But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
-Galatians 5:22-23
It’s all English to me…
While serving at camp this summer, I wrote 9 blog posts, each about a different Fruit of the Spirit. I’d wanted to write this series for a while, and God showed me that camp was the perfect time. First, there were 9 Fridays in July/August. Second, camp is arguably the greatest place to see the Fruits in action.
Unfortunately, time went by so fast. Here we are at the end of summer. Next week, I’ll kick off my Fall series (read on for more info). Before I do that, let’s take a moment to reflect on the past two months.
What events stood out to you this summer? What were some of your highlights? How did you serve or meet God in new ways? I’d love to hear from you, either in the Comments or through my Contact page!
Allow me to wrap up this series by summer-izing my biggest takeaways and thoughts… (I’ve linked each post in the headings.)
A Fruitful Summer
1. Love
When camp began, everything was fun and shiny. It was only later that struggles and disagreements came up. There are four types of love at camp: Agape, Philia, Storge, and Eros. As summer progressed, I grew way deeper in my Agape for the LORD. I grew in my Philia for the guys in my Summer Team cabin and those around me. I also experienced Storge when my family came up for a week.
2. Joy
Now that summer is over, I feel like there’s a ton more I could say. I felt God’s joy during the chapels, worship, and prayer times, plus in the interactions I had with others. Doing my devotions in the morning, photographing campers having fun, serving in the kitchen or on the clean team…it all produced the joy that can only come from the Lord.
I wasn’t always necessarily happy to get up early or clean bathrooms, but I always had joy. I sometimes ask myself how persecuted Christians can endure tremendous oppression and stay joyful. Simply put, you can have abounding joy even without being happy.
3. Peace
My time at camp was the craziest and most peaceful on record. All the hubbub about being in nature and tranquility is true. Coming out of this season, I sat down to analyze some of the patterns I implemented to grow closer to God and feel His peace. Here are three things I put into practice…
- Completing as much as possible before camp. I spent hours outlining my blog posts and completing other tasks prior to camp, so that I had very little extraneous work to do.
- Deleting all social media/video streaming apps from my phone. Additionally, we created phone pouches in the camp office. From 8 AM – 8 PM, our phones had a new home. Extreme ministry requires extreme measures.
- Beginning & ending my day with God. Even when I was tired or had to get up at 5 AM, I spent intentional time with the Lord. I did this before, during, and after camp.
4. Patience
God showed me that waiting is okay. He also reminded me to wait for His timing and trust His will. He taught me to slow down and focus on what matters, like Sabbath and the way I treat others.
5. Kindness
I was blessed to show kindness in very unique ways this camp season, from serving on the waterfront to helping prepare food. Most of my work was done behind the scenes, so I wasn’t always showing kindness to someone’s face. But I could display kindness in my attitude and actions, and I knew that God saw what I was doing.
6. Goodness
I was in the Kitchen the week I wrote this post, so I’ll expand on two of my biggest takeaways from that time…
- Working Together. I shared the first aspect of it, but unlike Harvey Dent’s coin, there are two sides to this one. To have an effective team, everybody needs to do their absolute best. It’s tricky because a team of 50% proactive people and 50% reactive people still looks good on paper. We need to serve God well as a team, but we also need to serve Him as individuals. I love that camp forces everyone to do their best and so create a team far greater than the sum of its parts.
- Acting Humbly. It’s no stretch to say God loves the humble and hates the prideful. I caught myself all summer teetering on the edge of pride. The devil will use the good you’re doing to snare you in sin. It’s hard to find a sure-fire antidote to pride, but we can regularly ask ourselves if we’re seeking His glory or ours.
7. Faithfulness
God is faithful to us. God is faithful to us. In turn, I wanna be faithful to Him. After weeks of tiring camp work and not enough sleep, it’s easy to become unfaithful and to follow our desires. Sleep, phones, and negative attitudes can become a temptation. It may have appeared that I kept going because of my strength, but that’s the opposite of the truth. When we’re faithful to God, He is faithful to us. It isn’t magic, but it does work.
8. Gentleness
I also had to practice gentleness in my actions, speech, and writing. I loved almost everything about camp, but some issues did pop up. So, I did the only natural thing for a writer to do: write a manifesto. At first, I was tempted to vent and write harshly. I later implemented the fruit of gentleness to take my personal opinions out and to write as objectively as possible. Point is, gentleness applies to our actions, speech, and writing.
9. Self-Control
During a game of camp-wide Hide & Seek, I had a long conversation with God. He revealed three powerful truths about my future and relationship with Him. They weren’t about self-control in the conventional sense; rather, they forced me to practice self-control by trusting God’s will with my life. I think it made for one of my deepest posts to date.
Growth Points
Now that we’ve planted the “seeds” of the Fruits of the Spirit, we need to let them grow. Cultivating fruit takes time. Just because I’ve written about Galatians 5:22-23 doesn’t mean I’ve perfected these things. But now that they’re planted, there’s only one place to go from here….Growth.
Starting next week, I’ll begin a 12-part series on Growth Points. I’ll also be bringing back The WLF Podcast. Every Friday, I’ll publish a post about a different way we can strengthen our relationship with God. The first half will focus on knowing more about God and serving His Kingdom, and the second half will be about perfecting our inner character. I’ve also done something new with my Photoshop knowledge…
You’ll notice that this dodecagon is blank. Each Friday, I’ll add the current week’s post title to the graphic and attach it to the post. By the end of November, we’ll have a full dodecagon. You’re then free to download it as a reminder of this series. I hope you like the idea (:
We’ve also reached the second anniversary of WLF. All glory goes to God! I couldn’t have made it this far on my own, especially when you look at some of my early posts. Thank you for joining me as I seek to serve His Kingdom. If my posts have encouraged or helped you in any way, you’re welcome to share them with others!
With that, allow me to sign off on summer 2025. If I didn’t think so before, I now know for certain that God is at work. As we enter Fall, I hope you’ll join me in praying this prayer…
“Lord, help me to seek Your Kingdom and Your glory above my own. Show me opportunities to share your love and hope with others. Help me use the gifts and talents You’ve given me to further Your mission. And above all, help me become someone whose very will is to do Your will. For Your glory, always.
As the first half of Proverbs 10:5 says…
“A wise youth harvests in the summer.”
P.S. I finally took new website photos…
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