Bearing much fruit for God

Dear Northside

I have been reading a book on the Fruit of the Spirit this Lent. You may ask why? When Jesus was entering Jerusalem one day, the Bible says He was hungry and saw a fig tree that had leaves, which meant it should have fruit. But it did not! Jesus cursed it because it looked good but bore no fruit. So, I think bearing the Fruit of the Spirit is part of the Easter story.

At the end of the book, it talks about how we can be fruitful for God.

The Fruit of the Spirit are a gift from God, but they are gifts that you have to open up, take out of the box, and put to use yourself (in a way).  Like the gift that the promised land was to Israel.  They were given the land.  It was given from God to them, but they still had to fight for it.  They had to exercise some military discipline to take it by force.  They had to exert their own wills in a strenuous effort to obtain the gift that they were given.  They had to work for the gift. 

The Fruit of the Spirit is not some finished product.  It’s more like a tool that will enable you to participate with the Holy Spirit in bringing about the finished product. Read 2 Peter 1:5-10 

The Fruit of the Spirit are listed here among the things that we are called upon to put effort towards getting.  Verse five says to make every effort to add these things to your faith.  Verse ten says be all the more diligent.  We need to put effort into these qualities, because if these qualities are yours, if they are in you and if they are increasing, then you will not end up being ineffective or unfruitful in your Christian life.  If you have these qualities, then the knowledge of Jesus Christ that you have will not be wasted knowledge that leaves you unfruitful.  Knowledge without action is unfruitful knowledge.  Faith without works is dead.

It is interesting that in order for us to be effective in our Christian lives, in order for us to be fruitful as we live out our time on earth, these qualities need to be in us, and they also need to be increasing in us.  There, we see progressive sanctification.  In I Peter 5 verse 9, whoever lacks these qualities is so near-sighted that he is blind.  He has forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. 

But we must remember, all of the Fruit of the Spirit is accomplished by the work of the Holy Spirit in you and me, and we can never take credit for accomplishing any of it.  You will never see the Fruit of the Spirit flourish in your life by simply trying.  But, at the same time, you will never see the Fruit of the Spirit in your life if you don’t try.  In other words, our efforts alone will accomplish nothing toward the development of the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives.  But if we do not exert effort toward the process, it will not happen.  It is one of those mysteries that we may not be able to reconcile in our minds with logic.  It could be that the idea that the Fruit of the Spirit is something which God does in you one hundred percent, but that your cooperation and action are also needed, may not be easy to fully make sense of in our minds. 

But I think there is a way to help our understanding of this.  And I think it would be more accurate for us to say that even the effort which God requires from us is something that God Himself causes to come forth from us.  Paul talks about this in His own life in 1 Corinthians 15:9-10. Paul comes into his apostleship in a less prepared condition than the other apostles.  He has some catching up to do.  And he says, “I worked harder than any of them.”  He added his effort to the growing process.  But even that extra, added hard work cannot be credited to Paul himself.  He says, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”  So then, when I tell you that your effort is needed, please understand that it is God who draws that effort out of you.

I hope and pray this helps you bear much fruit for God.

God bless, Pastor Gary