Fruit

I don't believe God faults us at those times when our faith isn't big enough, and I think that it's important that we continue to choose to believe, even when it doesn't seem to help us live. But I recognize that trying to just push through with what feels like an empty faith doesn't really satisfy that thing inside of us that's trying to live anyway...or desperately trying to hold onto living. 

This is where I think a solid faith does have an advantage for us. Because even when our faith isn't strong enough or big enough or good enough or meaningful enough, the fruit of our faith gives us the tools to develop a bit of a work-around and come back to a good place anyway. 

Or, at least, a place we can manage. 

The Bible tells us that the fruit of the Spirit - the fruit of faith living inside of us - is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And in the times when my faith isn't big enough - when believing and knowing and trusting and hoping and living in confident assurance simply isn't possible - I find that the fruits of the Spirit, those things living inside of me because of the faith I have cultivated over the years, help to give me a way through. 

If you fill yourself with joy and have fun in the moment and relish the experience and celebrate the season, it's really hard to be bummed about it or worried about it at the same time. 

If you find a reason to be thankful, the things you're worried about get cast into the shadows. 

If you are gentle, you find you're less harsh even with yourself. 

If you exercise self-control, you can stop yourself from doing some things that faith would have told you were wrong, but you aren't listening to faith right now. Self-control can still pull you back from the brink. 

If the whole world is collapsing around you, but you choose to do good, you can feel like you're pushing back the whole tide. 

If you're weary of waiting and it's starting to grind on you, choosing patience changes your perspective and puts a new spin on things. 

And you don't have to have a faith that's working for you right now to be faithful. This goes back to yesterday's post - you choose to keep believing, so you choose to keep acting according to what you know and not what you feel, and so you live a faithful life even in the face of your empty faith, and that's something. 

These things don't come naturally if you haven't already put in the work to establish them, but when you have a faith that you've been working on for awhile - really committing yourself to and honestly working to develop - then when that faith falls short, these fruits pick up. They put you in a better place just by living the way you've trained your heart to live, so deeply ingrained that it's become almost natural for you. 

And I am telling you - this is a precious, crucial, indescribable lifeline for times like these. 

If you can't believe, choose love. If you can't believe, choose joy. If you can't believe, choose piece. If you can't believe, choose patience. If you can't believe, choose kindness. If you can't believe, choose goodness. If you can't believe, choose faithfulness. If you can't believe, choose gentleness. If you can't believe, choose self-control. There are seasons to grow the fruit and seasons to pick it, and if you can't believe, if your faith is failing you, then this is a season to start picking some fruit and living off what you've been growing. 

And, I promise you, this will lead you through. It will get you where you need to be. It will. 

At least, it's never failed me.