“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8).
Do you remember your first taste of the Lord’s goodness? If you’re like me, your first tangible experience of his character was through someone He put in your life—maybe a parent, grandparent, friend, neighbor, or Sunday school teacher. When that person told you about the Lord, you listened because you tasted his goodness through the way she treated you and through what you observed about her life. You were tasting the fruit of the Spirit.
Is that what people taste when they interact with you?
The fruit we bear when we are walking in the Spirit is neither from ourselves nor for ourselves; it comes from the life of Christ in us, and its purpose is to feed others. When they taste the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in our lives (Gal. 5:22-23), they are tasting the goodness of the Lord.
But fruit only grows under the right conditions, when the sap of a healthy tree or vine flows through its branches. If we want to bear fruit, we have to stay connected to Jesus, the vine (John 15:4-5), whose sap flows into us only when we spend time with him.
Are you bearing fruit that others can taste?
Whatever season of life you’re in, God has placed people around you who need to taste the Lord’s goodness. For me in this season, it’s my kids—four of my favorite people, who are all looking to me every day to learn what God is like. Sometimes it’s painful to ask myself that what my kids are tasting when they observe and interact with their mom. Is it stress, irritability, complaining, ingratitude, anxiousness, or anger? If so, our family Bible reading, hymn singing, and spiritual discussions will taste bitter to them, counteracting my best efforts to disciple them. But if what they’re tasting is sweet, the things of the Lord will appeal to them—and that’s what I want for them above all.
Is God pruning you?
Just like every fruit tree needs pruning from time to time, every Christian needs tending by the Gardener. Like a sharp pair of pruning shears, the trials in our lives are his tools to cut out the dead branches in our lives—pride, self-sufficiency, complacency, selfishness, unforgiveness—so the branches that remain will bear sweeter fruit. Sometimes He prunes us not because we’re unfruitful, but because we are bearing fruit—and He wants to help us bear “more fruit” (John 15:1).
Are you connected to the vine?
I keep making the classic mistake of trying to produce fruit on my own, apart from Christ. Without making time to let His sap flow into me, I jump into my day, resolving to work harder at being kinder and gentler with my kids. And apart from Christ, it never works. I have learned the hard way that Jesus meant what He said: “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Why do I even try?
If you aren’t bearing fruit, get connected to Jesus however you can in the season you’re in. If you’ve drifted from him, any small step toward him matters: soaking up his words (even for a few minutes), praying (however imperfectly), and singing or listening to worship music all foster your relationship with him. The fruit of the Spirit will come from the outflow of that relationship.
In Second-Mile People, Isobel Kuhn, missionary to China in the 1930s, wrote about a friend named Dorothy who influenced her young faith profoundly. Shortly after the women met, Dorothy invited Isobel on a walk, prayerfully intending to have a serious talk with her about the Lord—but the conversation never went that direction. Instead, they laughed and joked as they walked, and Dorothy felt like a total failure. Dorothy had no idea that God was using her radiant, winsome spirit to draw Isobel to Himself in ways her preaching would not have.
Remembering the incident, Isobel wrote:
“Oswald Chambers says, ‘The people who influence us most are not those who buttonhole us and talk to us, but those who live their lives like the stars in heaven and the lilies in the field, perfectly simply and unaffectedly.’ . . . We fall in defeat when we try to ‘judge’ the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives; ours is to yield to Him in joyous faith, and not worry as to the kind or value of the fruit He is producing. Dear Dorothy’s special gift of the Spirit was her radiance, her shining happy joy in her walk with the Saviour, but I doubt if she ever knew she possessed it. She thought she should have been preaching, when as a matter of fact the Holy Spirit was using her gift of shining, to the very fullest extent in the life she had prayed to touch.”