Saturday, July 8, 2017

In Season

“Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.” (Mother Teresa)

Nutrition by fruit is a great-tasting way to strengthen your immune system, fight disease, boost your overall body health, and increase your water intake. Fruits supply carbohydrates that provide essential energy for metabolism, processing nutrients, and staying active, as well as some.

Fruits are loaded with Vitamins A, C, E (and Lycopene) your body cannot produce on its own. They help your body prevent disease, fight illness, and stave off the signs of aging.
Your body needs all eight essential amino acids for proper daily health and disease prevention. Fruits (like bananas) incorporated into your diet will assure you get what your body needs. Nearly all fruits are a great source of fiber. This is critical for processing nutrients and eliminating the toxins that come from the food, drink, and environment in which you live.

Fruit is a quick way to get the vitamins and minerals you need. While popular fruits like apples and oranges are very nutritious, less known fruits like dragon fruit, can provide an abundant source of Vitamin C. This will deliver a blast of illness-fighting phytonutrients to the body. With a limitless ways to prepare them, fruits are an easy way to increase a positive way of living good nutrition.

“In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23, Revised Edition NABRE)

Do you understand why fruit makes such an excellent spiritual analogy? The physical fruits we eat can add so much to our good health by healing disease. If you don’t eat fruit (and vegetables) your health will deteriorate. Your immune system will falter, and you will be prone to sickness and disease.

Spiritual fruit is a great way to strengthen your spiritual immune system, fight spiritual disease, and boost your overall Christian health. Spiritual fruit can provide you with different types of spiritual benefits that include more of the Holy Spirit in your life. Not only do spiritual fruits provide spiritual carbohydrates (spiritual energy). They provide essential spiritual wisdom, inspire good works, and keep you spiritually active while allowing God’s attributes to freely flow through you.

Spiritual fruits are loaded with the essential spiritual antioxidants. [i]Your physical body and mind cannot produce them on their own. These spiritual antioxidants prevent spiritual disease and darkness. These also help develop within you a strong spiritual immune system. Spiritual fruits are a great source of spiritual fiber that is critical for eliminating the toxins thrown at us from the devil.
We cannot develop the fruits of the Spirit on our own. We can never train our sinful selves to fulfill God’s holy, sinless standard. Spiritual fruits are not something we can grow. They need to be planted by God. Even after God plants the spiritual fruits seeds within us, we can hinder our growth. We must stop putting ourselves first, and spend time with Him. God must prune and water our lives so the fruit of the Spirit can be evident to all that come in contact with us.

During my lifetime, many of the sermons I’ve heard on the fruit of the Spirit have been rather undeletable, vague, and forgettable. The fruit of the Spirit must be a part of your world today to be of any use to you.  Hopefully what is provided below will aid you in achieving this goal:

Today, I choose…

·        Love instead of being bitter towards others.

·        Joy instead of being jaded with my world.

·        Peace instead of not forgiving others.

·        Patience instead of complaining about others.

·        Kindness to all those I come in contact with.

·        Goodness in always doing the right thing.

·        Faithfulness in keeping all the promises I make to others.

·        Gentleness in the way I deal with others (especially when I’m angry).

·        Self-control in what I am controlled with (and by) in my life.[ii]

 

“Fruit is always the miraculous (the created). It is never the result of willing, but always a growth. The fruit of the Spirit is a gift of God, and only He can produce it. They who bear it know as little about it as the tree knows of its fruit. They know only the power of Him on whom their life depends” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, author of The Cost of Discipleship)




[i] Spiritual antioxidants include: Vitamin L for love, Vitamin J for joy, Vitamin P for peace/patience, Vitamin F for faithfulness, Vitamin K for kindness, Vitamin G for goodness/gentleness, and Vitamin S for self-control.
 
[ii] Sources used:

·        “Max Lucado on the Fruits of the Spirit”

·        “The Analogy of Fruits” by Mike Shanta
 




 

 
 

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