In the book of Galatians 5:13-26, Paul writes to the believers in Galatia to tell them about an important truth. That truth, that writing, travels through time to us, as fellow believers (yes, travels through time - don't let anyone know we have the technology). Look at verse 17 closely to see what Paul sets up here. What we come down to is two sides. Not everyone has these two sides though.
Here's how I see it (you can disagree with me). Everyone (every person every created) is given an eternal spirit, it is the human quality to us and what sets us apart from the rest of creation. So all humans born have an eternal spirit and that spirit will spend eternity somewhere after this life is over (heaven or hell). When we accept Jesus as our personal Lord and savior; when we say that we are going to be obedient to only Jesus and His teachings; when we begin to live our lives in such a way that is bringing honor and glory to His name; when we recognize that we are sinful, fallen humans, separated from God by that sin and that the only way to have a right relationship with Him is through a relationship with His one and only son who came and died for said sins on a cross; or more simply put - when we are 'saved', we gain something. The Bible talks about the Holy Spirit which comes and dwells in us as Christians. Something happens when we are 'saved' that we might not realize. The Holy Spirit attaches itself to our personal eternal human spirit. Naturally, we've welcomed an internal conflict between our spirit and this new Holy Spirit that dwells in us. Paul explains this conflict here in Romans.
Go back Galatians. Paul takes some time to list off a few things of the flesh (or of our spirit), he also takes some time to address things (fruits) of the Spirit. By calling them fruits he is saying that this is what the Spirit inside of us should be producing within us.
So what we have are the things that our spirit (flesh) wants to do and these fruits of the Spirit (Holy Spirit) that should be produced in us. Those things oppose and pull on one another. There is a tension created vs. our spirit and the Holy Spirit in us (again, as Christians).
I would think that most of us can easily recognize the desires of the flesh, most of them are self-centered desires (gotta look out for #1 ya know? -#1 being yourself, not Jesus). Most of the ones we would probably think of are horrible ones that we would never even think about doing. The harder thing would be trying to figure out the fruits of the Spirit. Paul (through the Holy Spirit) kindly gives them to us instead of letting us try to figure it out for ourselves (because we'd probably screw that up). These fruits are love, joy, peace, patients, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (you might have a different translation to them, but this is how I learned them). The difficult part about these is that there is an equal but evil counterpart that we can sometimes mistake for being fruits of the Spirit. What I mean by this is that the world wants some of these things too, or at least something very similar to them. Satan steps in and does exactly what he is best at - get something as close to the Truth as possible that people start accepting it as the Truth, when in fact it isn't. I don't know if I can say that I have found the counterpart or half-truth counterpart for all of these fruits just yet, but I'm working on it.
What I would like to do is work through this, together. Over the next nine months each fruit will get it's own focus and it's own attention. My idea behind this is to focus on each fruit to wrap my head around 'what it looks like, what it feels like, and what it 'tastes' like, as to ensure that the fruit that is growing is what a 'Christ follower tree' should be producing.
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