What’s In Your Cup?
Living the Fruit of the Spirit
There is an ancecdote, in various forms, going around the Internet recently. It is about spilling a cup of coffee. It goes something like this:
You are holding a cup of coffee when someone comes along and bumps into you or shakes your arm, making you spill your coffee everywhere.
Why did you spill the coffee?
"Because someone bumped into me!!!"
Wrong answer.
You spilled the coffee because there was coffee in your cup.
Had there been tea in the cup, you would have spilled tea.
Whatever is inside the cup is what will spill out.
Therefore, when life comes along and shakes you (which WILL happen), whatever is inside you will come out. It's easy to fake it, until you get rattled.
So we have to ask ourselves... “what's in my cup?"
When life gets tough, what spills over?
Joy, gratitude, peace and humility?
Anger, bitterness, victim mentality and quitting tendencies?
Life provides the cup, YOU choose how to fill it.
It is true that life provides us the “cup” and we choose how we fill it. However, as followers of Christ, we have a choice concerning what is in our cup. Do we fill the cup ourselves or let Holy Spirit fill it with sweet tasting fruit?
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23a CSB)
The power to have true love (agape), joy, peace, patience, etc. is not within ourselves. It comes from God! Only he can produce these characteristics in our lives! We can try to truly love others - but what about those differnt from us. We can try to have joy - but our efforts fall short when life’s trials come. We can try to have patiencw with difficult people - but then our patience wears thin. Only, through the power of God can we truly have these characteristics in our lives. The Apostle Paul put it this way:
“For God, who said, "Let there be light in the darkness," has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.” (2 Corinthians 4:6-7 NLT)
The question becomes, “How? How does God produce these wonderful traits in our lives? Here are two thoughts on how to let God produce the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives.
Jesus said that He is the vine and we are the branches. If we abide in Him, we will produce much fruit. The Apostle Paul says this is the spiritual fruit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Therefore, this spiritual fruit is a result of abding in Christ. Without spending time with Jesus it is almost impossible to have the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives.
How do we “abide in Christ?” We spend time with Him reading the Bible. We spend time with him in prayer. We sit in His presnce and just listen. We spend time worshipping Him.
You will notice a common thread in the above - time. We abide in Christ as we spend time with Him. When we do, Holy Spirit somehow begins to implant this fruit in our lives. We begin to act more loving, We begin to have more pece and joy. We begin to experience more patience. We begin to produce the Fruit of the Spirit! Not because of any positive thinking or willpower of our own. But because we have abided in Jesus.
Then, when our lives are “bumped,” what spills out is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
May God’s wonderful fruit spill out of your life this week!