Are you hooked up to the spout where the water comes out?

I have had three somewhat successful vegetable gardens in my lifetime. The first one was while I was a seminary student in Ft. Worth, Texas. I had two large plots of plowed up ground in the backyard of the house we were renting. The second was when I was the pastor of my first church, about ten miles outside of the community of Crawford, Texas. It, too, was while I was a student in seminary. And the third was while I was pastoring a small country church in Neches, Texas. I had graduated from seminary, but this “farming stuff” was still new to me.

Now, I do not have what is called, “a green thumb”, but we were able to plant and grow a few vegetables, among these were tomatoes, lettuce, squash, some potatoes, and a few skinny carrots! I even tried my hand at growing corn while I was at Crawford. However, two rows of corn weren’t quite enough to produce any corn on the cob worth looking at! The few that I did harvest looked like someone had already eaten most of the kernels off the cob! How was I to know that corn took a lot of acres of planting? This novice had never grown corn before! Oh, well, it was fun trying to produce something from mother nature that we could eat.

But do you know what? This gardening business is hard! You don’t just go and throw some seeds on the ground and expect a harvest, you have to first plow and cultivate the ground. Then when your soil is nice and pliable, you have to make some furrows in which to plant your seeds. Then you have to water it almost daily, and, in order to protect your plants, you have to sprinkle insecticide on them as they grow so you can keep the bugs and beetles and worms away that are looking for a free meal! This, too, is cultivation. And it is a daily event.

The Bible also talks about a garden, only this garden doesn’t grow vegetables, it grows fruit, spiritual fruit, the kind that is supposed to be growing in our lives and growing not just for us to eat, but for other people to eat as well. In fact, it really is for other people to benefit from than it is for ourselves, yet producing this kind of fruit in our lives benefits us as well.

Turn to Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the fifth chapter, and verses twenty-two and twenty-three. Here Paul lists the fruit that the Holy Spirit comes to produce in our lives; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, geneleness, and self-control. Folks, this kind of fruit is hard to produce. On our own, it’s impossible because we get in the way. We allow sin and selfishness and anger and judgment and all kinds of things get in the way of the Holy Spirit producing this kind of fruit. That’s why Paul called it, “the fruit of the Spirit”, because it is He, the Holy Spirit, who is the gardener, the waterer, the cultivator, and reaper. We are basically the fallow ground in which He grows His fruit. It’s kind of humbling to walk with the Lord sometimes, isn’t it?

What happens when you water your yard? The first thing you do is to bring out your garden hose. Next, you hook up one end of your garden hose to the outside faucet, and at the other end, you hook up your particular sprinkler. Then what do you do? Quite simply, you turn on your outside faucet and watch as the water streams through your garden hose and out your sprinkler attachment and on to that part of the yard where you place your sprinkler. What is taking place that you can’t see but that you can see the results of? The water is streaming through your hose and coming out of your sprinkler, watering the ground around it. Your water hose is just a conduit for the water to flow through, isn’t it? It’s just that simple. We, by faith, ask the Holy Spirit to produce in us His fruit so that His fruit can benefit not only our lives, but the lives of everyone it touches. We are just the conduit through which His fruit flows. Let me ask you. Are you hooked up to the Holy Spirit? Think of it this way, are you hooked up to the spout where the water comes out?