SPIRITUAL
GROWTH; SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES; FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT

I would like to be able to ask every Christian in the world this question: Are you really interested in God’s producing in you the beautiful fruits and fragrances of the Holy Spirit?

For every affirmative answer, I would quickly recommend: Then look to your own willingness to be regular in the habits of a holy life—for flowers and fruit do not grow in thin air! They grow and come up out of a root and “the root of the righteous flourishes” (Proverbs 12:12).

For every beautiful garden that you see, whose fragrance comes out to welcome you, has its roots down into the hard earth. The beautiful flowers and blooms will grow and appear and flourish only when there are deep roots and strong stalks. If you take the roots away, the blossom and flower will endure perhaps one day. The sun will scorch them and they will be gone.…

According to my Bible, there should be a people of God—they do not all have to belong to one church—but there should be a people called out by the Lord God and subjected to a spiritual experience given by God. Then they are to learn to walk in the way of the Truth and the way of the Scripture, producing the righteous fruit of the child of God whatever world conditions may be.…

So, this is the answer. Every flower and every fruit has a stalk and every stalk has a root, and long before there is any bloom there must be a careful tending of the root and the stalk. This is where the misunderstanding lies—we think that we get the flower and the fragrance and the fruit by some kind of magic, instead of by cultivation.

Proverbs 12:12; Song of Solomon 4:16; Galatians 5:22–23

Who Put Jesus on the Cross?, 12, 13, 14, 16.