Book Review: Fruitful: Cultivating a Spiritual Harvest That Won’t Leave You Empty

Fruitful: Cultivating a Spiritual Harvest That Won’t Leave You Empty, edited by Megan Hill and Melissa B. Kruger

My word of the year is fruitful, so if you have been following along with InspiritEncourage for a while, you may have expected me to seek out opportunities to learn about biblical fruitfulness through books and studies. I generally don’t reach for devotionals, but this was actually one of few books about fruitfulness that I found in my initial searches.

Fruitful is a 40-day devotional which delves into the fruits of the Spirit, as written in Galatians 5:22-23. Four or five days’ devotions are shared on each of the topics – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Various authors were invited to contribute, which each addressing one of the topics.

The Good

Despite devotionals not being of great interest to me, this book helped my attention. Each of the devotionals followed the same outline or format, but also were not restricted and didn’t dwell too much on personal experience and stories. They focused on the word and what it meant, with a primary text for each day. I easily continued reading through the sections rather than just one per day.

The passage focuses for the topics were from both the Old and New Testament and this offered a broad look at the Spirit at work in us. This allowed for inclusion of ideas outside the usual boundaries of Paul’s teachings about the Spirit and was refreshing. The editing was well-done and the devotions consistent, despite having various authors contribute.

The So-So

The only drawback that I saw of the book was the inclusion of recipes. I didn’t find that it integrated nor enhanced the experience of reading the book. It seemed more cheesy than anything. Additionally, fruit of the Spirit is addressed in the Bible singularly, rather than plural and the use of actual fruit to illustrate doesn’t seem to help that understanding of unity or singularity.

Well Done

Overall, I give the book 5 stars for the excellent use of Scripture and well-done editing. If you are looking for short meaningful devotions about the fruit of the Spirit, I’d recommend this book.

Crossway publishing gave me a copy of this book, but the opinions are my own.