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How do I know when I am making spiritual progress in my life? Is there any objective criterion that can be applied? Am I a better person for being a Christian, or does it make any difference? Am I growing in grace? Am I improving? Just where do I measure on the spiritual scale?

These and similar questions are the ones I hear from the people in the congregation and from my own heart. Does the Bible offer any criteria for evaluating my life in the Spirit? Or is the answer the one my parents gave me when I inquired how I would know when I was really in love. "You'll know," they agreed, "You'll know."

For over fifty years I have been in love with God through Jesus Christ and I still entertain these kinds of questions. Preaching this series of sermons in a local congregation helped me to realize that there are in fact certain observable fruit of the Spirit. The challenge then became, how to ripen the fruit.

This series of sermons is based on the struggle with the nine fruit of the Spirit that the Apostle Paul shared with the church in Galatians 5:22. It is a struggle that every church and every Christian goes through. It is a struggle that Paul went through himself.

Paul, writing to the church in Rome said, "You are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you" (Romans 8:9). The Church of Jesus Christ was in the Spirit, and hence these nine fruit should be found in abundance. This is the harvest that comes from living the abundant life.

The nine fruit of the Spirit are called by different names in different translations. While my basic translation for quotation is the New Revised Standard Version, I have based this listing on the Good News Bible (GNB) translation of Galatians 5:22:

"If we live by the Spirit," wrote Paul, "let us also be guided by the Spirit" (Galatians 5:25). Here is my attempt to be guided by the Holy Spirit. You will have to decide if I live by it.

C. Thomas Hilton

Interim Senior Pastor

Wayne Presbyterian Church

Wayne, Pennsylvania