Sometimes our friends, family, and coworkers may approach us and ask, “ how do you know if a person you are dating or in any other relationship with has good intentions?”

And that seems like a very difficult question to answer. We’ve come up with all different kinds of secret formulas to make this happen. The bottom line is: we have the Holy Spirit, who is our helper, teacher, counselor, comforter, and indwelling friend. And we often forget that.

And then, along with the Holy Spirit aiding us in testing the spirits of the individuals we interact with on a daily basis, we also have the ability to evaluate fruit. If every time we come in contact with certain individuals, and all they do is slander other people, then we know that the fruit they are bearing would be slanderers.

Pretty soon, we will be slanderers.

It’s kind of like going to the grocery store. It’s rare that we end up purchasing bad fruit on purpose. This usually happens if we are buying fruit by the bag. Four instance, if we are purchasing a bag of apples, oranges, tangerines, etc. It’s hard to see every single piece of fruit in the bag.

And just like with the fruit, haphazardly, placing people with toxic traits in our shopping carts are only going to lead to us having toxic hearts, minds, soul, and spirits. We end up buying fruit by the bag when we join clubs, Bible study groups, Ministries, and Churches where we have no way of knowing that there are a few rotten fruit in the bag until we see these individuals outside of their usual places and spaces.

And sometimes even then, it may take a few years, and extensive healing and growing on our part towards self-actualization before we are really able to assess that these particular individuals have existed in our lives all along for Satan‘s agenda of stealing, killing, and destroying us.

So what is the lesson for us in all of this? Never be in a hurry when you’re shopping for fruit.