Bad Fruit

(upbeat music)

- Hey, this is Pastor John Ryan Cantu

from Pneuma Church in Houston, Texas.

Thank you for listening to the message today.

I hope that it blesses you

and all those that you share it with.

God bless you.

(upbeat music)

♪ Feel, feel, feel, feel, feel ♪

♪ Feel, feel, feel, feel ♪

- I don't know how they do it.

I tried it many years ago to be a youth pastor

and it wasn't for me.

So, I mean, they've been in it five years now

and praise God for all their work

and thank you to the parents as well.

Amen.

It takes a lot to run that ministry.

Amen.

So, we're gonna go straight into the word this morning.

If you would stand with me.

We're gonna go to Galatians chapter five, 22 through 25.

And this is another one of those words, man,

that lately the Lord has really been,

has been making me work for it.

Making me work for these sermons

and just battling through the things throughout the week

and just really trying to discern what the Lord wants to say.

And I believe that he has something to say this morning

and it's not gonna be a very long passage of scripture

like it usually is, but if you have it,

I want you to give me a nice amen.

I wanna ask that you would give me your attention

here this morning.

I'll try to keep it a little bit shorter,

try to take into account these presentations.

But if the Lord wants to go two hours,

hey, you're gonna be here.

Listen, two hours.

(laughing)

Amen.

It says this, but the fruit of the Spirit is love,

joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

gentleness, self-control.

Against such things there is no law.

And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh

with its passions and desires.

If we live by the Spirit,

let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

Amen.

Let's go to God in prayer.

Heavenly Father, I thank you, my God,

for just bringing us here to your house this morning, Lord.

And I just pray, my God,

that as you have spoken this word over me, Lord,

you would speak it over your people, my God.

I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would be on my lips, my God,

as we deliver this message, Father God, to your people.

Father God, I pray that you would make us receptive,

that our hearts and our minds would be open

to everything that you wanna say

and everything that you wanna do this morning.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Amen, you may be seated.

Y'all good this morning?

Amen. Y'all a little quiet.

Y'all a little quiet.

Y'all know I don't like quiet.

I don't know how much louder

y'all are gonna get this morning with this sermon.

I don't anticipate a lot of amens.

I don't anticipate a lot of shouts of praise.

I don't anticipate those standing moments

where everybody's giving glory to God.

I don't anticipate much of that today

because it's gonna feel like I'm preaching at you

and not to you.

And this sermon is very much about character,

the person of who we are.

I believe that we need to learn how to give God

the intermost parts of ourselves that make up our DNA,

not just the things in our lives,

but the parts that make us us.

And so when we talk about that,

we're talking about very personal things.

We're talking about things that make you you.

And one of the way that we do that

is through the fruit of the Spirit.

I wanna try to keep things as practical as I can.

I've been wanting to do a series

on the fruit of the Spirit,

but I just can't commit to like a nine week sermon series,

but it needs to be preached.

So I'm gonna try to go through these briefly and broadly.

I also don't believe that the apostle Paul

meant for this list to be exhaustive,

meaning that this isn't all that the Holy Spirit produces

in terms of character.

Paul is pretty well known for making lists

and sometimes he lists things in one place,

like he'll talk about gifts of the Spirit.

And then in another letter,

he'll talk about gifts of the Spirit.

He doesn't always list the exact same gifts.

So in no way do I believe that if you get all of these right,

you've achieved complete holiness and perfection,

but it is the best place to begin.

And the reason this is so important, man,

is because I think we've got a lot of,

the world is filled with Christians who have bad fruit.

Bad fruit, that's the title of the sermon, bad fruit.

We got Christians that got,

they got good theology, but bad fruit.

Good callings, huge callings, bad fruit.

Good giftings, bad fruit.

And maybe we're not completely spoiled

because we have Jesus,

but we're not always like grade A level choice fruits.

You know, when you go to the grocery store

and you shop for produce, you,

Ellie, she loves strawberries.

So we'll always get strawberries

and we'll check for, you know, mold and all that stuff.

And we'll open it up, we'll examine it.

Sometimes we'll put it back because you can do better.

You can find something better, right?

'Cause that one's one day away from growing with mold.

I think we got a lot of Christians like that

that are just a day away from going bad.

One day away, one, somebody cutting you off,

one bad word, one bad day away from going completely rotten.

And I think it's because, you know, many of us, we,

when we come into church and when we come into Christ,

we are discipled in how to manage ministry.

We're discipled into the word,

but we don't learn how to manage emotions.

God cares about your fruit

because your fruit is a sign of holiness.

And as I stated, as I started the sermon this week,

I really, I thought this was gonna be about fruit

of the Spirit, but God began to shape the message

into a message about holiness.

But the fruit is what tells the world and what tells God

that you are becoming more and more holy.

It's not how much you pray,

it's not how much you read the Bible.

Holiness is not about what you're anointed to do.

We talked about that a few weeks ago.

You could be anointed for something and not holy.

The holiness of a person is about the righteousness

of a person's character that reflects God's.

And I'm not saying that you're gonna be perfect,

but Jesus did say, "Be perfect

as my heavenly Father is perfect."

So holiness is something that we should be striving for.

Perfection is something that we should be striving for.

We shouldn't just be looking at it

as an impossible thing to achieve

so that we never even bother to try to be holy.

We should take it as a reminder

that because God wants me to be perfect,

we need to continually and holistically walk

with the Holy Spirit in every aspect of our lives.

I'll put it to you like this.

My wife would love it if I were a perfect husband.

And I am a perfect husband.

But for sake of example, let's pretend I'm not.

She would love it if I always said the right things

and did the right things and knew when the right times were

to say the right things, because not every time

is the right time to say certain things.

I'm sure she would love it if I wasn't confused

by the way of the women think

and that I could just read her mind

and that I knew when she was upset.

And she would love it if I knew exactly

what she wanted to eat and I didn't even have to ask her.

Amen.

She'd love it if I were perfect.

So as a husband who is supposed to die to himself

for his wife, the least that I can do

is give my best self to her and constantly learn ways

to be a better husband to her.

Understanding that I won't get it right,

understanding that I can't do the impossible

and read her mind, but if she knows that I am a man

who is trying his absolute best to be the best for her,

she's gonna give me grace when my best isn't enough.

And that is a relationship that we enter

when we commit ourselves to the Lord.

Jesus isn't just, he's not just saving us from sin.

He saves us from sin, but he also teaches us

to be like the Father who is perfect.

Holiness is attained through consecration.

When you give something to God, he makes that something holy.

When you give your life to God,

the Holy Spirit begins the process of sanctification

to make you holy.

And I want you to get this,

the more of yourself you give to God,

the holier you become.

I want you to get that.

The more of yourself you give to God,

the more you die to yourself, the holier you become.

Plain and simple.

Holiness is not religious, right?

Those are two different things.

The Pharisees were religious, Jesus was holy,

and the difference is in the fruit.

A religious person is typically a judgmental person.

When a religious person looks at a sinner,

he sees disgust and sickness and something to be avoided,

and don't bring him around me because I am holy.

A holy person is typically a loving person,

that's the fruit.

Jesus loved people in their sin.

In our sin, he came and he died for us.

The Bible says that when Jesus went into the towns,

he would look at the lost sheep

and have compassion for them.

The difference is in the fruit.

God isn't looking for you to become more religious.

He didn't set Israel apart to be religious.

He set them apart to be holy as I, the Lord your God,

am holy, he says.

The holiness produces the religion,

but the religion won't produce the holiness.

And so the more of yourself you give to God,

the holier you become, amen?

And look, I'm not talking about salvation,

there's no levels of salvation,

but holiness is a process of spiritual growth,

which means you can be more holy tomorrow than you are today.

You can be more holy today than you will be tomorrow.

And God cares about holiness,

and God is looking for a holy church.

Jesus is returning for a pure and beautiful bride.

And we need to care about that.

You know, the most important to me as a dad

for my two girls is that they have life.

I want them to have life.

I want them to live a long, healthy, fulfilled life.

And that's my prayer for them every single night.

Lord, cover them in the blood of your son Jesus

so that they would live long, healthy lives.

I want them to outlive me.

That is my prayer every night, I never miss it.

Want nothing more.

And in the same way,

God wanted nothing more to give you life.

And so that's why he sent his son Jesus to do it.

But the second most important thing to me as a father

is that my children grow up and mature.

I don't want them just to age.

I want them to grow up.

I want them to mature.

I want them to learn things.

I want them to achieve things.

I want them to become good people and independent women.

I want them to mature.

If my daughters get up to 30 years old

without having learned a single lesson

that my wife and I have tried to teach them,

you know, I'm gonna be happy that they're alive,

but I'm not gonna be very proud of them.

Because they never matured in their thinking.

They never grew out of their childlike ways

when they reached adulthood. It's cute now.

It's not gonna be cute forever.

And they will have wasted such a blessed thing.

And Christians who never grow up

waste such a beautiful thing in their salvation.

God intends for you to grow.

He intends for you to mature in your faith,

to become holy as he is holy,

to be conformed to the image of the father

so that you can produce godly children

and godly friendships and do things

that benefit the kingdom of God.

But so many times Christians put a cap

on what they give to God

so that they never grow beyond that point.

But God cares about your holiness.

He cares about your holiness.

And the more of yourself you give to God,

the holier you become.

Man, I didn't hear.

Y'all taking that serious.

I didn't hear a single amen today.

(gentle music)

Christians, man, we like to give God,

we like to give God our ministries

and our businesses and our finances

and our marriages and the things

that we want God to bless, right?

We set those things apart.

We set our finances apart so that God blesses those things,

but we don't give God the most inner parts of who we are.

And when we don't give God

the most inner parts of who we are,

we don't allow him to change

and transform our character into who he wants it to be.

God wants to transform you as a person,

not just what you have in your life.

He doesn't wanna just make things better

for things that are happening in your life externally.

He wants to make you a better person.

And this is why so many believers,

we struggle still with the most basic things.

You could be a Christian for 10, 15, 20 years,

and we're still struggling with the most basic things

because we hold onto the person of who we are.

We learn all the new ways of doing ministry and discipleship,

but we still have anger issues.

We still struggle with anxiety

and we still struggle with jealousy.

There's dozens of marriage conferences,

men's, women's conferences.

We have them here at our church, leadership conferences.

There's not a conference for the fruit of the Spirit

because nobody's gonna go to that.

There's no seminars that are gonna tell you

how to be a more faithful person or a more joyful person.

Those are things that you have to invest in

intimately and intentionally.

And because we don't do that

and we focus on the other things externally,

how to become a better minister and a better preacher

and a better husband, all of those things are good,

but we have all of these healthy looking churches

in the world run by unhealthy leaders.

And we present a healthy looking Christian

who is just one day away from the fruit

going completely bad because we haven't given God

the ability to form our whole character.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

I don't like preaching on the fruit of the Spirit.

And the reason I don't like it is because it's so basic.

I like to get deep into the word.

I like to exegete.

I like to go into the Greek and the Hebrew

and the cultural context.

I like to do all of that stuff.

This is what you learn in Sunday school.

Love your neighbor, be joyful, bring a smile to church,

be at peace, be patient with people, be kind.

I don't like preaching on this.

'Cause there's no like fire quotes

that you're gonna get from this sermon.

Nothing like that.

But I know there's people in the room today

who come to church and they know how to wear the mask

of love so well.

You know how to put on the face of joy

when you come to church because everybody else

has got one on.

You come to church and you got that face of peace,

but deep down you haven't truly allowed God

to transform the most anxious parts of your spirit

and so you deal with it alone at night

when nobody else sees it

because you haven't given it to God.

And deep down you've got bitterness

and you've got anger and you've got hatred for people.

You're jealous of your fellow brother,

your sister in ministry.

You don't know how to live in peace

of who God made you to be

so you're constantly trying to be somebody else

that God did not make.

But no one knows any of that

because these are the most basic parts of Christianity.

There's nothing complicated about it.

This is why we don't have conferences on it

because it would last two minutes.

That's why I don't like preaching on the fruit of the spirit.

There's nothing deep or profound about it.

But one of the devil's greatest tactics

is to attack the parts of you that no one else sees

because nobody thinks it's a problem.

Nobody thinks this is a problem.

How many of you thought when I brought up this scripture,

you're like, yeah, that's not for me.

I know how to love.

I know how to have joy.

I know how to peace.

I said this before,

maturity is the ability to exercise the fruits of the spirit

in the midst of adversity.

In the midst, how well can you use these when you need them?

How well can you use these against the enemy?

I wanna go over just real quickly over these nine

because there's nine of them.

That's a lot and we're not gonna go deep into it.

But man, my prayer is that if any of these

are an area of weakness for you,

you would allow God to just transform your character

so that the fruit is produced healthy and good

because we represent Jesus.

And at the end of the day,

people are gonna care less about how you performed

and what you knew.

They're gonna care more about how you reflected Christ

in your life.

And the first one is, you still with me?

Okay.

The first one is love.

Again, so basic.

I don't even know where to go from here.

But love is the foundation of all of these.

If you don't come from a place of genuine love for people

and for his people, everything else is gonna be fake.

You won't look at people with compassion.

You're gonna look at them with judgment or disinterest.

I feel like at one point in my life,

I didn't love people the way that Jesus wanted me

to love people.

And I would listen to their problems

and I wouldn't really care about their problems.

My heart wouldn't break.

But the closer I got to God,

he began to break my heart

for the things that broke his heart.

You wanna love like Jesus, you have to love Jesus.

You wanna see people with compassion,

you gotta get closer to Jesus.

Now, again, you might be thinking,

yeah, that's not a problem for me

because everybody loves somebody.

Everybody in here has a loved one.

But maturity isn't loving some people,

it's loving the people who don't love you back.

It's loving the people who have rejected you

and hurt you and abandoned you and betrayed you

and hate you and talk about you behind your back.

The fruit of the spirit of love

does not come by loving Jesus,

it comes by loving Judas.

That's the practice.

That is practicing the fruit of the spirit

in the midst of adversity.

People are gonna hurt you.

The church is gonna hurt you.

Leadership is gonna hurt you.

The pastor's gonna hurt you.

I'm gonna try not to,

but I might say something that'll hurt you in passing.

And I've done it so many times, I've misspoke.

And somebody comes to me later,

man, pastor, somebody was really hurt by what you said.

My bad.

You're gonna get hurt because people are imperfect.

And if you're not well-rooted in love,

you're gonna leave because you're just a day away

from that fruit going bad.

(gentle music)

I've talked to so many people who, man, they have hate.

They have hate for somebody.

And it's not the hate that like,

you wanna see them suffer, you wanna see them die.

It's not that type of hate.

Sometimes that's there.

But the hate that I see is the hate

that just doesn't allow you to love them.

That's what hate is.

It's the opposite of love.

It doesn't allow you to love genuinely.

Jesus said, love your enemies.

The church has all kinds of enemies.

We have all kinds of enemies,

and we're supposed to love every single one of them.

The next one is joy.

I'm just going through these briefly.

Joy is the experience of gladness in the life of a believer.

And so in the context of spiritual fruit,

joy isn't something produced by a joyful moment.

It's produced by walking daily in the Spirit, right?

That's what joy is.

Joy is not a moment.

That should mean that even if we walk,

if we walk by the Spirit and there is a test,

there is still joy.

If we walk by the Spirit in sickness, there is joy.

Wherever we are in life, as long as we do what Paul says,

in step with the Spirit,

we should be experiencing lifelong joy.

Look, the world should not see a miserable Christian.

Like that shouldn't even belong in the same sentence.

A miserable Christian.

Sometimes, I mean, this is just my preference.

We're a Pentecostal church.

You know, we get crazy in worship and all that.

But sometimes when I go to a church

and the music is just banging, man,

and everybody's like,

everybody on the worship team is getting it,

and the church is just like not,

they're just not feeling it.

Like, I don't know if they're deaf.

They're like deaf and blind, right?

But I'm like, how can you come into the house of God

and not be joyful?

But it goes beyond that.

Because we know how to be joyful in the house of God.

But can you be joyful outside,

when you're not with your brother,

when you're not with your sister,

when you're in the midst of adversity,

can you be joyful out there?

The world should not know what a miserable Christian is.

Because you are, as a Christian, you are free.

Your debt has been paid when you had nothing to do with it.

We have a God that loves us, that cares for us.

We have every reason to be joyful.

But sometimes we allow the weight of our troubles

to bring us more sorrow than the joy

that we should be walking in.

Well, we fake it.

We fake it so well when we come to church.

Or maybe we only experience joy

when we're in the presence of God.

How many of you feel joy

when you come into the house of God?

Yeah, so do I, man.

But we have to be careful that the worship session

doesn't become a therapy session.

Where it's like once a week, it's gonna be therapeutic,

and I'm gonna feel good, and then I'm gonna go out,

and then I'm gonna need to come back again

'cause I'm gonna be on empty.

Joy should happen every single day

with every step that you take

because you are keeping in step with the Holy Spirit.

That's where joy is found.

Jesus says my yoke is easy, my burden is light.

He gives us rest in our troubles,

but it's only when we cast our cares,

when we give him our burdens,

that we begin to walk in joy.

Again, I say the more of yourself you give to God,

the more of your troubles you give to God,

the more of your sorrow you give to God,

the holier you become.

Because now you're not walking in sorrow,

now you're walking in joy, you're producing fruit.

Peace, the next one.

I'm gonna do a whole sermon on peace.

This is what I'll say about peace,

and I'm going to the next one.

When uncertainty comes into your life,

you either walk in peace or you dwell in anxiety.

That's it.

Anxiety is what the disciples were in the boat

during the storm, they were going all frantic,

they were thinking that they were gonna die.

Peace was Jesus asleep during that same storm.

That's peace because he knows

that he is sovereign over every storm.

You have to know that God is sovereign

over every storm that you walk through.

That has to be your peace.

I'm not saying that the waves aren't scary,

I'm not saying that you won't be a little worried at times,

but you gotta be driven by peace.

Man, yesterday we had a crazy experience,

crazy experience, and some of you already know,

but Leila, she woke up in the morning,

she had a bloody nose, which is normal,

she usually has bloody noses, she has nosebleeds a lot.

But it was coming out of both nostrils at one point,

and it was a lot.

And it's, you know, they say if it goes longer

than 20 minutes, then you need to seek medical attention.

And it was already creeping around 15 minutes,

and Melissa was holding her nostrils like this,

and she was, you know, Leila's freaking out,

she's crying and she's thinking she's gonna die.

All of a sudden, the blood starts to come out of her eye.

Yeah, we were all freaking out.

And it, now looking back it was funny.

Because man, she gave, look, I don't recommend

y'all watch the movie Carrie, but if you've seen it,

it was like the movie Carrie, where her blood

is coming out of her eyes, and it's like a horror film.

Leila gave out this like, I mean,

brilliant Oscar performance of a scream.

And she said, I'm gonna die.

And I mean, bro, we were freaking out,

but we were trying to keep calm at the same time.

I don't know why, this had nothing to do with the sermon,

but just knowing that God is in control,

that gives you peace.

That gives you peace.

And there's gonna be moments like that

where something's gonna freak you out,

something uncertain's gonna happen,

you're not gonna know what to do.

But the peace of God that surpasses all understanding

should go before you, that's what you dwell in.

Patience, you still with me?

Patience is the ability to withstand provocation.

This doesn't mean waiting on God.

The Greek definition means the ability

to withstand provocation.

So when somebody provokes you,

you don't go off on them like a grenade.

Some of y'all are ticking time bombs.

Some of y'all, one word is, ooh, say something.

That's how some of y'all are.

When somebody hurts your feelings,

when somebody hurts your pride,

when somebody says something to offend you,

if you can remain calm and collected, that's patience.

This means when you go through unfavorable circumstances

that are not any person's fault,

you're not blaming God for what you're going through.

That's patience.

The fruit of patience is produced through provocation.

All of these fruit are produced when the opposite happens.

Patience is produced when somebody cuts you off

and you hold your tongue.

When somebody goes off on you

and you don't say what you really wanna say,

what you would say if you were in your hood days.

That's patience.

Kindness, goodness, these are too closely related.

Goodness is the quality of being good

and kindness is the action of goodness.

We know we serve a good God,

but he's not just a good God.

He gives us good things out of the kindness of his character.

And so when we walk in the spirit,

the goodness of God should fill our lives

and cause us to be good to our neighbor and to our enemies.

And look, check this out.

Goodness is not something that is corruptible.

God is good, he can never be bad.

Good can never be evil, evil can never be good.

So when you are truly walking in the goodness of God,

you can be around bad people, but it's not gonna affect you.

And I'm not saying that you aren't corruptible.

No, we get tempted, we fall into sin, we make mistakes,

and we should avoid things that cause us to stumble,

but God is not corruptible.

The Holy Spirit is not corruptible.

So when you are in the midst of adversity

and you're trying to display goodness in an evil world,

the only way you start to look more like the world

is when you abandon the Holy Spirit.

So if you start to talk like the world

and act like the world and think like the world,

it's probably because the goodness of the Holy Spirit

is no longer dwelling in you, causing that fruit to spoil.

Faithfulness, and again, man, I wish we could really go

into every single one of these,

but I wanna do a survey really quick of all of them.

Faithfulness is the ability to keep going,

the ability to endure and keep doing the work

even when you don't see the fruit of your faithfulness.

Maybe you can be faithful as long as you're being rewarded.

Oh, I'm gonna talk to somebody right here.

As long as they're giving you what you're giving them,

then you'll continue giving them the good

that you're giving them, but when they stop giving you

the good that you're giving them,

you're gonna stop doing the good.

That's not faithful.

That's not faithfulness.

That's loving with restrictions.

Faithfulness is continuing to do the work,

even when the event that you asked pastor

if you could do and prayed and fasted for, nobody shows up.

It's continuing to do the work

that God has placed in your life.

Faithfulness comes from the same word as faith.

A faithful person is someone in whom faith is placed.

Anybody can be faithful when it's easy,

but the fruit is produced in adversity.

Man, I remember, again, I was just talking about it.

I remember being a youth pastor back in the day.

I would prepare a sermon for like five or 10 people

to show up at our youth services.

It was discouraging, but it was a test of faithfulness.

Your faithfulness should be fueled

or not be fueled by the results that you get.

Your faithfulness should be fueled

by your obedience to the Lord.

And sometimes God will command you.

Listen, I want you to get this.

Sometimes God will command you to go in one direction

just to make you fail so that your faithfulness is tested.

God will make you fail just to see

if you're gonna keep going.

Gentleness, the ability to handle the truth with care.

Many Christians know the truth.

You have the truth, but you don't deliver it in a gentle way.

Christians are known for piercing and twisting.

The truth of the word already does the piercing.

You don't gotta twist it.

We got Christians who don't know how to be gentle

and their correction.

To be gentle means to be meek.

When God commanded Moses to speak to the rock,

to bring water to the nation of Israel,

and in his anger, he struck the rock and water came out.

The result was the same.

It was the same as if he would have spoken to the rock

like God asked, but Moses was held accountable

because in his anger, he let his emotions

get the best of him in his delivery.

He wasn't gentle.

Self-control, the last one.

Self-control is the discipline to say no to temptation

or to that fourth donut you wanna eat, right?

This applies to anything.

The discipline to hold your tongue,

the discipline to not give in to temptation,

the discipline to say no to things

that negatively affect your spirit.

How well does your fruit handle unfavorable circumstances?

That's the question today.

And sometimes we think, well, I'm not naturally kind,

I'm not naturally joyful.

People think I'm mad half the time,

I'm not a peaceful person.

Naturally, I'm an anxious person.

We look at some of these fruits

and it's like we're okay with having some of them,

but we don't need all of them.

It's as if we treat the fruit of the spirit

like it's the gift of the spirit.

Oh, well, God didn't give me that one.

I got joy, but he didn't give me patience.

No, you didn't give God your impatience.

That's what happens.

The more of yourself you give to God,

the holier you become.

You might say, well, I love you,

but I'm not a gentle person.

I'm gonna just tell you the truth

and if you don't like it, you get your feelings hurt.

That's on you, baby.

And we talk about these things like they're cute.

You know, like, oh, it's just my bad mouth.

I just, you know, the Lord's working on me.

He's been working on you for 15 years.

(congregation laughing)

We treat it like it's cute.

We treat the bad fruit like they're pets

to be kept around and fed.

It's not, your anger problem's not cute.

It's not cute.

It's not cute to not have self-control.

It's not cute to not be worried,

to be worried all the time.

We represent Jesus in this world.

And Paul says, when you walk by the Spirit,

these things will produce.

So when they're not being produced,

what does that tell you?

You're not being moved and led and empowered

by the Holy Spirit that we claim to have.

I don't know what your issue is.

Maybe it's anxiety, maybe it's stress, maybe it's pride.

But you choose whether or not to give

those weak moments to God.

That's walking in the Spirit.

And when you make light of the fruit of the Spirit,

the good fruit will not produce.

We've convinced ourselves that certain fruits,

they're just not for us.

But these aren't just good habits, church.

These aren't just good practices.

The fruit of the Spirit tells people who Jesus is in you,

just by knowing you.

Your peace should point to Jesus.

Your goodness should point to Jesus.

What does your fruit say about who God is in you?

I'm gonna have the worship team come up.

We didn't get a lot of emails today.

But everybody in this room, I know, struggles

with one of these on the most intimate level.

I'm not talking about external things.

I'm talking about, again, the things that make you you.

The world is gonna be the world.

They're gonna tempt you.

But if you aren't honest about your weaknesses,

you won't be able to give God those things

so that he can transform you and heal you

and make you holy.

I'm gonna share something with you

that I never thought I'd share with the church.

It probably goes against every pastor code

of not letting people see your weakness.

But I'm gonna share it with you

because the Lord has really taken me

on a character journey that has been incredibly healing

to me as a person and as a leader.

If I were to let the devil define me,

I know exactly what he'd say

because I know my weak points.

And the devil, he wouldn't attack my failures,

he would attack me.

He would attack me as a person.

The devil makes it personal, man.

Because he wants to get you to think

that you are the problem,

that you are too damaged to be repaired.

So if the devil were to define me,

he would probably say that I am a prideful person.

And not like the pride that I can't admit

if I'm wrong, I'm talking about like territorial pride.

Like that's mine type of pride.

Get your hands off that, that's mine.

That's the pride that I naturally deal with.

He would probably say that I'm prone to jealousy

because I'm a person who likes to achieve things

and if I fail at something,

it's only gonna make me bitter about who I am

and I'm gonna be angry with myself,

which increases my own insecurities.

He knows that naturally I like to please people

and in the flesh, I question more what people think

about me than what God thinks about me.

All of these things have some truth to it.

When I'm not in the spirit, I do have pride.

I am my biggest competitor.

So if I fail at something, I get angry with myself.

Melissa will tell you.

She'll tell you you're on your man period again.

(congregation laughing)

Because I'm moping around, I'm angry with myself.

I'm like, I'm just having a bad day.

I'm just having a bad week and I'm just mumbling

and I'm so upset with myself

because I didn't achieve something

that I thought I was gonna achieve.

Acting like a baby.

And the thing is I'm aware.

Praise God for awareness.

'Cause I'm aware.

I'm aware that if I am not in the spirit,

if I am not walking daily in the Holy Spirit,

these things produce spoiled fruit in who I am as a person.

And that's what I give to God,

that's what I give to the world,

that's what I give to the people that I minister to.

I need to be aware.

You need to be aware.

So many times I have allowed the enemy to define me,

but for good reason.

I know that this is gonna sound so counterintuitive,

but sometimes I don't mind

when the devil accuses me of things

because I can turn that around and say,

I'm gonna go ahead and give it to God.

Thank you for that.

Thank you for pointing that out in my character.

I wanted to know.

I need to know where I'm getting it wrong

because I am a God who loves my God and I wanna be holy.

And the closer I get to him, the holier I become.

So thank you for giving this to me

so that now I can give it to God.

The devil used to say, Ryan, you're a prideful person.

You're a prideful, I said, well, dang,

I better give it to God then.

Thank you for pointing it out to me.

I've learned to give God the weak points in me as a person.

I've learned to give every insecurity to the Lord.

And because I have given more to God,

I've become more holy over time.

What the enemy meant for evil, God turned into his glory.

But you gotta be aware.

You have to be aware of what's bad

so that you can give it to God.

'Cause the closer you get to God, the more filth is exposed.

Have you ever noticed that?

The closer you get to God, there's conviction everywhere.

Because the more in tune you get with the Holy Spirit,

the more you hear the Holy Spirit.

And so the closer you get to God, the more filth you see.

And the more filth that you see,

the more you're able to give it to God.

And the more you give to God, the holier you become.

The other day, I wanna end it with this story.

The other day,

I think it was Easter, Easter Sunday, resurrection Sunday.

Man, the devil's a liar on Easter Sunday.

I was in my office and I got word that there was a,

there was a transgender, transvestite person

that came into our church.

And right away, right away, I was like, wow.

Praise God, because I mean, you know what we've been,

you know what the Lord has been saying.

You know what we've been preaching about.

You know what we've been saying.

I mean, I've shared the vision with you that, man,

God's gonna begin to bring weird people into the church

so that they can get healed and transformed.

And we've prepared for it.

We've been preparing for it.

And I remember saying it for, I mean, for years,

what's gonna happen when that person comes in?

And so when I heard that this person came in,

I said, man, praise God, praise God.

It's happening.

I said, the vision is happening.

I remember looking up to God, I said, thank you, God,

because the vision is happening.

But now I gotta be honest with you.

I gotta be transparent with you.

And I hate to say it, but I'm gonna be vulnerable.

I've been vulnerable the whole day.

It's gonna make me sound like a punk.

He came out, I was going to come into the service,

and I saw that the man,

he was talking to Pastor Amaritsan and Pastor Danny.

And for the briefest second,

I'm gonna tell you what happened.

The enemy said, they're talking to your vision.

You know when God gives you a vision,

he doesn't really give you all the details,

but you get a vision,

and you start to write a little bit more.

You start to offer a little commentary

on the vision that God gave you.

You start to draw a little bit more of a picture.

You start to color it, and you envision it more

in a way that God didn't say it was gonna happen like.

So I remember thinking very briefly,

they're talking to your vision.

Because in my mind, I had this whole idea

that one day this man was gonna come in

or this woman was gonna come in,

and I was gonna meet him, and I was gonna say,

I was gonna introduce myself.

Hey, I'm Pastor Ryan.

I wanna let you know that we've been praying for you.

We've been expecting you, and we're glad you're here.

And I had this whole thing coming to me,

and I had this whole thing prepared.

And real quick, for a brief second,

those words, they're talking to your vision.

Within the same fraction of a second,

the Holy Spirit said, "Your pride is showing.

"Put it away.

"Your pride is showing."

I will tell you that if I wasn't aware,

if I wasn't walking with the Spirit daily,

if I hadn't committed to give God

the weakest parts of me years ago,

I would've ruined my Sunday

because I would've made it about me.

And God said, "Hey, I gave you the vision,

"but it's not your vision, homie."

I remember coming to the altar, and I had to repent.

I mean, I didn't dwell on it.

It was a fraction of a second, but I had to repent.

I said, "God, I'm sorry.

"That pride doesn't belong in me.

"The fruit that I wanna give to you,

"I want it to be good.

"And so I am calling on you today

"to be aware of the weakest points

"in your character and your life

"so that you can give to God what He deserves,

"the best, the best, the choice, grade A level fruit

"that you give to God, that you give to the world,

"that you give to your spouse, that you give to your kids,

"that you give to the people that you minister to,

"because you represent Jesus.

"And we need to give you the fruit of your choice,

"because you represent Jesus, and we need Christians

"all over this world to produce good fruits,

"more than just good ministries,

"more than just good theology.

"All of that is so important, but man, we need good fruits.

"And we need to remind the devil

"when he needs to be rebuked.

"We need to remind the devil of who we are now in Christ.

"He's trying to touch that.

"No, no, you don't touch my fruit.

"My fruit is produced by the Holy Spirit.

"You don't get to have your hands on it.

"You don't get to touch it.

"You don't get to accuse me of things.

"My fruit is produced by my Holy God,

"because I represent a Holy God.

"And I'm calling upon you today, church."

That's my prayer today, is that you would give God

the weakest parts of your being.

I want you to stand.

Lord, Lord, I pray, Father God, against,

against the anxiety, Father, that chronic anxiety.

My God, I pray against those who are always worried, Father.

I pray against, my God, those who are always

in their own heads and insecure and have no peace

about who they are and about what you're doing.

My God, I pray against, Lord, the chaos, Father God,

of our minds and our spirits.

My God, I pray in Jesus' name, peace to be produced, Lord.

I pray against bitterness.

I pray against jealousy, God.

Those who compare themselves to others, my God,

those who aren't happy with themselves, my God,

in Jesus' name, Lord, I pray that you remind us

that we are children of the living God,

created to look like you, not anybody else.

(gentle music)

Holy Spirit, make us holy.

Make us holy, my God, with our character,

with our DNA, with who we are, Lord.

Make us holy, my God.

And I just wanna offer one ultra call real quick.

If you need to come and submit something to the Lord,

if you need to submit anxiety to him,

if you need to submit the inability

to just have self-control,

if you need to submit pride or jealousy

or a competitive spirit to him,

I want you to do that right now

because I believe there is power and healing in that.

And the altars are open, the worship team's gonna sing,

but that's my ultra call to you today,

is that you bring the fruit that is about to go bad

at the feet of Jesus so that he would make it good.

Thank you, Father.

- Thanks for listening.

If you'd like some more information on Pneuma Church,

visit us on our website at mypneumachurch.org.

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and tag us @mypneumachurch.

Thanks again and God bless.

(gentle music)

[MUSIC PLAYING]