Continuing on with the theme of the gifts and fruits of the spirit, I felt I wanted to say what's contained in this posting, but it seemed to confuse matters when I made it part of the previous post. So now I am, perhaps, going to be a little controversial. If we look at the characteristics of the forthcoming messiah as prophesied in the book of Isaiah:
A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him -
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord -
and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. Isaiah 11:1-3
The Roman Catholic Church derives a set of seven 'spiritual gifts' from this list of attributes: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and awe (fear of the Lord). They appear to me to be related, at least in tone, to the ‘Fruits of the Spirit’, as set out by Paul in his letter to the churches in Galatia:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23
It seems to me that the combined list of the Fruits of the Spirit and the ‘Catholic’ gifts of the spirit form, in some way, a set of prerequisites for exercising the Pauline 'Gifts of the Spirit' in a way which truly serves to build up the church, whilst not inflating the ego of the one exercising the gift. If you truly allow yourself to be filled with all the above fruits, and seek earnestly after wisdom, understanding, etc, you aren't likely to go wrong in exercising the Gifts of the Spirit!