives out of the deep conviction that an eternal holiness permeates all things. And that they see in every person an eternally significant being who is worthy of love. It will be a type of person who even in sorrow retains a lasting contentment that can make their way through all of the hardship of life. Does that sound like the sort of person we want to be? Does that look like a picture that is compelling to us? I hope so. And it should make us think, how do we get it? A couple different things that Paul mentions right at the end here of how this actually starts to work itself out in our lives. First, we need to be people who receive the way and work of Jesus in our lives. He says, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. That is, he's saying, the fruit of the Spirit will come into our lives when we allow Christ's death and resurrection to have its work and way in us. That's what it means to become a Christian. To look upon Jesus, his death and resurrection, and to allow it to shape us from the inside out. We need his work to save us, to forgive us. And we also need his work to shape how we show up in the world. His dying and rising, we need to see happen in our own lives. We need to die to self-justifying. Die to self-indulging. Die to self-actualizing. Controlling our lives. And when we do, we will find new life springing forth in us. This is what Christians in the scriptures call repentance, which sounds like a fancy theological word. It just means to turn around. To stop with a way of being in the world that is not producing life. And to receive the life, the death and resurrection of Jesus in our own. We need to refuse chasing that relationship or chasing that career success or trying to control wholeness. And when we do, when we give that up, what we find is that something starts to work in us instead. When we receive the work of Jesus, there's a seed that gets planted. It's the Spirit. And that happens whenever you become a Christian. That starts whenever you become a Christian. A little acorn gets planted. And over time, it starts to do things. So that's the first thing. If we want to see this in our lives, we need to receive. We need to have the desires of the flesh crucified. We need to receive the love and grace of Jesus. But then he gives us one other thing. And this is the only command that Paul gives in this whole passage. The only thing he says to do. He says, let us also be guided. Let us also be guided by the Spirit. Some of your translations might say, let us walk in step with the Spirit. What he's saying is this. Because of what Jesus has done, and because the Spirit is at work in you, learn what it looks like to let God be God in your life. And not you. Build practices and habits that cultivate the soil. That means we need to become people who ask ourselves an important question as Christians who follow Jesus. What is the soil in which I'm planting myself right now? What's the soil? What are the conditions of my life? And do they allow for space for the Spirit to work? We don't force this. Do we allow space to be with God and for the Spirit to work in us? This is where spiritual disciplines have been helpful for me and helpful for Christians throughout the centuries. Spiritual disciplines are not religious activities that make you earn God's love. They are spaces in which we can receive God's love. They are an intentional cultivating of room for God to work. And so maybe that's what it looks like for you. Go through some spiritual disciplines. Things like prayer. Build prayer as a consistent daily pattern. Learn to listen to God well. Set aside time for solitude. Remove yourself from the busyness of the world. Allow yourself to get out of the insta-culture. Fast. This is a big one. Choose to remove a desire of your life that is distracting you from the desires that God has for the world and in your life. Let God reorient you by removing a desire and allowing His desires to shape you. Practice service. Give away your time to someone else. Time that you ordinarily would spend on yourself. It's a great way to reorient. Community. Doing this stuff. Worshiping together. Have space in your life to remember who God is, remember who you are, remember what He's called you to, and spend time with other people who can encourage you in that. All of those things are cultivating soil. And if we stick with that for decades, if we stick with this thing, the promise is wholeness. Transformation. The fruit of the Spirit. So friends, enough of our insta-culture, enough of our self-obsessed pursuits at comfort or convenience. Those things won't make us whole. Real fruit that bursts with flavor and sweetness in your soul and from your life. It's available to us simply by being. By cultivating soil in which the Spirit can work. It might be slow. It might be invisible. It might be invisible. It might be invisible. It might be invisible. It might be invisible. It might be stretch. But over time, it will make you into a transformed person, into a whole and free person. So cultivate the soil and let the Spirit do the rest. Amen? Let's pray, my friends.