Paul wrote you a letter, but maybe you never realized it was for you. I didn’t either and until I was working on this book I wrote for you:

In short, as I researched the fruit of the Spirit for another book, it dawned on me that Paul could as easily have written his letter to the Galatians as a “Letter to the Great Commission Worker.”

The Galatians had access to freedom in Christ and yet, they kept returning to the comforts and familiarity of the law. It’s understandable because the law was familiar. It was known. It was easier to track and measure. And the law wasn’t “bad,” it was incomplete.

If Paul had written to us, he’d become exasperated with us too. We have come to bring the good news and to set captures free! We should be the most free people! Amen? Amen and all the exclamation points.

But too often we have substituted our own “law” and live under the bondage of ministry metrics.

Now, I’m not anti-metrics. We need to have goals and reasons for being on the field, doing what we’re doing. However, we—both individuals and organizations—can easily slip into a modern day version of the law a ’la metrics. Like the Galatians, we stay enslaved to something that never could provide freedom and life.

I wondered, “Did God call you to the field to set others free in Christ while you stay trapped in an unintended form of ministry bondage?” 

What if collectively we moved our metrics down a peg and allowed walking with the Spirit to be the true measure of fruitfulness?

Over and over as I researched and wrote this book my mind was blown. For one thing, the fruit of the Spirit is not like the gifts of the Spirit. You and I don’t get all of the gifts, we get some of them. But the fruit? We can have all nine all the time. All nine all the time. I have a question for you:

How much of your life experiences

Love

Joy

Peace

Patience

Kindness

Goodness

Gentleness

Faithfulness and

Self-Control?

If your answer wasn’t “24/7 Baby!” This book is for you. In it you’ll find that God has upward fruit (toward Him), outward fruit (toward others), and inward fruit (toward yourself) for you. When God talks about fruitfulness, He has true, holistic, all-of-your-life fruitfulness for you.

Guess where grapes, the fruit that Paul uses, produces fruit? In rocky soil. In other words, in the messy realities of your life on the field. So, fruitfulness isn’t just for the early morning “Tea and Jesus” time. It’s also for public transportation, annoying teammates, and doors that won’t open.

Because Paul is known as the “party guy,” no wait, that was Jesus and the “best wine ever!” Anyway, because parties are fun, here’s a fun way to celebrate this book’s release;

We’re going to a have a “pop-up” book club in October!

We’ll read the book and then discuss it for four weeks. Redefining fruitfulness is both simple and hard. So instead of all of us reading the book and saying, “Yes, that’s the kind of life I want to live” and then moving without much really changing, we’ll discuss the book for four weeks, allowing new roots to take hold.

We’ll discuss:

—The fruit of the Spirit and the idea of metrics

—The upwardly oriented fruit: love, joy, and peace

—The outwardly oriented fruit: patience, kindness, and goodness

—The inwardly oriented fruit: gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control

Get the book today and join the book club below (time to be determined). We will record the meetings, but the only way to get the recording is to join the pop up book club.