As promised, I’ve embedded my instagram from March that got me thinking about fruits of the spirit…

A photo posted by BrightonTheDay.com (@brightonkeller) on Mar 27, 2015 at 7:28am PDT

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to really (truly) live for Christ.

I’m not talking about the safe or cool way either…I’m talking about doing it FOR REAL. I think there have been periods of my life where I kind of put God in a box – as cliche as that may be.

And the more I get to know Him, the clearer it becomes that He wants ALL of me. My mornings, my playlists, my outfits, my taxes, and even the silliest and most trivial things in my life – he wants it ALL

Anyway, all this has me meditating on the question, “WHAT does it look like to live a life for Him?”

And obviously, this has led me to study the fruit* of the Spirit. And I have listened to Tim Keller’s sermon on “How to Change” (from June 2010) 3x and have since really dug in, prayed, and studied all the truth packed in there. SO GOOD. And so relevant to the Christian walk. Anyway, I wanted to share these thoughts with y’all!

Keller talks about the importance and reason why Paul presents the “fruit” as a singular, rather than “fruits” of the spirit….the fruit is gospel-character produced by true doctrine believed and felt. The deeds of the flesh are produced by living under the law; they are the inevitable results of believing the false (!) doctrine that our performance keeps us in God’s good graces. The fruit of the Spirit is simply just Christian character; it is a multifaceted way to describe holiness. Listen to the sermon and it will make this clearer – it’s so beautiful omg don’t hate me for the novel y’all!

*it’s actually important to note that here, the “fruit” of the Spirit is singular, not plural. Keller explains why in the sermon.