As you enter a grocery store or farmers market, you search the produce section for the best fruits and vegetables to bring the highest level of nutrients and healing. Before you pick the right one, you look through all of them to make sure that you grab the best looking one. It has to have the right shape and color. It must have the best smell and the correct texture. We make sure that we get the best for ourselves and our families. Like no person is going to bring home rotten fruits on purpose. For this reason, we get labeled as great fruit inspectors. We are so good at picking physical fruit that have no clue how to pick spiritual fruit.
Inspecting fruit of The Spirit has become a skill that we have lost over generations. We have become numb and blind to the things that are killing us. As we open our soul up to perverted perspectives and misconstrued identities our judgement of other people’s character gets compromised. It gets to the point where we are unable to trust the heart because the mind, will, and emotions are influenced by secular and demonic culture. Testing the fruit of people’s character needs to be the response to meeting someone new. They must prove themselves worthy before they get the privilege knowing you in an intimate way. We often get hurt by opening up to fast to the wrong people, because we don’t know inspect the fruit of their spirit (their character). The best way to inspect their fruit is to observe them for a period of time.
Over time people show their true character, but we don’t believe them. We ignore it because those harmful traits have become normalized. Yet, watch how they treat/interact with you and other people. For example, how often do they complain or gossip. Spiritually these two hangs together, and they look like a rotten fruit that has maggots and flies all in it and around it. Never forget that we were made as spirits first! It’s more important what we look like spiritually than how we present physically. So, we must become more intentional about looking out for what people look like spiritually. When they look good spiritually, they have fruits of The Spirit (Holy Spirit). However, when they look bad spiritually, they have fruits of the flesh (devil).
The fruits of the flesh show up in people who are not fully submitted to God or people that need salvation and deliverance. The fruits of the flesh manifests as hate/indifference (absence of compulsion to or toward one thing or another), despair (the complete loss or absence of hope.), anxiety (a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease of the future), impatience (having or showing a tendency to be quickly irritated or provoked), rudeness (lack of manners), unreliable (not able to be relied upon), abrasive/harsh (showing little concern for the feelings of others), and undisciplined/ lacking self-control (not showing a controlled form of behavior or way of working). Each and every one of these traits are signs that that person is someone you should not trust enough to be vulnerable with. You should never fill your closest circle with people that operate from their flesh. This will be putting yourself at risk of getting hurt and delaying your promises from God. The reason why life can be so hard at times is because of the toxic relationships we allow to attach to us. As people reveal themselves to us it is our duty to know what category to place them in. When the devil wants to attack you, he sends a person, yet when God wants to bless you, He also sends a person.
The people that God sends in your life will show themselves as such. They have characteristics that bear good fruit in their own life that will overflow into yours. Their fruits are replenishing, peaceful, and loving. Like when you notice that every time this person comes around, they carry an atmosphere of peace and a bright aura of love. This is evidence of a person with good spiritual fruit. If you have someone like this in your life keep them close. Those are the people to let your guard down around. Tell them your struggles and your traumas so they can direct you to the source of their fruit. They have good fruit because they have fully yielded themselves to allow Holy Spirit to express Himself through them. The fruits of His spirit looks like love (1 Corinthians 13:4–8), joy (be happy no matter the circumstance), peace (peace that surpasses understanding), patience (the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset), kindness (to people that you like and don’t like), faithfulness (loyalty), gentleness (meekness, power under control), self-control (the ability to control oneself, emotions and desires or the expression of them in one’s behavior in difficult situations). This is the kind of spiritual fruit you need for the highest level of nutrients and healing for you spirit, body, and soul. As you shop for relationships make sure you aren’t takin any rotten fruit home to your family.
Understand these spiritual fruits to makes all relationships easier as you navigate through life’s ups and downs. Life is on your side when you have relationships that bear good fruit. Relationships are spiritual. Anyone that doesn’t have the fruits of The Spirit does not have Holy Spirit in them, so how can they treat you right? You deserve relationships that will cover you and direct you into green pastures. Holy Spirit is needed to have good fruits and recognize them in others. Inspect your life by self-reflecting on the type of fruit you have in your life. So, as you inspect your own fruits you will become a wiz at inspecting them in others.
