"You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you."
—John 15:16
How do people know that you are a Christian? They can't see your heart. They can't see your faith—but they can see the results of it. Jesus said, "By their fruits you will know them" (Matthew 7:20). The only way someone can determine whether you are a follower of Jesus is not merely by your profession of Him, but by the evidence they see in your life. And that evidence should be spiritual fruit.
Fruit doesn't grow overnight. And sometimes the best judge of the growth in your life might be someone else. You can be very introspective and say, "Have I become more like Jesus in the last 24 hours?" But that would be like trying to watch your kids grow. The growth is subtle, yet someone who hasn't seen your children for several months will notice it. In the same way, you don't necessarily see spiritual growth in your own life. But someone else might say, "You have really changed. I see you are becoming more like Jesus."
Spiritual fruit is important, because Jesus said, "You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain" (John 15:16). He is saying, "I want there to be fruit in your life."
But what is this fruit? Galatians 5:22-23 gives us the answer: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law." We bear fruit by walking in communion with Jesus, by staying close to Him. And spiritual fruit is a result of that relationship.
What we really need today is to bear spiritual fruit in our lives so that others can say, "Now there is a follower of Jesus Christ."
Copyright © 2010 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. For more relevant and biblical teaching from Pastor Greg Laurie, go to www.harvest.org
4 comments:
Fellas, if you missed that, "the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law." FYI, longsuffering is defined as patiently enduring wrongs or difficulties or patient endurance. So if I were to dissect what my wife and kids might answer to each the the fruits about me, I might not fair so well.
My prayer for this week is that we all live this out.
Blessings
cas
I suspect the same cas.
Amen to that prayer
Very convicting...Hopefully, my kids will be the fruit of my relationship with the God of Creation. I do need to be more intentional about praying for and being aware of God using me throughout my week and not just when I'm doing 'church/christian' events.
I hear you cas, I often feel like I am on my own 5 yardline (referring back to Jim’s message a while back)! But did have someone say to me recently that I have changed, and that I talk about my church a lot…sad thing is he was saying this was a bad thing and I took it as a complement...
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