Let them taste the fruit of your abiding in Christ.
Right from the start we do well to humbly and gladly recognize that the Holy Spirit is sovereign in all that has to do with the conviction and conversion of souls. He whose ways are higher than man’s ways may choose different approaches and procedures. Theoretically and actually, the successful soul-winner is the surrendered Spirit-controlled Christian, in whom that blessed Person can bear His fruit unhindered. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; against such there is no law.”
Love
Love finds a way. True love will drive us to prayer on behalf of those we are trying to win, and there God can reveal to us the best approach in each case—how to gain access to the citadel of a hard or indifferent heart. True love sacrifices, but sacrifice without true love is vain and empty (1 Cor. 13:3). Love changes our features, colors our speech, and tinges all that we do. Love will enable us to adapt ourselves; it will cause us to seek the necessary point of “common interest” because” love seeks not her own.” It may be the other person’s family, or work, or hobby.
Instead of trying to “Anglo-Saxonize” others, we will be willing to become like them in all that is consistent with New Testament teaching. As Paul wrote: “Unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,)…To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:20-22).
We will show “mercy with cheerfulness,” “be given to hospitality,” “weep with them that weep,” and “very gladly spend and be spent.” The world is dying for a bit of love, or better expressed, for lack of demonstrators through whom God can show His love and prove to them the existence of the Greatest of Lovers who for us died on a tree.
Joy
The great mass of people, whether religious or irreligious, know nothing of joy. They spend much time and money on worldly pleasures, and yet there is a great void in their lives. The Christian who has the joy of full salvation through believing the word of the Lord and walking humbly in His presence, even in the midst of adverse circumstances, is attractive to those seeking life’s answers. Our joy should cause them to ask us for a reason of the hope that is within us. George Mueller said that he considered it his first duty in the day to get his soul happy in the Lord.
Peace
Peace is the possession of all those who cast every care on the Lord, and whose minds are fixed on Him. How can they have peace who have not let the Prince of peace into their hearts, who do not live in the reality of the peace which He has “made… through the blood of His cross” (Col. 1:20)?
Only steady peace can come with assurance of complete forgiveness and eternal life. How can they have peace when they are afraid of God and of what their future may hold?
Longsuffering
Considering how Bible Christians are enabled by the Comforter to hold up under suffering and persecution causes many to desire similar consolation and fortitude. Many Catholics were convinced of the truth and led to seek the Lord by witnessing how victoriously the evangelicals suffered and died during the Inquisition.
Gentleness
The word is translated “kindness” in the Revised Version. An evident concern about the welfare of others shown by helpfulness, sacrificial good works and neighborly acts, sympathetic words and thoughtful deeds in times of sickness, bereavement, and adversity—all can help to open the heart to gospel light. “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men” (Gal. 6:10). “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Mt. 5:16).
Not by words of mouth so often
Is the world convinced of truth,
But by deeds of loving service
From the heart bring fullest proof.
Goodness
This refers to character: “None is good save one—God.” On earth true goodness is godliness manifested, lived out by the Holy Spirit in God’s children, and is without guile or hypocrisy. A holy, wholesome life is an unanswerable argument, shining as a light in the midst of a sinful and perverse generation. May we thus “adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.”
Faith[fulness]
Faith not only makes possible many spiritual and material blessings from God which show Him to be a faithful Father, but it also makes its possessor steady, faithful to his word, faithful to his family, faithful to his duties. In times of adversity, men do not turn to doubters or unstable people for help. The true Christian’s conduct will let them see, too, that while we claim to be justified by faith alone, it’s not a dead faith, but one that works by love. “By faith the walls of Jericho fell down” (Heb. 11:30), and by faith other walls of resistance will fall down as we prayerfully compass them about with a good testimony.
Meekness
“Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly” (Mt. 11:29). “The meek will He teach His way” (Ps. 25:9). Bible meekness involves subjecting ourselves to governments in every way that does not go against the precepts of our Lord in the New Testament. It means not presuming special privileges because of race or social standing, turning the other cheek, and reviling not again, but committing our souls to a faithful Creator.
Temperance
Temperance refers to self-restraint, which in the Spirit-filled life means being God-controlled. That quick temper about personal slights and injustices melts away before the loving, forgiving Spirit of Christ. Appetites are sanctified for their proper use. Often lack of temperance in one thing weakens our testimony and hinders us from declaring the whole counsel of God. If Christ is worth anything, He is worth everything. To live simply, live for eternity, and to show no ambition for that which the world counts gain, is a good practice and an effective testimony, especially in other countries than our own where outsiders are under special scrutiny.
Fruit growing in a desert world
All this is in such contrast to the spirit of the age: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God” (2 Tim. 3:1-4). The world cannot help but notice the difference when they taste the Spirit’s sweet fruit produced in the life of one rooted in God and abiding in Christ, the Branch.