Joyce Meyer - Understanding Gifts vs Fruit - Part 1
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The reason why I had this made was because I want to make a point. The Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, which is humility, and self-control. Something that I began to realize a long time ago is that all of the fruit come out of love. You see, love really is "The Fruit" of the spirit. And you're not really gonna have any of these if you don't have this.
Now, yes, there might be some that would be a little more naturally patient person. My husband is a more naturally patient person than I am. But the real fruit of the Holy Spirit, we're not just talking about personality traits, but the real fruit of the Holy Spirit has to come because the love of God has been put in us and because the Holy Spirit lives in us and where he is, his fruit is. But then they're also all held in place by self-control.
So I kind of look at self-control and love as two bookends and it's like they all come out of love, but if I don't have self-control, I'm not gonna be humble. If I don't have self-control, I'm not gonna be faithful. I'm gonna give up on things when it gets hard. If I don't have self-control, I'm not gonna be good to anybody or kind to anybody or patient. I'm not gonna be peaceful because when something upsets me, I'm just gonna have a fit and lose my temper and just lose my peace. I'm not gonna have Joyce if I don't have self-control because as soon as something happens that I don't like, then I'm gonna be all upset.
So I want you to see how these things work together this weekend. But I wanna talk to you tonight about the difference in the gifts and the fruit. I want to talk to you about character development because I think we have to understand how we have a tendency to look at gifts compared to how God looks at gifts and how we need to realize that gifts are something that God gives us. We don't do anything to earn 'em. We don't really have to do anything to develop 'em. I mean, yes, we need to work with 'em, you know, we need to learn how to use our gifts. But gifts are given.
Fruit, however, is not given. It's developed. It's given to us in seed form when Christ comes to live in us, but the only way that we develop the Fruit of the Spirit is through being put in situations where we need to use them and then using them. And it's like a muscle that's inactive. It will become weak and wimpy, but when you begin to use that muscle, every time you use it, it gets a little bit stronger, a little bit stronger, a little bit stronger and a little bit stronger. You pray for patience and what you're gonna get is a trial. I might as well tell you the truth before we get into this: if you start praying for the Fruit of the Spirit to be developed in your life, you are gonna get some people that are hard to get along with.
You are gonna meet some situations that are gonna be hard on your temperament, but you need to be bold enough and brave enough to say, "God, whatever I gotta go through to get to where you want me to be, I want to go through it. I want to grow up. I want to be the person you want me to be". Because here's what's gonna happen if you don't, you're gonna spend your whole life going around and around and around and around and around the same stupid mountains, up and down and up and down and up and down. Feeling bad and wanting to do the right thing, doing the wrong thing and spending three days feeling guilty. We need to not be afraid to grow. Everybody say, "I'm not afraid to grow".
Now, God gives gifts to men and women. They are abilities. Everything that you can do that you're good at is a gift that God has given you. And to be honest, I think in the world, we admire people for their gifts, perhaps, a lot more than what we should. What we need to do is admire the God more who gave them those gifts. And so what happens because people want admiration and they want acceptance and they want applause. Even as Christians, we get overly concerned about our gifts or what we can do and in the process of that sometimes we don't get nearly concerned enough about our character. A lot of people have a gift that will take them somewhere, but they don't have enough character to keep them there once they get there.
That's why we see so many rising stars. Their gift take them to the top of some plateau and then they will make a total, complete fool out of themselves, fall into sin, do something shameful and terrible and if they're going it in Christ's name, it's even worse. And then people get confused and say, "Well, I just don't understand". That's why many times, even though you have a great gift, and many of you do, you have abilities and things that you can do. And you do not understand why God is not using you. You don't understand why the doors are not opening for you. And I tell ya something you better do, you better pray that no door opens for you until God has got your character to the place where you can walk through it with a right attitude.
We get in too big of a hurry today to get promotion. And then we have people that have got a lot of gifts, but they don't have anything on the inside. The abilities that God gives us distinguish us from one another. They don't make us better than one another, but they make us different from one another. I am a very good communicator, but I'm not a singer. I'm a teacher, but I'm not a musician. God doesn't give each one of us every gift, although he could. If he could give us one gift, he could give us a hundred gifts, but he doesn't let every one of us do everything. And I wonder why he does that? Because he wants us to need each other. And if you can do something that I can't do but I need what you can do, then that means I'm gonna need you.
And what he wants us to realize is that he gives all of us the gifts that he wants us to have. He doesn't want us to be jealous of one another. He doesn't want us to covet what somebody else has. He doesn't want us to spend our life trying to be what somebody else is. Come on now. He wants us to get satisfied, content with the gift that he has given us whether it's a public gift or a private gift, whether it's a gift that the world claps about or one they don't think there's all that much to. And you know we're all kind of like that to a certain degree. You meet a new person and you say, "Well, what do you do"? And if they say, "Well, you know, I'm a waitress or, you know, I work on the assembly line at the car plant or, you know, I'm whatever".
You're like "oh, that's nice". But if somebody says, "I'm a scientist or I'm a doctor," you're kind of like... But see, the truth is one of those people is not any more important than another and one of them is not any better than the other because the only reason the scientist can be the scientist is because God has given him the brains to do it. And many times, they get so smart that they can't even glorify the God who gave them the ability to do what they're able to do. One of the worst mistakes that we can make is to be proud of what we can do. And then we ramp it up to another level and we get an attitude about other people who aren't good at what we're good at.
"Well, why are you so slow"? Well, the only reason why you're fast is because God made you that way. "Well, how could you not understand that"? Well, you wouldn't understand it either if God didn't enable you to understand it. I want some people tonight to come to the point where, first of all, they totally accept themselves for what they are. Learn to appreciate what God has enabled you to do, whether it's cooking, teaching children, being a helper, being an administrator, being somebody who loves to clean houses. I'm telling you what. I'm glad that I've got somebody that loves to clean my house because I do not love to clean it, but I do hate dirt.
So I am glad that I have got somebody that loves, I am glad that I have got somebody that knows how to fix my hair. I am glad for the people who invented this make-up that I'm wearing. I am glad because all I can do is talk. I'll talk to them all day long if they'll do the stuff that I can't do. You know, I came into a real strong walk with God back in the '70s when there was a great charismatic outpouring around the earth. A lot of people being touched in a powerful way by the Holy Spirit. And there was a lot of teaching, a lot of teaching about the gifts of the spirit. And I'm gonna talk to you a little bit tonight about the gifts of the spirit because probably now we're in a time where there's not enough teaching, about the gifts of spirit. And you can make too much out of anything.
You know, God wants us to prosper, but that's not all he wants so if all you ever do is preach prosperity, then people are just gonna get money minded and they're gonna forget all about God. Everything needs to be taught in balance and God gives us gifts and he wants us to learn how to function in those gifts and use those gifts because what a gift from God is is a supernatural endowment of power that distinguishes you and keeps you from having to live an ordinary life. With the gifts of God, you can live ordinary everyday life in a supernatural, extraordinary way. They are endowments of power.
So we're gonna take a look at some of these gifts. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on it because I want you to know that even though God gives us gifts and he wants us to use them, what he really wants more than anything is for us to develop fruit. The Bible says that we are to bear roots downward and bear fruit upward. We get root downward and then fruit comes up. When you plant a seed in the ground, you see nothing on the surface until those roots go down in the ground and take hold way down deep inside, then there's some fruit on the top. If you have a tree that doesn't have deep roots and it bears much fruit, the first storm that comes along, it's gonna blow it over.
But if it's got deep, deep roots, storms won't destroy it. I used to sit in my living room, 30-some-odd years ago after God had called me to teach, and I would watch people preaching on television and I would think: I do not understand why God will not let me go out and have a public ministry and why all I'm getting to do is teach this little, bitty home Bible study in my living room every Tuesday night and I've been doing this for five years already. And I would look at some of those people and think, "I could teach circles around you".
Now, how many of you can guess why I was in my living room floor and they weren't? And I could teach then like I can now, but I didn't have any character. I was full of pride. I had no humility. I had no gentleness. I had no patience. My joy was controlled by my circumstances. I didn't know the first thing about love, not the first thing. Oh, I could pat somebody in church and say, I love you with the love of the Lord. Oh, my gosh, we have so overdone that. I mean, every week in church somebody'd tell me, "Now go hug somebody and tell 'em you love 'em with the love of the Lord".
I didn't even like the people. And then I was probably gonna leave church and go gossip about 'em, but I loved them with the love of the Lord. And I didn't understand why God wouldn't loose me on the world. "Let me at 'em. Here I come. Preacher Joyce". Is anybody understanding what I'm saying? So, you can understand that we need to work on this a little bit before we go anywhere else. So, in God's kingdom, we are not known or applauded by the gifts that God gives us, but what God looks for is fruit. He looks for character. He says you will know them by their fruit. The world admires gifts.
Boy, if you can do something that the world think is great, you're in. But God admires character. Gifts are easy, they're given. We're not better than one another because we can do something that someone else can't do. We must learn to live deeper. "Either make the tree sound (healthy and good), and its fruit sound (healthy and good), or make the tree rotten (diseased and bad), and its fruit rotten (diseased and bad): for the tree is known and recognized and judged by its fruit".
Fruit. We need to learn how to be fruit inspectors. We need to live deeper. We need to look deeper, at the people's lives that we're around and the people that we get hooked up with. You know that a peach tree is a peach tree because it bears peaches, right? A peach tree doesn't go around with a megaphone yelling, "I'm a peach tree. I'm a peach tree. Yo, look at me. I'm a peach tree". People come up and say, "Yeah, well, where's your peaches"? Well, that's what happens with Christians. "Oh, I'm a Christian. I've got a bumper sticker. I've got a Jesus pin. I've got a tape recorder. I say 'hallelujah, praise the Lord! Thank you, Jesus'! I cast out devils. Whoa-ho. I'm a Christian".
Yeah, well, where's your fruit? You're known by your fruit. Are you helping anybody? Are you patient? Are you loving people? Are you a giver? Are you quick to apologize? Are you gentle? Are you faithful? Are you sticking with something and refusing to give up on anything? How do you treat people? Those are the things that are important to God. Somebody say, "Amen".
All right, let's look at some gifts for a minute. 1 Corinthians 12. "Now about the spiritual gifts (the special endowments of supernatural energy), brethren, I do not want you to be misinformed". So God wants us to be educated about the gifts of the spirit. How many of you really have never heard that much about the gifts of the spirit? Let's see your hand if you've never heard all that much about the gifts of the spirit? Okay, well, I think that that number is only gonna get more and more and more as years go by if we don't start doing some teaching about these gifts.
And you know, I went to a church for a lot of years and I never knew about the gifts of the spirit. I didn't know that, you know, there were supernatural things available to me. And you know we have a desire for the supernatural, do you know that? Because there's a spiritual part to us, we have a desire for spiritual things. We want to be able to know things that we don't know how we know them. We want these gifts. We want these supernatural gifts and yet, very often, people are afraid to teach about them because they don't understand them or they're afraid that people will get out of balance and lean on them too much.
So, it goes on and talks about a lot of different things in here I want you to study it all for yourself later. But it starts out in verse 8 and says, "To one is given in and through the Holy Spirit [the power to speak] A message of wisdom, and to another [the power to express] A word of knowledge". And these are very practical gifts. Many times, I will get words of knowledge. It's not something where I have to stand up in a service and say, "Yo-ho, look at me. I'm about to operate in a gift. I have a word of knowledge," which was some of what was going on back in the '70s that got a little bit wacky. You know, it was like everybody was trying to display their gift. And I got so sick of people saying to me, "Well, what's your gift? Well, what's your gift? Well, what's your gift"?
You know everybody was confused about what their gift was and what their call was and nobody wasn't doing much of anything, certainly not growing up. Was anybody back around those days, you remember what I'm talking about? Amen. So, it's important that we're taught about them, but we want to understand the real value of them. So but I get words of knowledge all the time. I believe when I'm preaching, that God speaks things through me. And you're out there going, "How in the world could you have known that? I can't believe that you said that. I came here tonight asking God if you don't tell me thus and so". I mean I have people tell me that kind of stuff all the time.
Have any of you ever had that happen when I've been speaking on television, you're like, "How did you know that"? Well, I don't even know that it's happening, but God has given me a word of knowledge. There's times when I will lose something and I will just see where it's at. I'll just get like this, and I'll know where it's at. And I'll go and there it is. Looking all over the house for my keys and all of a sudden, I'll see the front seat of my car and that's where they were. Go out there and find the keys.
So, these gifts are very valuable: word of wisdom, word of knowledge. It talks about faith, wonder-working faith. The gift of faith is different than the ordinary faith that we live by every day. We all have faith, but then God sometimes will give you a gift of faith for something that there's no way in the world that you could do it if God didn't give you that gift. But to you, it's not that big a deal. See, Dave and I have a gift of faith when it comes to running this ministry. Do you know that if we didn't have that, I would fall over dead from fright right now just thinking about the bills that I have to pay in the next month? I mean, it would just completely do me in.
If I didn't have that gift, I would be afraid to stand up in front of the crowds and be bold. And I didn't even know I had that gift for a long time and several years ago, another minister said to me, "Well, don't you realize that you have a gift of faith to run this ministry"? Because to me, it's no big deal. It's not that big of a thing. That's why I say when God gives us gifts, we don't need to go around patting ourselves on the back because God enables us to do what we do and we need to give him the glory for it. And that's also why we don't need to look at other people and think if we're not like them, there's something wrong with us.
Come on now. I said, we don't need to look at other people and think if we're not like them that something is wrong with us. Amen? I had breast cancer 23 years ago. Had to have a surgery. I know other people that have had cancer and gotten supernatural healings. Well, there would have been a time in my life where I would have thought, "Well, what's wrong with me? What's wrong with my faith? Doesn't God love me"? But I tell you when you get to the point where you understand these things and you know that God loves you but his plan for everybody is not exactly the same. He healed me. He just didn't do it the same way that he did her.
I had to have a surgery, but I never had to have any chemo. Never had to have any radiation. I get checked every year. I've never had any kind of cancer since then. God took care of me. I missed two weeks preaching and went right back to work. But if you don't know who you are, then you don't understand that God gives some people gifts and if he chooses not to give that to you, then God will still meet your need, but it may just not be the same way that he met their need. And then you don't have to compare yourself with other people always wondering what is wrong with you because you're not getting it the way they got it.
I felt like by the time we got done tonight that some people would be able to go, "Ah... You mean I'm okay"? And so then there's working of miracles. Discerning of spirits. That's such a great gift to have. So you can look and somebody and they may look perfectly good on the outside, and you've all had this experience, but yet, you just "Something's not right. Something's not right". Where we make our mistake if we're not operating in the Fruit of the Spirit is instead of keeping that between us and God and praying about it and just watching, we'll go tell 20 people. "You know something's just not right about them".
Come on, I'm preaching better than you're acting. That's why if we have a gift, but we don't have fruit to balance it out, then those gifts can actually become very dangerous. I've known people that had real sharp gifts of discernment, I mean, spiritual gifts of discernment but they never matured in God and they did not have the Fruit of the Spirit. And I'm telling you, those people saw a devil in every doorknob. It was like "Ooh, ooh. Ooh, ooh". Sitting in a restaurant with a girl one day.
"You see that angel over there in the corner"? I'm trying to eat a bowl of soup. She claimed to see angels all the time and I never saw 'em, and you know? So, I'm like, "Well, what's wrong with me, God? Why don't I see angels"? Well, I'm not sure she was seeing them either, but even if she was, she should have kept her mouth shut about it. She didn't need to be telling me over soup that there was an angel in the corner because what she was doing was trying to impress me, and we don't need to try to impress one another.
The Bible says that these gifts are given as the spirit wills and they are given for the good and the profit of all and for the glory of God. We don't use them to show out. We don't use 'em feel like we're better than other people. I'm not better than anybody else because I'm up here preaching tonight. Phil's not better than anybody else because he's obviously a great songwriter and a great singer. We're not better than anybody else just because we happen to be up here tonight.
Let me tell ya something. There are people in this room tonight that are more famous in heaven, than any one of us will ever be standing up here on a platform. And I know that. I know that I know that I know that. I mean, there are people in here tonight that are so valuable to the Kingdom of God that it is absolutely mind boggling, and yet, nobody will ever know their name, but God knows their name.