What is your favorite fruit? Picking a favorite fruit is almost impossible, isn’t it?

Watermelon on a hot July afternoon. A cold, Honeycrisp apple. Strawberries straight from the vine. Peaches so juicy they drip down your elbow. Pineapple cut up in every shape and size, and even on your pizza. Grapes so plump and sweet they burst on your tongue like candy.

Your favorite fruit is probably the fruit you’re currently eating. Every one of them earns the title of favorite. That’s one of the reasons I love a fruit salad. It’s got so many of my favorites together.

But nobody makes fruit salad with just one fruit. That’s the point. Watermelon alone isn’t a salad. Neither are strawberries or grapes. The whole bowl is what makes it what it is, every piece working together, nothing left out.

Apostle Paul’s list of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 works the same way. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control. These are the fruit of the Spirit.

But these are not nine individual options to pick and choose from. They are one bowl, one fruit salad. You don’t get to be known for joy while ditching self-control. You can’t claim kindness and skip gentleness. The Spirit isn’t building a partial life. He’s building the whole bowl. All of these fruit are to be present in our lives.

And this only happens when the flesh is out of the way. That’s verse 24, “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Not negotiating with your flesh or managing it. No, you nail it to the cross.

When that happens, the Spirit gets full run of the orchard and the patch and the vineyard. Only then will the Spirit be able to flow through us fully so that we produce the full harvest of fruit.

Beloved, don’t pick and choose your favorite spiritual fruit. Don’t settle for one slice of Christlikeness. Surrender completely to the Spirit to produce the whole bowl of fruit salad.

Change begins in you!