Abounding Grace

Guest (Male): Pastor Ed describes the wonderful work of God, producing glorious fruit in our lives.

Pastor Ed Taylor: If you're going to think of your life, I want you to think of your life this way: not God as a factory manager, but God as a gardener. You take a trip to the botanical gardens, you're not going to be walking through and stop and go, "What was that, honey?" I don't know. You're walking by one of the beautiful trees or flowers and you hear it go, "Argh."

"What was that?" "Oh, it's this tree. The tree's working, working hard to produce fruit." No tree, you don't hear a tree do that. You don't hear a tree do anything. You just watch it grow. And then there's beautiful fruit because somebody's going through that place taking care of it, making sure everything is in order. The gardener, those folks that take care of things, they're doing all the work. God does the work.

Guest (Male): It's been observed that a good tree makes good fruit, and the branches draw their life from the vine, not vice versa. Keep that in mind as you join us for another edition of Abounding Grace. Maybe life as you know it is challenging right now. That's often the case in life. Sometimes it's fruitful, and other times it's a grind.

Well, today's lesson from Galatians Chapter 5 will help explain why and what can be done to assure greater fruitfulness. Picking up in Galatians Chapter 5, verse 22, here is Pastor Ed Taylor.

Pastor Ed Taylor: Open your Bibles, Galatians Chapter 5 is where we are as we finish the chapter today. Galatians Chapter 5, we're going to pick up in verse 22 when you get there. I've entitled our Bible study, "The Glorious Fruit of the Spirit." We learned the obvious and evident works of the flesh in our study last time. I mean, the works of the flesh are obvious. Nobody needs to explain them, although the Bible does do that.

We know the flesh when it arises in our lives. The problem that often comes with the flesh is that we know it's the flesh, but we just make excuses for it. We've always got a reason why. There always seems to be a good reason why someone responds in the flesh or lives in the flesh. But there really is no good reason. The works of the flesh are to be forsaken, repented of, and prayed through. Any time we choose to depend upon ourselves, we will produce rotten fruit. It's just the facts.

What rotten fruit can be described as in the Bible is the works of the flesh. Of our threefold enemies that we learned—the world, the flesh, and the devil—and they're all very formidable, for sure our biggest problem and our biggest enemy is our self-life, our flesh life. A lot of attention goes to the devil, and he's formidable for sure, but no match for Jesus. A lot of attention goes to our culture, and certainly, our culture has forsaken God around the world, and a lot of attention is given to the culture.

But the area that needs most attention in your life is you and your life walking in the spirit or in the flesh. You and I, we seem to be our greatest challenge because the self-life dissipates and destroys the Christ-life being expressed through us. When we walk in the spirit, the Bible promises we will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. That's sanctification. That's the fancy word for God's work of change in your life from the inside out.

Think about it here. Here you are, you have reoriented your whole day today to start in obedient worship of God with the family of God. This is a step of walking in the spirit in your life. Right now in these moments, and they could be brief because you go back and forth because it's a battle, but in these brief moments, you're not living in the flesh. You're seeking the Lord. You're desiring to move forward.

I know we go to church every week and we have church services. I know that. But it's so much bigger than going to church. You're walking in the spirit right now, right now in these moments. Even if you're going back and forth, "teach me Ed, feed me the word," and then the very next thought is, "what's my Chipotle order going to be?" and you've got this silver big blob swirling around of what lunch is. You're going physical food, spiritual food.

But in the times that you are spiritually seeking the Lord, you're walking in the spirit. It's so important not to undermine even the steps you're taking. Some of you have made a decision and you've pretty much kept it this year, you're just going to go to church regularly, you're just going to worship regularly. Look what God has done already. It's such a great decision to make. It's been a few months since I did that Bible study on resolutions and things, but look how far you've come.

Look how long you kept it and look what changes came and see that the Lord is good. Because day by day, step by step, we are walking forward. We are making progress. How do we do that as believers? In the spirit, by the means of the presence, work, and activity of the Holy Spirit of God in our lives, Christ in us, the power of the Holy Spirit upon us. When we choose to walk in any other way, we will be in the flesh life.

When we choose to walk any other way than the spirit, we will be in the flesh life. The cravings of natural humanity will overtake us when we choose not to walk in the spirit. I'll give you an example. I've been away for a while, and I remember an episode recently on my vacation where there was a situation where I was mildly inconvenienced. It was a minor inconvenience. It was probably going to add an hour and a half, two hours to my day. I had something planned and this person inconvenienced me and I responded.

I responded in the flesh. We all respond to difficult things from time to time in the flesh. Can I get an Amen for that, please? I want you to admit it out loud. We respond in the flesh. It's usually internal, we get a little frustrated and then we just get over it and we seek the Lord, and that's normal humanity. I got upset about this and I began to mumble and complain. But I mumbled and complained a little bit too loud and the lady heard me.

That lady's not my wife; she gets that all the time. But that lady, she heard me. Now she didn't know I was Pastor Ed and we didn't have a real connection, but I walked out of the room mumbling and complaining. She heard me and I blew my witness. Now, I wasn't witnessing to her or anything, but in my own heart I knew. The Holy Spirit convicted me in that moment. Then guess what happened the next day?

What happened the next day, I got violently ill and I lost the whole day. Actually, I lost 48 hours of my time because I got sick. I ate something and I got food poisoning; I was sick for two days. When I got sick, one of the first thoughts that came to my mind is God's judging me because I grumbled out of my mouth in front of this lady about what happened and I got upset and walked out and God's judging me. Of course, God wasn't judging me, but he was reminding me that time is very precious.

"And Ed, you're going to get upset in the flesh over two hours? Let me show you that I could take 48 hours from you. I can rearrange your whole life if I want to. You're going to be upset about that?" I looked for that person to apologize and I couldn't, so I just had to give it up to the Lord because I haven't seen her again. The cravings of humanity will overtake you. Just hear it from me. And you may not, and I look at that and think it wasn't that big a deal. No, actually, it's the biggest deal of the moment, isn't it?

When the Lord's going, showing you, "Ed, you're in the flesh." It's interesting with the flesh, isn't it? Because we are very, very good at seeing the flesh in other people. Because you're listening to my story going, "Man, you're all messed up. You're such a fleshly guy." Yeah, maybe I am. But what about you? Oh no, we're not talking about me. No, what about you? Do you see it in your own self? Do you see it in your kids? You're always disciplining your kids, but you know your kids are you.

They're walking little images of you. They live in your house. They follow your example. But it's easy to see it in them. But the Lord's going, "You know that little thing you're dealing with your kid? That's you." "Oh, it's not me." "No, it is you." And I want God said, "I want to show you that your personal cravings of humanity and selfishness and self-life are very real, very alive." The Bible says that not only have they been crucified, but you also have to daily crucify them and acknowledge them and repent from them.

When we choose not to walk in the spirit in a situation, in a moment, we immediately begin to start producing the works of the flesh. There isn't a third option. We're in the spirit or we're in the flesh. There are no other options. Remember the flesh, we've defined this in previous Bible studies, but let me define it again. When the Bible uses the word flesh, it's usually used in two ways. One is the obvious humanity, it's referring to the skin on your bones. That's not how the spiritual side or what Paul's been dealing with in Galatians has been using it.

When the word flesh is used in the spiritual realm, I want you to think of a couple of things. Number one, I want you to think of your old sinful habit patterns. Your old sinful habit when there was no restraint in your life and you did whatever you wanted to do, that's your flesh. So you were angry and you stole or you manipulated or you gaslighted. That's the flesh. That's all the flesh, that's not from God. There's a whole long list of those as we studied some of them: hatred, contentions, outbursts of wrath. That's all the flesh.

Number one, your old sinful habit patterns. But number two, I want you to also think of the flesh as your self-life, where your decisions are made based on yourself, things like selfishness, self-centeredness, inconvenience. Think about how much your flesh is provoked by inconvenience. That's a big deal. You just got your whole day made up and you're inconvenienced. Something happened, you get a curveball thrown at you, and now you've got to change your life. Is your response from the Lord or do you see it as, "It's going to mess up my day. You messed up my day"?

No, the Lord doesn't mess up days. He's leading and guiding you by the power of his spirit. Old sinful habit patterns, self-life. Now, when we come to Galatians 5, the fruit of the spirit, I want you to know this before we get to them, kind of laying a long foundation. The fruit of the spirit is not a list of things that we are to aspire to and achieve. A lot of times you approach the Bible that way. You look at it and go, "Okay, I got a list. These are the things."

We naturally come to the Bible here and you look at it in verse 22, "The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering or patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law." That's how we come. It's like, "Oh, I want to be more loving. I want to be filled with joy. I want more gentleness. I'm going to be more faithful." And we just approach it with that sense of, and I think there's a good part of this where we desire these changes, but a lot of times it's just kind of a list to follow. But this isn't a list to follow.

This is something that God does in your life. This isn't something you wake up and go, "I want, I will." Do you hear me? "I want, I will, I desire." What do you hear repeated? "I, I, I." You can listen to yourself talk and when you hear a lot of "I's," that's your self-life. Again, I don't want to dismiss the desire of good motives and the desire of not all the time we use the word "I" as its selfish. That's not what I'm saying.

But when you approach a list like this as "I'm going to be more loving, and I'm going to be filled with more joy, and I'm going to be more faithful," that's not going to happen. It's not the fruit of the spirit. That's your behavior changes. You can make behavior changes. You can choose to be more happy. You can choose, there's a lot of choices. But you can't take fleshly resources and produce Christlike character. I am unable to improve the depth of my character. God does that.

He's the one that works inside. Here's how we approach it. You can modify your behaviors. We all do that, and we should modify our behaviors at the very least. You can modify human behaviors a little, but you can't change someone's character. Only God works on the inside. The fruit of the spirit is not manufactured. It's not created. It's not produced. It's not developed by man. Sometimes we approach Christianity like we look at our lives as believers like we're in a factory.

We work at a factory, so we just got to keep working and producing, working and producing. "I'm a Christian now, so I need to be a good Christian, and I now need to do these things, and now I'm living with a desire to produce things in my life. I'm human, I'm responsible, I'm here to do something, I'm here to make something, I'm here to produce the finest product for God. So now I have joined the Christian factory."

And of course, what happens if you see life as just producing all the time? Because the world has put that into your life. That's what the world's all about: produce, produce, produce, sell, sell, sell, make money, get ahead, make it bigger, broader. That is the world system and we have to learn how to navigate through the world system. But we bring that into our lives like you think of all the pressure that gets put on you at work, all the ways that efficiencies are being pressed upon you.

"You've got to do more with less and you've got to come up with more." And then there's big layoffs and now you're doing the job of everybody that got laid off. You go through a few of them and go, "Please lay me off. I do not want to do the work of 30 people. I can't do the work of 30 people." The world system is just "boom, boom, boom." That's why rest is so good because when you step out of the system, you start to see it for what it is.

And you begin to walk in the spirit in the world and in the system. We're not in a factory because if you see yourself like in a factory having to produce, then if you're in a factory, you see God as a factory manager just telling you what to do all the time. "Do this, do this, do this, don't do this, don't do this." Now you don't even have a relationship with a guy that's just bossing you around all the time. You want to avoid him because you know if you see him, more work, more work.

So you're looking around the corner making sure and going the other side, making sure you know where he parks, you park on the other side of the parking lot. You stay away from the factory manager. You don't have a relationship with someone like that. If you're going to think of your life, I want you to think of your life this way: not God as a factory manager, but God as a gardener. Some of you are really good with gardening. You love gardening. Don't know why, but you do.

And we appreciate you, the folks that take care of the flowers here on the property. It's just so beautiful, it's wonderful. We appreciate you. But it's work, isn't it? You do the work, gardener. The plants don't do the work. You don't give direction to the plants. "Okay plants, now I know some of you do talk to your plants, but you're very kind to them. 'Oh please blossom for me.'" But you don't leave going, "Okay, this is how it works here. I'm the gardener, you're the plant. I want you to do this, this, and this, and I'll be back tomorrow."

Nobody does that. You're just tending, taking care of the soil, pruning, weeding, watering. You're a gardener. It's peaceful, it's restful. It is work. There is something to do, but it's the gardener who does the work, not the plants. Jesus put it this way, turn over to John Chapter 15, would you? I want you to see this, and we will get to the fruit of the spirit, but these foundational principles are so important for you to respond in the spirit, not in the flesh. I don't want you to see your life following Jesus as a factory, but rather as a garden where you're not working.

When you place an emphasis on works, then it takes us to all the pressures and the deadlines and the constant need to produce and to produce more, and there's competition and there's a new person in town. All of that. But the emphasis in a garden is on fruit. You take a trip to the botanical gardens, you're not going to be walking through and stop and go, "What was that, honey?" I don't know. You're walking by one of the beautiful trees or flowers and you hear it go, "Argh."

"What was that?" "Oh, it's this tree. The tree's working, working hard to produce fruit." No tree, you don't hear a tree do that. You don't hear a tree do anything. You just watch it grow. And then there's beautiful fruit because somebody's going through that place taking care of it, making sure everything is in order. The gardener, those folks that take care of things, they're doing all the work. God does the work. Look what Jesus said, John Chapter 15, verse 4.

He says, "Abide in me and I in you." Now, depending on your personality, you read that one of two ways. One way you read it, "Okay, I got to abide. Got to abide." Or, "Oh, what a wonderful invitation that Jesus gives to me to come to him and stay to him." Since you turned your Bible, circle the word abide if you haven't already and write next to it the Greek word, it's *meno*, M-E-N-O. And the word just means to stay put.

Think about again our trip to downtown as we go through the botanical gardens, and you go on a Monday and there's the tree and it's producing fruit, and then you show up the following Monday and the tree is gone. And you go, "Where'd the tree go?" And you talk to his friends and all the trees go, "Oh, he got up and left. He didn't like it here and he moved." No, if you go back the following Monday, there's a good chance you know what that tree's been doing: abiding. It hasn't moved at all.

And if it did choose to move, it wouldn't move on its own. Somebody would have to move it. And you, we have a little bit more freedom than a tree does, but it's a great picture because you can choose to stay put. If I see you on Monday in the spirit and I come back and see you another Monday, I hope to see you in the spirit on that following Monday. Why? Because you *menoed*, you stayed. That's what he's saying here.

So you just have to be careful how you read it because notice what he says: "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me." You see that Jesus, he says it so simply. It's so simple. Branches can't bear fruit by themselves. It's impossible. A branch of a tree cannot produce fruit on its own. It has to have the network that God has created for it to produce the fruit.

The illustration is simple. You ready? You cannot produce the fruit of the spirit on your own. You can't be more kind and more gentle. You can't produce these things spiritually. Now, you can be more kind and gentle in the human realm, but you're going to be using a worldly definition for kindness. If you really want to see kindness, you have to stay put and abide. Because again, you'll come here and go, "Well, there it is. I now know what I'm supposed to do. I need to do the work of abiding."

Abiding's not a work. Staying put means you just don't do anything. You stay there. You stay put. When times get tough, you stay put. When difficulties arise, you don't move. You abide. Sometimes I think we forget that God's at work, that he's working in you both to will and to do for his good pleasure. We forget that it's God working and that he's always been working. And his plans for you are much larger than where you are right now.

The kindness, the gentleness, the longsuffering, the patience, all of these things, he has more of a vision for that in your life than you could ever learn. And he not only puts the desire in your heart, but also empowers you to do that. And let's just believe Jesus when he said he didn't come to condemn but to save. And I know this as you pay attention, you know them and you pay attention, you will see every day the fruit of the spirit operating in your life.

Guest (Male): That is Pastor Ed Taylor speaking of the glorious fruit of the spirit here on Abounding Grace. And Pastor Ed, you made such an important point here. This fruit isn't manufactured by self-effort, but rather it's a work of God in and through us. So if someone listening right now, after careful examination, sees little to no fruit in their life, what is that an indicator of?

Pastor Ed Taylor: Well, there can be an indicator of all sorts of things. It could be a person is a new believer and they don't know yet. It could be someone who has a real sensitivity and maybe a self-condemnation type of personality where they just can't see anything good in themselves. There's a lot of different reasons, but I would say, I would start here: memorize the fruit of the spirit. So go to Galatians and memorize the fruit of the spirit.

It was one of the first things I've ever done, probably one of the top 10 sections of scripture I ever memorized at the advice of a brother, and you hear me quote them quite a bit: love, joy, peace, patience or longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Memorize them, because once you memorize them, they'll be easier to recognize. The Holy Spirit will just show you his presence in your life.

So just start, there's a lot to say about this. We really don't have the time to get into it, but maybe you just don't know or you haven't paid attention or you beat yourself up too much or you live under the weight of condemnation. Let's just start over. Let's know them, let's look for them, and then let's believe what God says: there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ.

Let's just believe Jesus when he said he didn't come to condemn but to save. I know this as you pay attention, you know them and you pay attention, you will see every day the fruit of the spirit operating in your life.

Guest (Male): Thanks again, Pastor Ed. We look forward to hearing the rest of this message next time. Hear it again at aboundinggraceradio.com, oneplace.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here in the month of July, we've picked out an excellent book from David Wilkerson, *The Jesus Person Promise Book*. It contains over 800 promises from the word of God, helping you discover hope, grace, and healing for almost every spiritual and personal problem encountered today.

It would make a meaningful gift for that special someone or a purse companion for you. And we'll send it to you when you support Abounding Grace with a gift of $25 or more today. Reach us toll-free at 877-30-GRACE or go online to calvaryco.store.

And thank you for your support. It helps us get the word out on stations like this one all across the nation. Large or small, God is using your gifts in great ways. I wish I could share all the emails and phone calls that come in as evidence of that. To make a donation, just visit aboundinggraceradio.com or call 877-30-GRACE. Aboundinggraceradio.com or 877-30-GRACE. Our time together sure goes by quickly, doesn't it? But we're already looking forward to our next study in Galatians here on Abounding Grace with Pastor Ed. God bless.