What is Church? 3 How God works with Christians

The Church is made up of many people and even though there are many (c)hurches we are all one Church. Each person has things within their being that are growing and developing. One of these things are the Fruits of the Spirit. These are listed for us in Galatians ch 5 as love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, gentleness, patience, faithfulness and self control. These 9 fruits are present in all Christian lives, some juicy fruits in one area and maybe a shrivelled core in another! We are all developing and growing! I'd love to have 'ready to pick' fruits in every aspect of my life, and ill bet others would love for me to have them also!

Because these are the Fruits of the Spirit we can assume that these are also attributes of God's dealing with us. I have observed that the fruits have three distinct categories:

The fruits of 'being'

These are Love, Joy and Peace. These are what God's motivating attributes are. He does things, even tell us off, with the combination of these fruits at work. Have you ever wondered what someones motive is? Isn't it better when someone does something out of love, with joy and with a peaceful demeanour. God's like that in his relationship with us. If we remember that we can always see how God never means harm no matter how terrible we feel about our circumstance. We can see and understand it is the making of us.

The Fruits of 'doing'

When things happen in our lives we can sometimes wonder what the source is. Aware that we have an enemy, often there are questions over who's at work but we do know that when God does something it is always good, kind and gentle. Even God's rebuke is gentle, as opposed to how we often beat ourselves up with harsh judgement and condemnation (if your'e anything like me!). With love, joy and peace God does things that are good, kind and gentle. How cool is that? Conversely, the enemy weaves counterfeit strategies that can seem like God. However, they lack the Godly attributes we are discussing here.

The 'anchors'

Love, joy and peace are attributes of 'being' and goodness, kindness and gentleness are attributes of 'doing.' If God's work with a person falters or is not received correctly, God gives relational anchors in which he set out his terms of work. He will be patient with us, self controlled and faithful. Amazing! God shows his terms but lets not forget these are fruits in our life to be outworked to other people!

Can we relate to others with love joy and peace? Are our works always good, kind and gentle? Do we offer others unlimited patience, self control and faithfulness? It's certainly a struggle to be like God but hey, we are all growing and developing. Church is about relating to our brothers and sisters and we have all the tools we need to become natural, sweet and in season, just like fruits!