Episode 9 · Galatians 5:22-23
The Fruit We Never Bring Home
We fill the cart with every easy fruit of the Spirit: joy, peace, kindness. Then we hit the aisle for patience and self-control and quietly abandon the cart.
Pundayschool · Topic
Spiritual growth: devotionals and study guides
Seven episodes about how growth actually happens, and what happens when it stalls: the fruit of the Spirit we love to shop for and quietly leave on the shelf, what really shows up when we pray for patience, the bookmark that stopped moving in January, a first-love fire that quietly became a pilot light, a borrowed kindness we turned into a debt nobody actually billed us for, a prepared table we keep eating standing up instead of sitting at, and a song we quietly turn ourselves down on the moment it gets unfamiliar.
In short
Spiritual growth in the Bible is rarely instant and rarely one-directional. Galatians 5:22-23 lists the fruit of the Spirit as one harvest, not a pick-and-mix; James 1:2-4 says testing produces perseverance; Lamentations 3:22-23 meets us when we fall behind; Revelation 2:4-5 names what happens when love itself quietly cools; Romans 13:8 says the one debt we should always owe is love; Psalm 23:5 pictures a table already prepared, waiting on us to actually sit; and Psalm 33:3 asks for a new song, not just the comfortable one we already know by heart. Pundayschool has seven short comedy episodes about these, each with a free devotional and study guide: The Fruit We Never Bring Home, The Very Urgent Prayer, Genesis 4 February, The First-Love Smoke Alarm, The Container Hostage, The Backpack Still On, and The Car Radio Verse.
The episodes
Episode 10 · James 1:2-4
The Very Urgent Prayer
We pray for patience on the way out the door. Traffic stops. The wifi spins. A friend who is five minutes away stays five minutes away for twenty.
Episode 15 · Lamentations 3:22-23
Genesis 4 February
January first: new pen, chair angled for maximum holiness, Genesis chapter one, day one complete. Six weeks later the bookmark hasn't moved. Here's the confession: we didn't stop because the story got boring, we stopped because we fell behind, and behind felt like failure. His compassions are new every morning, not new every January.
Episode 21 · Romans 13:8
The Container Hostage
Somebody presses a kindness into our hands after the shared meal at church: leftovers in their nice container, clear with a blue lid. Bring it back whenever, they say. We hear whenever and invent a rule nobody gave us: it cannot go back empty. So it waits. Week two, behind the toaster. Week three, covered with a towel, like a witness we cannot face. It's been three weeks. I have to move to a new town. But nobody ever sent a bill. We wrote it ourselves. Then Romans 13 says what the debt really was: love was the whole transaction, and the container was just the packaging.
Episode 26 · Revelation 2:4-5
The First-Love Smoke Alarm
Remember when faith felt like a fire? First prayers, first songs, sitting close, we could not get warm enough. Nobody decided to put it out. We just stopped adding wood, and it started running like a pilot light: small, blue, technically still burning. The alarm only chirps when life gets loud. So we get the ladder and check it. It still works. Still Christian. Battery low since 2019. Jesus said something tender to a busy, faithful church: you have forsaken the love you had at first. Not lost. Left. His call was repentance, but he made the way back plain: do the things you did at first. So this week, one log. Fires need feeding, not a speech. Sit close again.
Episode 38 · Psalm 23:5
The Backpack Still On
Every night the table's set just for the mascot - plate, glass, chair pulled out. Every night it eats standing at the counter instead, backpack still on. Psalm 23:5: "you prepare a table before me." Nobody's stopping it from sitting. So tonight: sit down.
Episode 39 · Psalm 33:3
The Car Radio Verse
Word-perfect, full volume, until an unfamiliar verse comes on the radio. Then the mascot's hand shoots for the volume knob. Psalm 33:3: "Sing to him a new song." Not the one we already know by heart. So today: turn it back up, and sing the part you don't know yet.
One verse to hold
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."
Galatians 5:22-23, NIV
Questions people ask
What are the fruit of the Spirit?
Galatians 5:22-23 names nine: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Paul calls them fruit, singular, because they are one harvest grown by the Spirit, not nine separate achievements to collect.
Can I have some fruit of the Spirit and not others?
That is the exact habit The Fruit We Never Bring Home teases: filling the cart with joy, peace, and kindness, then abandoning it at patience, self-control, and forgiveness. The episode's point is that you do not get to grab joy and leave forgiveness on the shelf; they grow together, on the same trees, in the same soil.
How does God grow patience in us?
Usually not as a feeling delivered on request. James 1:2-4 says the testing of our faith produces perseverance, which is why The Very Urgent Prayer plays out the way it does: pray for patience and the slow traffic shows up immediately. Sometimes the answer to 'give me patience' looks a lot like waiting.
Whose job is spiritual growth, mine or God's?
Both have a part, but not the same part. Your part looks like putting the hard fruit in the cart: choosing patience or forgiveness when the moment comes. The growing itself is God's. As The Fruit We Never Bring Home ends: you do not have to force the fruit to grow. He does the growing.
Can spiritual growth go backward?
Yes, and two episodes in this series picture that honestly. Genesis 4 February is about a Bible reading plan that quietly stalled in January, and The First-Love Smoke Alarm is about a whole faith that cooled from a fire to a pilot light (Revelation 2:4-5). In both, the fix is the same shape: not shame, and not a bigger performance, just returning to something small and ordinary that was already working.