Per Ola Wiberg-Powi

When writing about spirituality, I much prefer to write about the fruits of the spirit than the subject of spirituality itself. I believe that each person’s spirituality is totally unique for each of us. Yet however we practice our spirituality, the fruits of the spirit will be reflected in our personality. If there are no fruits revealed, I question if the person is surrendering his/her will and life to the care of a God of his/her understanding.

One of the guiding principles of AA is that each member is taught to “not take someone else’s inventory”. In other words, The AA member is taught to take his/her own “inventory”. In continuing to blame others for our behavior, we are not checking our own motives. So, if we are truly committed to being changed, we begin the long road to self-discovery by learning to keep our side of the road clean. (In a side note to this, I have to confess that my favorite T-shirt of all times was for sale at an AA convention, and the slogan was: “Go ahead and take my inventory because I’ve already taken yours.”)

The fruits of the spirit are the heart of human change by a relationship with the God of his/her experience. From bible-knowledge.com, the fruits are listed:

Here are the 9 fruits of the Holy Spirit listed one right after the other in a bullet point format:

• Love
• Joy
• Peace
• Longsuffering
• Kindness
• Goodness
• Faithfulness
• Gentleness
• Self-control

Now here is the specific verse from Scripture where these 9 fruits are being given to us by the Lord:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” (Galatians 5:22)

From Spirithome.com--

• Paul Describes the Spirit’s Fruit (with links to specific fruit)
• Other Passages Which Bear Fruit
• What Is the Fruit of the Spirit?
• Reconciliation and Unity
• Recap

Therefore, I want to continue focusing on the uplifting qulities that spirituality produces. 

The first quality I want to provide links for is creativity. I believe creativity to be the source for being joyful and happy. It is the place where we get to “play” and is the source of “flow” as I understand it to be.

Love-hate by _abhi-1

One of the many wonderful benefits from using WordPress is the broken links report. For years, I have been ignorant of how to fix my broken links because I don’t write code. But now, for all my WordPress blogs, I can see the broken links for that blog and go right in and either fix it or eliminate it.

The extreme importance that God puts on the fruits of the spirit is emphased in bible-knowledge.com,

When God the Father purposely isolates and spells out 9 specific qualities that will be coming direct from His Holy Spirit – He is really letting you know the extreme importance of these 9 specific fruits.

These 9 fruits are major fruits and qualities that are coming direct from God Himself – and every Christian should do the best they can to work with the Holy Spirit in getting all 9 of these fruits worked into his or her personality.

Continuing your study of the fruits at this site:

“I’ll first start off by bullet pointing each of these 9 specific fruits so that you can have all nine of them isolated at the top of this article. I will then give you the Scripture verse where these 9 fruits are coming from, and then do a brief commentary on each one of these fruits so you can fully understand what each one of these fruits are all about and how they can dramatically change the quality of your life and your state of well-being if you are willing to allow the Holy Spirit to start to work all 9 of these fruits into your mind, soul and personality.”

A study of the fruit of the spirit of faithfulness is from discipleshiptools.org.

A Christian family that creates their life around their faith is savethephillipsfamily. Unfortunately, I only found her husband’s name several times, Tobe, but failed to find an “about the author” so I will call her Mrs. Phillips. She may have a broken link as I couldn’t access the history for the site. But she is an amazing author and has started a study of the fruits of the spirit. These lessons she shares with her children.

“I started the first lesson by discussing fruit with my children, talking about what fruits they like and what makes those particular fruits so incredibly delicious to their little tummies. We discussed what good things fruits do for our bodies (i.e. providing nourishment, helping sustain energy..BTW, I don’t think I used the word “sustain” with my 2 and 4 year old, giving our bodies vitamins) and why it is important to eat them.”