Jun 17, 2019
Fruitfulness. It’s a well-documented expectation in the New Testament. God expects His people to live fruitful and productive lives, but on His terms and according to His power, not their own. Yet, we tend to make fruit-bearing a competition sport, where we score points with God by producing more fruit than the believer next to us. It becomes an endless and hopeless endeavor to manufacture that which only God can produce. Jesus told His disciples that fruit-bearing required abiding. He clearly communicated that, apart from Him, they could nothing that even remotely bore the resemblance of the kind of fruit God was looking for. But when they did abide in Him, they would be productive and fruitful, giving ample proof that they were His followers. And their fruitfulness would bring glory to the Father because His Holy Spirit would be the ultimate source of their fruit.