When Fruit Speaks - Goodness & Faithfulness
Fruit that requires surrender
I have this saying – I don’t expect people to treat me better than they treat God. While it may not be biblical, I stand on it based on what God does say in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. Even our foundation verse for this series, Galatians 5:22, alludes to the idea that if we don’t have the fruit of The Spirit, to think we can magically pull on these character traits when we feel like it is asinine.
When I looked up the biblical definition of faithfulness, I found that it is the character of one who can be relied on. We know God is faithful, and we often declare it in our testimonies and when we experience victory. But I wondered if God were sitting down with us and giving us a performance review (or rather, a FRUIT review), would He struggle to find consistent faithfulness within us?
I remember when I was struggling to understand some of the mental warfare I was going through while I was in college. No matter how much praying I did, I would find myself spiraling into depression, experiencing nervous breakdowns, and struggling to function in my day-to-day. It wasn’t until I learned about deliverance and how the enemy enters our lives through sin (doors) that I realized I wasn’t walking bearing the fruit of faithfulness in my life. These “doors” can be seen as an opening of sin or bondage in our lives that invites the enemy to create a stronghold.
Since I was doing the surface-level stuff that made me a Christian—praying, reading the Bible, and going to church—I couldn’t see the deception that I was living in. I was still living in disobedience in many areas of my life, and while God wanted to answer my prayers, He was waiting for one thing—a real “yes,” which would require a deep faithfulness to God.
And if I wanted to experience the goodness of God in every area of my life, I would need to walk out consistent faithfulness in our relationship and abide in Him with a healthy reverence of who He is. 2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 (New King James Version) states, “Therefore we also pray always for you that our God would count you worthy of this calling and fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness and the work of faith with power, that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
This is so good. This verse says that Paul is praying for us to walk worthy of this calling, the call to follow Christ, so God can work His goodness in and through us so that Jesus can be glorified. How can that happen if we aren’t faithful to Him day in and day out?
While God’s character doesn’t change, some conditions come with our Godly inheritance (read Ephesians 1 & 2). I asked God how to encourage women to walk in faithfulness and goodness, and to be honest, I’m struggling to do this in a concise, and clear way. So, bear with me as I do the best I can with God’s help.
1) Faithfulness to God isn’t something that just happens. You have to surrender your way into faithfulness. As I mentioned above, people who scream how loyal they are will find that their desire to be loyal to people is limited without pure-hearted loyalty to God. What I’ve come to discover is that we struggle to be faithful to God when we don’t trust Him. Earlier this year, God gave me a revelation on Proverbs 3:5-6. While believers quote this scripture quite a bit, here’s what God revealed to me: People can only trust me with all of their hearts if all of their heart belongs to me. And that’s where faithfulness comes in. Which is why…
2) You can’t compartmentalize your faithfulness to God. I think people feel like they can be faithful to God in the area of how they manage their family but choose their own blueprint for how they manage their finances and their desires. It’s the mindset, “God, I trust You with this area, but not this one.” We struggle to experience walking out the fruit of faithfulness when we try to compartmentalize how (and even when) we’re faithful to God. Romans 12:1-2 tells us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. This means, that our entire being should be presented to Him as a sacrifice, not when we die and go to heaven, but as a “living” sacrifice, which means on this side of heaven. This means we must submit to the process that will make us look more like Him.
3) For God to fulfill all the good pleasure of His goodness in and through us, we must look like Him. This requires faithfulness to the Holy Spirit’s work in us to produce the fruit that makes us evident image-bearers. Even Jesus cursed the fig tree that didn’t bear fruit (Mark 11). I’m not saying He’ll curse us if we don’t bear fruit; however, we can forfeit the inheritance promised to us by living outside of the will of God. When we don’t allow the Holy Spirit to work in us to develop the fruit Paul speaks of in Galatians 5:22, we forfeit God being able to rely on us so He can use us the way He desires. One of God’s greatest desires is for people to be drawn to Him and come into a relationship with His Son Jesus. People are drawn to Christ by how His disciples live. Remember the beginning of this article? The definition of faithfulness is the character of one who can be relied on. We know we can rely on God. The question is, can He rely on us?
Listen. I want to be someone God can trust. I don’t want to pray for anything, then God gives it to me, and I can’t be trusted with it. This is about all things that pertain to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3), not just material things. Our Father is looking for people whom He can show His goodness through. Ask yourself this question before you create a vision board for 2025: Am I willing to be faithful to God no matter what? Your vision board may have to be edited, but you’ll end up living a life you could’ve never envisioned for yourself anyway.