June 28 2026 | Rooted In The Spirit S1E1 | The Epistles: Fruits and Gifts

Pastor Adam Stadtmiller opens the new series with a question the church has been asked countless times: Is your church Spirit-filled? His answer reframes the question entirely. The Pentecostal definition — tongues, healings, works of power — isn’t wrong, but it’s incomplete. Paul’s letter to the Galatians places the fruit of the Spirit before the gifts, and for good reason: you can show up to Heaven with a full portfolio of gifts and hear “depart from me, I never knew you.” You cannot show up with a life marked by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control without having become like Jesus. That is the distinction this series is built on — and the big idea of the message: the Holy Spirit’s primary work is not to make us supernatural, but to make us more like Christ in character first and acts of power second.

The first clarification is grammatical but theologically significant. It’s not fruits of the Spirit — it’s fruit, singular. The difference matters. When we parse it into a cornucopia, we give ourselves permission to grade on a curve: the patience cluster isn’t great, but look at the kindness over here. Paul’s point is that these qualities are one nature, not nine separate categories. As a believer abides in Christ, they come up together — like a watermelon, not a fruit basket. Against that singular, unified character, there is no law — and Pastor Adam unpacks what that means: law exists for those who break it. When you’re in agreement with God rather than merely obedient to Him, you’ve moved to a different level of maturity entirely.

The theological spine of the message is the biblical arc of trees: the garden of Genesis 2, the tree of Psalm 1:3 planted by streams of water, the tree of life in Revelation 22 yielding fruit every month. The Bible doesn’t begin and end with gifts — it begins and ends with fruit. The key distinction throughout: fruit is grown, gifts are given. Gifts are like keys to a Ferrari — handed to you, immediately drivable, completely unearned. Fruit requires tending, planting, watering, and time. Pastor Adam’s summer on a new property in East County — squirrels eating his vineyard, varmints destroying his watermelons, sixty pepper starts dead because he ignored his wife’s advice to harden them off — is the sermon’s running illustration. You don’t manufacture fruit. You create the conditions for it. John 15:4 is the method: Abide in me, and I in you. Hudson Taylor’s gloss on it is the takeaway: See to the abiding; He will see to the fruit.

The message closes with the harder truth — fruit will be consumed. Whatever you grow, you eat. Isaiah 3:10, Proverbs 1:29–31, and Galatians 6:7–9 all say the same thing: the righteous eat the fruit of their deeds, and so do the unrighteous. God’s discipline in the New Testament isn’t the Babylonians — it’s turning us over to our own desires. The people who changed Pastor Adam’s life most weren’t the most gifted: they were a youth leader named Doug who showed up through family chaos thirty years ago (and was sitting in the room that morning), a mechanic named Dave Kreisler who met weekly for scripture, a couple named Betty and Lloyd Hart who knelt beside their bed every day for twenty-eight years and prayed for Adam’s family. That is the fruit the series is chasing.

S1E1 of a new four-week series on the fruit and gifts of the Spirit, moving through the Epistles. Follows the four-part series “Rooted In the Spirit.” 

Podcast (sermons): Play in new window | Download