The Fruit of Emmanuel

I was just reading a blog about how Christmas is all about God's desire to spend time with us and how this was wrapped up in the name given to the Messiah by Isaiah: Emmanuel which means "God with us." (I will give the link to this article at the end of my post).....Christ's mission on earth was to clear up the obstacles of sin that were obstructing his ability to commune with us.  He did this, as most of us know, by dying on the cross, the perfect for the imperfect, to pay our debt of sin before God the Father, so that God --in the form of the Holy Spirit--could live in mankind for all eternity.

In that article were given some verses in which Jesus talked about this plan of his.  One of them was this :

If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples. (John 15:7-8, NKJV)

And as I read this verse the thought crossed my mind, "What is the 'fruit' that God wants us to bear?"
Immediately,like all good Sunday-schoolers, the thought came to my mind that the "fruit" are the souls that we help to usher into the Kingdom.   And as I thought that, the Holy Spirit buzzer went off in my head.  BZZZZZZT, "Wrong answer"

So I got to thinking...what does the Bible say about Fruit?  Well, what about the "fruits of the Spirit"?

Galatians 5:22 and 23 say this:
²² But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

 And to throw further light on it, read on a few verses:

²⁴ Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. ²⁵ Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. ²⁶ Let us not become conceited, or provoke one another, or be jealous of one another. (the New Living Translation)

So what is this all saying?  It's saying that the "fruit" that we are supposed to be producing in our lives comes from "hanging out with (abiding in)" Christ Jesus. (Emmanuel, God with us)
and what that does is that it gets rid of all our fleshly bad habits and the foulness that our spirit was born with  and it replaces it with the "fruit"...which just means looking and sounding like and acting more like Jesus.

And THAT friends is "Emmanuel"--- God with us and through us and in us and around us.  God all over the place.  And less and less of the old "you" and "me."  And THAT friends is Christmas.
The Baby Jesus was our introduction from God to us.
And yeah....we can already see some of that fruit in that manger scene.  
There was JOY.
There was PATIENCE (after all, hadn't mankind been waiting for centuries for that moment?  So had God.  And he was patient to wait for just the right moment in history.)
There was GENTLENESS
There was LOVE and KINDNESS, 
And MEEKNESS (Humility and gentleness wrapped together)

Yep, Jesus in his birth, came to the Earth reeking of the goodness of Heaven.  The wonderfulness (I know that is not a word!) of God his Father. 

And he came here. Not only to hang out with us....but to make us like himself....so that we would later be suited to live in his Kingdom.  He came to make us disciples. He came to be our Teacher.  He came to make us living breathing examples of all the goodness that is Jesus....and by this he drew all men toward himself.

Here is that link:
http://www.cbn.com/spirituallife/devotions/vonbuseck-christmas-god-with-us.aspx