Believer’s Bounty: Filled to Overflow with the Fruit of the Spirit

By Andy Lee

My eyes sprung open.

I looked at the clock to see 3:00 AM staring back at me. I groaned and turned over, re-positioned to ease the ache in my hip, and began to pray as I always do when I wake before 5:00.

It’s not holiness that prompts my petitions. It’s a determination to frustrate the enemy if he indeed is the culprit to my middle-of-the-night rendezvous with consciousness.

Yet at the same time, if my alert state is the Lord’s prompting, I don’t want to miss His cues, so I pray.

And I think.

As I stared in the dark, waiting on the Lord to fill the time or put me back to sleep, the words Believer’s Bounty echoed through my thoughts.

Then I felt the Lord say,

The Fruit of the Spirit is the believer’s bounty. They can have as much of me as they will allow me to fill them. The blessing of my fruit is never-ending. It’s a bounty of goodness and kindness, peace, and joy that always blesses those who are in the presence of someone filled with My fruit.

I sat up in bed disturbing the cat (Sorry, Hank.) 

Yes, Lord! That’s a great post for the week of Thanksgiving! We need all the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control we can get especially during the holidays. This season can be taxing and trying no matter how wonderful our family is, there is always one member that requires extra grace—sometimes it’s me!

But this is what’s so great about the fruit of the Spirit. God knows we can’t manufacture these qualities on our own no matter how hard we try. He knows we need His fruit to do the good works waiting for us this week.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law” Galatians 5:22-23 NIV.

How can this verse help us during the holidays, especially weeks like this one? There’s a clue hidden in the ancient Greek under our translation. It’s found in the word we translate as Spirit.

The Greek word is Pnuema, and it means “current of air, that is breath (blast) or breeze” (Strong’s Definition). Though we can’t see the Spirit, we can focus on His Presence, claim this verse, and breathe. When we are in need of a little love or joy or peace, maybe some patience, kindness or gentleness or self-control, we should first take a deep breath or two before we respond.

3 Things to Do

1. Take in deep, long breaths imagining the infilling of God.
2. Recite Galatians 5:22-23.   (When my kids were small, I would practice breathing and reciting this verse before reacting to their shenanigans. If you notice, the last fruit is self-control. By the time I got to it, I usually had some.)
3. Get into the Word so it can get into you.

To help you fill up with the Word before this season of gatherings, parties, family, and gift buying, I’ve made a pre-holiday Believer’s Bounty Journal. Here’s a sneak peek of the scriptures and prompts. The journal will include a space for you to pen your thoughts and answer the prompts.  

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Believer’s Bounty Verses

1 John 4: 16: And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

• • • • Is there anyone you have trouble loving? Ask the Holy Spirit to help you love them. It’s always great too to ask God to help you love Him more and the people in your immediate family.

Romans 15: 13: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

• • • • I find joy and peace when I surrender my agenda to God’s. That’s called trust. If you’re struggling in the joy and peace department, is there something you’re trying to control?

Isaiah 40:30-31: Though youths grow weary and tired, and vigorous young men stumble badly, yet those who wait for the LORD Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired. They will walk and not become weary. (New American Standard)

• • • • Patience is a bad word in our culture. We don’t have much of it. But we need it. According to this verse, what happens to those who wait on God? Consider everything you do even the smallest detail as waiting on God.

Ephesians 4: 2: Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.

• • • • Humility comes before gentleness. Humility doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself but more of others, especially Jesus. Put Him first in all relationships. Ask Him to give you eyes to see others as He sees them. Broken, wounded, in need of a Savior.

Ephesians 4:32: Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

• • • • Who do you have trouble forgiving? Ask the Lord to help you break the chains of pride that keep you captive unable to forgive. Pray for grace to let it go.

2 Peter 1: 5-7: For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.

• • • • When do you lose it? Ask Jesus to reveal the root of your lack of control in this area. Let Him free you.

Ephesians 5: 8-9: For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth.)

• • • • Are you a child of the light? Oh, that we would shine with all goodness, generosity, and honesty. What does living this way look like to you?

 

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I love when God wakes me up in the middle of the night (usually.) This time, He definitely had something to share. Beloved, He has so much He wants to give us. Oh, that we would be emptied so He can fill us up.

We are so blessed. What do you do when you wake up in the middle of the night? Has God given you any great nuggets of Him?

(Is Thanksgiving getting you down this year? Check out Andy’s latest post on her website: When Celebrating Thanksgiving Is Hard)