Twice a month, I write a devotion for the church newsletter. I will repost those here. These are posts from a series on the fruit of the Spirit.
Read John 15:1-11
Read Galatians 5:16-25
It’s God’s will for you to bear fruit. At first glance, this sounds like a lot of work. And yet, it’s not the kind of work you would expect. In John 15:8, Jesus says to His disciples, “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” This work has more to do with your attitude than actual physical labor.
Earlier in the chapter (verses 4 and 5), Jesus explains what He means.
“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is who bears much fruit, for apart from Me, you can do nothing.”
Jesus told His disciples to abide in Him. Abide means to stay, rest, remain, and even to wait for. If you want to bear fruit, first, connect yourself to Christ. Jesus gave the disciples a picture so they could understand His meaning. He compared abiding in Christ to a vine and branches.
The vine supplies the nutrients that the branch needs to grow. The branch draws its nutrients from the vine and those nutrients allow it to bear fruit. In this case, Jesus referred to grape vines. They grew up from the ground, the branches grew off of the vines, and grapes grew off of the branches.
The branches didn’t have to work hard to produce grapes. They didn’t groan in the middle of the night so they could force the grapes to appear. Instead, those branches stayed connected to the vine, received nourishment, and naturally produced grapes.
In Galatians 5:22-23, the apostle Paul writes about the kinds of fruit Christians can show with their lives. He writes, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”
As you rest and remain in Christ, trusting Him to live through you, then you can also trust the Holy Spirit to produce this kind of fruit in your life. No one gets this right every time. There will be times when the Holy Spirit prunes away the parts that aren’t bearing fruit, and it will hurt. You can thank Him for the pruning, even when it hurts because it will help you be more like Christ.
May God richly bless you in the coming week as you abide in Christ.