The Fruit | Ps. Maegan Pittman

Welcome to the Celebration Church Orlando podcast.

Thank you so much for listening today.

We hope it encourages you and inspires you.

Here's today's message.

That video always catches me.

I just love it so much because, you know, on Mother's Day, you think it's just the title of a mom, but it's really a person that has significant impact in others' lives.

It doesn't matter about the title, it just matters like what are you doing with that gift?

And I'm so thankful for each and every type of mom that's out there.

We celebrate and we honor you today.

You're doing a significant and beautiful job.

It's not an easy job, but it's very rewarding in the end.

So continue to do what you're doing.

We honor you today.

Can we give a round of applause for all the mother figures in the room today and online?

Amen.

Well, this morning I got a gift that I didn't want.

Um to be honest and transparent, this morning, like when I woke up, I got, you know, we're talking about the fruits today.

One of the fruits is, you know, obedience.

Um, I woke up with no voice.

And literally said, How am I going to do two services?

Not one, but two services with no voice today.

And I had the choice to say, literally, I can't do this today.

Or I had the choice to be obedient and operate in the fruit of the spirit.

I had a choice today.

And so what I what I did was I called upon people.

Listen, every day is not gonna be roses and sunshine, every day is not gonna be filled with all of these things that are gonna go right.

Sometimes things are gonna go wrong, but what are we gonna do in that moment?

And so I started reaching out to people.

And as I got to church and I could barely get my words out, they're like, Do you have a voice?

And I'm like, No, pray.

I'm like, can you pray?

And these women, I'm telling you, they were like, I'm praying for you.

They literally put hands on me, they put hands on my throat, I got some VIX, I got some throat spray, I got tea, I got advice.

And I'm telling you, right before I walked into the service, I was coming down this hallway and I saw Pastor Nate, and I was like, I hope I can do this today.

You know, I don't have a voice.

And literally, as I'm talking, my voice is normal.

And as soon as I recognized that, chills came over my body, and I was like, That's you, Jesus.

I literally needed a miracle today.

So I'm thankful.

I'm thankful for our God.

When you get in your deepest places, get to the people that are around you.

I'm getting ahead of my message, but um very emotional from what my husband said this morning.

Like, I am a champion for my people.

I'm I'm a champion for people I don't know.

Continue to do that, make a difference in the lives of your people.

Well, we are in the series, and I always get this mixed up.

You know, um, there is a way that you're supposed to say the series that we're in, which is parakletos.

Nope, my husband's not gonna correct me anymore.

It's all right.

God knows my heart.

But this is the Greek word um that Jesus uses to describe the Holy Spirit, and it means advocate, comforter, helper.

You know, and there are many times that we need help and we're going through things, so we need the strength, we need comfort, and we need support, and that is the Holy Spirit.

So if you've been in this, if you have missed any of the messages in this series, please feel free to go on to YouTube.

We have the videos there, you can catch up.

But I promise you, it will transform your life if you listen to the message.

The messages are not for here to just to hear something that's gonna feel us good, help us to feel good in the moment, but it's gonna help us to transform our lives and make to make a difference and to exhibit the characteristics that God would have for us.

Amen.

Alright, if you have your Bibles, can you turn to Galatians 5, 22 through 25?

Galatians 5, 22 to 25.

If you don't have your Bible, there should be the Bible in the sky.

Um, but I wanted to share some uh background context with you.

Uh, the apostle Paul, he was writing the book of Galatians to a couple, a group of churches in Galatia, which is a region uh that is in present-day Turkey, which I visited.

If you haven't had the chance to go, you should visit one day.

Um, and his primary focus was to lead the church out of legalism to a faith of love, obedience, and grace under the Holy Spirit.

It says, but the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

There is no law against these things.

Those who belong to Christ have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there.

Since we are living by the Holy Spirit, let us follow the Spirit's leading in every part of our lives.

Today I want to talk to you of what it looks like to operate with the Holy Spirit in our lives.

And I have a message, I have entitled this message, The Fruit.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, I thank you for this message.

I pray that the message seals our hearts, Lord God, that it stays in there and it's not plucked out.

I pray that it transforms us, that it renews our minds, and that it aligns us with your characteristics of the Holy Spirit.

I thank you for what you're going to do in our lives today.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray, Amen.

Amen.

Well, you know, God, He has given Adam and Eve a charge.

And that charge was to be fruitful and to multiply.

Fruitful means to yield fruit or put to be abundantly productive to produce results.

To be productive, we must be intentional.

And this is the word I'm gonna give you for today because we're gonna keep going back to being intentional, because anything that we do, it has to be intentional.

We can't just wing things, but we do have to be strategic in what in how we do it.

So otherwise, when we're not intentional, things don't take root and it doesn't produce good things.

It can also limit our growth.

Imagine you had a small garden.

Any gardeners out here?

Oh, we got a few.

Amen.

I want I envy you.

I want to be you when I grow up.

Even though I'm grown up, um, I think I haven't got there yet.

But with gardens, you need to, you know, water it, you need to fertilize it, you need to take care of it, you need to do all these things so it can grow.

But if you don't bother to take out the weeds, then those weeds can overtake what you have grown.

And as they grow taller and taller, you no longer can see what you were trying to produce, whether that was uh fruits and vegetables or whether that was a plant.

But eventually they'll stop growing and they won't live up to their full potential.

And how many of you know that this happens in our lives when we're not intentional?

We don't see fruit in our lives.

Just like the weeds choked out the vegetables or choked out that plant, the same thing can happen to us when we lack vision and we lack when we don't have we have these distractions in our lives, which we have so many times in our lives.

We have a lot of distractions.

We're a mom, we're doing this, we're doing that, we have a job, we have this.

And those distractions can choke our ability to be fruitful.

How many of you want to have fruit in your life?

I mean, I know I do.

I want to produce things, I want to prosper, I want to do things, and you see the evidence of my hard work, my dedication.

But if we're not intentional, we can have all the potential in the world, but still not flourish.

And if we don't put in the work and clear out the distractions, we'll never reach our full potential.

Galatians chapter 5 primarily focuses on the contrast between the freedom and the freedom of the spirit and bondage of religion.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

Paul then goes on to describe the conflict between the flesh and the spirit, and he lists them as this sexual immorality, idolatry, hatred, and jealousy, and contrast them with the fruits of the spirit love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

And we have a choice to make.

We have the choice to be intentional or not, and it has to be cultivated.

We have to cultivate those things in our lives.

To cultivate something means to foster growth and develop through intentional efforts.

It requires effort on our part to be intentional, such as nurturing, tending, and pruning.

And how many of you know sometimes we don't like pruning?

Or pruning is good.

Pruning is good when we're in the garden and you prune, and good things blossom out of things that are pruned.

And in that context of spiritual growth and development, it means deliberately working towards improving or developing kingdom characteristics.

Man, that's the hardest part is to develop kingdom characteristics.

Because sometimes when we get upset, those kingdom characteristics are not always there, right?

It requires intentionality.

This requires consistent effort, discipline, and a willingness to make the necessary adjustments along the way.

So, how do we cultivate those things in our lives?

Sometimes people give you one point, sometimes they'll give you two.

I'm gonna give you three today, which is like average.

Um, but our first point is gonna be stay connected to the vine.

You need to stay connected to the vine.

John 15, 5 says, Yes, I am the vine and you are the branches.

Those who remain in me, and I in them will produce much fruit.

For apart from me, you can do nothing.

If you have your Bibles or you're taking notes, that is so important.

It says, For apart from me, you can do nothing.

Listen, you can't produce the fruits of the Spirit on your own.

I wish we could.

I4 is a prime example of that, right?

You get on there and you're like, oh my gosh, you're yelling at them knowing they can't hear you, right?

You may wave a hand, hey, didn't you see me?

Like, we can't do those things on our own.

So when you do that and you try to forgive in your own strength, can you forgive in your own strength?

That's very difficult, right?

When someone does something to you and you feel justified, man, I don't want to forgive that person.

How do you control your anger in your own strength?

That's difficult to do.

I'll wait.

It's quiet in here.

It's hard to do it in your own strength, right?

So for us, the only way that we can do this is to have the Holy Spirit guiding and directing us and asking him to help us with that.

We must stay connected to the source, which is Jesus.

He is divine to produce all the fruit that we need to see in our lives that he wants to cultivate in our lives, not that we think should be there.

We can cultivate the fruit of the Spirit by spending time with him and spending time in his word.

So, apart from him, so just imagine we all have busy schedules in our lives, right?

And we have different seasons where we feel so close to God and then we feel so distant because guess what?

We haven't been on our word, work has been tiring us up, you're so tired, and all of those things.

And then what happens is the patience that we used to have is gone.

The love we have for somebody else, even if it's something minor, we take it out on them and we choose not to love in those moments.

But when we're connected to the vine, it helps us to be more accountable, we're sensitive to his spirit, and we want to treat them just as the Holy Spirit would treat us.

We would want them to treat them just like Jesus would anybody that was on the street, even if they had a background, even if they had things going on, even if they were not a good person, or whether they were a good person.

Jesus was consistent in his characteristics.

Now, here's what I know we're not perfect, and I know the Bible says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

But there must be some consistency in that.

We have to be consistent in our characteristics.

And the only way that we can do that is staying close to the vine.

Amen.

We also need to stay connected to other believers, they can hold us accountable to those things.

We don't like accountability, do we?

Accountability is hard.

Like I last night I had an incident with my husband, and I was like, oh my gosh, he's like, I'm challenging you on this part.

Don't get defensive.

And I'm like, but I'm defensive.

And then it's not like I'm defensive.

You need people like that in your lives because otherwise we go living our lives on our own terms.

We go living our lives on our own terms, and then we do the things that are opposite of the fruits of the spirit.

Just like a flower needs water to grow, we need to stay connected to the source of life, which is Jesus, to produce the fruit that we want to see in our lives.

Just like we can't water a plant once and expect it to grow, we need to spend time with Jesus to produce fruit consistently.

Let me tell you, I don't have a green thumb.

We have killed so many plants.

When people give me a plant, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is a blessing.

And then in the other ear, I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so terrible at this.

And I try.

I do such a consistent job at the beginning, and then when life gets busy, I neglect it.

And even if I neglect it for a second, it dies.

How much more can that be for us when we're far apart from God?

We try to take on these characteristics, and it's like, oh now I'm angry, I'm acting out of character, I don't have love or grace for people.

Um, it's so vastly different, but we cannot do this apart from Him.

Another way to cultivate the Holy Spirit in your life is to practice, practice, practice.

Going back to Galatians 5, 22 through 22 through 23, it says, but the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

One of the hardest things for us to do.

There is no long against no law against these things.

The fruit of the spirit is not something that appears magically.

Like we can't just pull it out and be like, I'm gonna have joy today.

Holy Spirit, you need to do it right now.

It doesn't happen that way.

It takes practice and intentional effort to cultivate these qualities in our lives.

We can do this by choosing to act in the fruits of the spirits with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in our everyday lives.

And we can ask the Holy Spirit to help us when we are struggling.

When we're struggling.

Everything is good.

When things are good, you can ask the Holy Spirit.

It's so easy.

But when we're struggling, we fail to ask him for the help.

Before entering into uh high school, uh, I think it was like when my spring year, uh, right before entering the high school, my sister ran track.

So I went to all of her track meets.

Uh loved it.

I was like, oh my gosh, this looks so easy.

Like, wait till I do it, I'm gonna be smoking people, like I was talking trash.

I was like, I'm I'm gonna beat these people.

I knew I was gonna do all this stuff.

You guys, I get to high school, doing practice, and I'm thinking I'm all that.

And the first meet, I'm in last place.

I'm telling you, God humbled me really quick.

I was like, I'm never gonna say it again.

I literally I was baffled.

I was like, I thought I was gonna win.

Mind you, I was just starting out.

I, you know, got ahead of myself with the confidence that I had with no practice.

And so um I started doing better.

I started working really hard and practice.

In one of the games, um, my coach needed points in the game.

Any um hurdlers in here?

Anybody do hurdles?

No, we had someone the last service.

I was like, all right, sister, you know my pain.

Um, but he put me in a race for hurdles, and it was like, I think the 300 hurdles.

So you're like going all the way around, and I was like, oh my gosh, I've never done this before.

But it should be easy.

I'm gonna jump over it, I'm gonna jump over each bar and I'll get through.

As long as I get points, I'll be in second place because there's only two people in the race, right?

Literally, we had um the whole school was out.

It was a homeschool game.

So I'm like, oh my gosh, I gotta show off, you know, I gotta do this.

And I jumped over the first hurdle and I hit it.

And my shin hit the next one, and the third one almost broke my neck.

Um, I almost fell, I almost crushed it, and I was so embarrassed.

People were like laughing.

I could see my friends laughing in the stands.

And I'm telling you, when I walked out, I was angry.

I was angry at my coach for embarrassing me.

I was like, how could you do this?

Like, you don't love me because why would you put me in there to be embarrassed by my peers?

You know, and I made an interval to myself.

I said, you know what?

I'm never doing this again.

I'm never gonna try this again.

I'm I don't care what he says, I'm never trying it, and I didn't.

So as I progressed and I've and I got really well practicing and practiced uh with races, uh, did relays and all that kind of stuff, I was really good through the Holy Spirit.

And it's done, let me not take credit.

I started to get good because I was practicing, and one day in 11th grade, two years later, he asked me, Hey, I really want you to do hurdles.

I feel like you, I see the potential in you, and I think that you'll do very well in this.

So he's starting me off with the the hurdles are typically like about this, they're pretty high.

But he started me off with real low, baby steps.

You have to have a certain amount of steps before you step over, have the right leg formation, tuck in, do all that stuff.

So I was like, okay, I'll master these.

Why he give me these low ones, you know?

I I master this.

And he raised it up, and I was able to um master doing the hurdles just by practicing every day, being focused and dedicated.

And it was in that moment of obedience, which was one of the fruit of the spirit, I began to see how I was flourishing and what God was calling to me to do in that season.

By the end of the school year, I was in the fastest heat in the state.

And so what I'm saying is we don't give up on God when He we have these characteristics.

He wants to develop something in us that is so great.

And even if we fall, get back up.

All he wants to see is consistency.

And if he sees consistency, we will flourish.

Amen.

We will flourish.

Thank you.

Just like the athletes need to practice to perform well, we need to practice the fruit of the spirit to see growth in our lives.

We have to practice patience, we have to practice joy, we have to practice love.

We may trip, but we need to get up and keep moving until you see the fruit.

Don't give up.

If you have a tendency to be uh sensitive or um angry or any of those things, don't give up on God transforming your life because that will be used as a testimony for other people, and you don't know what God is going to do within you with that.

Our second point is surround yourself with good fruit.

Proverbs 13 20 says, walk with the wise and become wise.

Associate with fools and get in trouble.

Man, how many times have we hung out with the wrong people growing up?

You know, you know they're not good for you.

You know when they're with you, they're talking about somebody else.

If they're talking about somebody else, they're gonna be talking about you.

Just remember that.

You're not exempt.

Um, or you get around someone and you feel like your characteristics change around that person, that it pulls you into being somebody.

Who you're not.

We all must surround ourselves around good people.

It says, wise cancel, wise counsel, become wise.

I growing up, I always loved everybody.

Listen, I loved everybody.

I wanted everybody to be my friend.

I just knew it.

My dad could see it from a mile away.

It was like, those people are not your friends.

I didn't believe him.

It took me into my 20s where I believed, oh my gosh, they really weren't good friends.

And so then I began to, when I kept making mistake after mistake, um, and not creating boundaries around, okay, this is your inner people.

Everybody can't be in your circle, but this is your inner people.

These are people that you can hang out with temporarily, and these are the people that, hey, every now and then, yay, hey, let's go out to dinner or something like that.

And so when I began to surround myself around wise counsel, I begin to see the characteristics that I knew I already possessed from the Lord, but I begin to operate in those things.

So I surround myself around people who are positive.

I surround myself around people who are fun, but I also surround myself around people who will hold me accountable.

I don't want yes men in my corner.

I don't.

I want people to be like, hey, man, sis, your character was off the chain today.

And that is not you.

Like, God has so much more for you.

That's not godly characteristics.

And girl, I know it's something going on.

Let's talk about it.

You need to have those people in your life because otherwise, if we just depend on the Holy Spirit, sometimes we're not listening to the Holy Spirit and we need a practical voice in our life.

Amen.

So when we surround ourselves around those types of people and we spend time with them, we'll exhibit those fruits that we want to see in our lives.

I've been so blessed for the last 15 years to have some amazing people that I can call on at a whim's notice and get goodly, wise counsel, and they'll pray for me.

The third point that I want to bring to our attention is we want to bear fruit that lasts.

As we cultivate this fruit of the spirit in our lives, it's important to remember that the ultimate goal is not just to produce fruit, but to pre-fruit, but to produce fruit that lasts.

Listen, I want fruit that's gonna last.

TikTok.

TikTok has a thing where you get fruit from the store and you use like baking powder and like uh vinegar, I guess, in there.

And um, and so it's supposed to clean your fruit.

When you rinse it off and put it back in there, you add water to it and everything, you let it clean for about 10 minutes or something like that, and then you put it back in your refrigerator.

It's supposed to last a little extra two weeks, right?

You know when we get fruit from publics, sometimes we take it and um the next day it's spoiled.

And it's like, man, I just bought this, or it lasts two or three days.

It doesn't last long.

We all want fruit that lasts.

So with the fruits of the Spirit cultivating your life, don't you want that to last within you as well?

And not to uh waver from circumstance to circumstance.

We want the thing that is going to last and push us to our potential and what God has for us.

You didn't choose me.

The John 15, 16 says, you didn't choose me, I chose you.

I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for using my name.

We can do this by serving others and sharing his love, the love of Jesus with those around us.

When we focus on loving others, we produce fruit that will have a lasting impact.

Just like planting the tree, the tree will provide shade for you for generations to come.

And when we're focusing on producing fruit that lasts, we're investing in the future and leaving a legacy for those who come after us.

I know as parents, keep an eye, we want to leave a legacy for our kids.

We want them to grow, we want them to prosper, but the only way we can do that is by making sure that we're staying close to the fruit, staying close to the source so that we can produce the fruit that we want to see and the legacy to come.

So as we celebrate Mother's Day, let's remember that just as a mother nurtures and grows her children, we need to nurture and grow the fruit of the spirit in our lives.

By connecting to the vine, by practicing the fruit of the spirit, and surrounding ourselves with good fruit, by doing these things, we can see the fruit of the spirit in our lives.

If you don't do anything today, be intentional.

Be intentional with the fruit so that God can allow you to reach your potential and the weeds are not being choking the things out in your life that God wants to do.

Amen.

Let us pray, Lord Jesus.

I just thank you.

I thank you for your word.

We don't take it for granted, Lord, that sometimes operating in a fruit can be difficult.

But I pray for each and every person here under the sound of my voice, that you be the strength that they can lean on to operate in those fruits of the Spirit.

I pray that you guide them, Holy Spirit, and that they be led more by you than their flesh.

I pray that the seed that you place in their heart of this message and the word that you have given them will not be plucked up, but that will be rooted, impacting them lives, their lives in a great way.

So I thank you for what you're gonna do, Holy Spirit.

We trust in you and we trust that your word will not come back void.

We trust that as we walk out of these doors, we will be transferred, transferred from the root renewing transferred by the renewing of our minds, Lord.

I just thank you for what you're gonna do, Lord.

I love you, and it's in your name we pray.

Amen.

Thanks again for listening.

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