Series: Fruit bearing
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This morning, I want to further share with you on ‘Fruit bearing’. We have been looking at what Scriptures have to say to us about bringing forth fruit. And that’s because it is the will of God for us to bear fruit, which is referred to in scriptures as the fruit of the Spirit. On that note, we have looked at how to bear fruit. And one main instruction the Lord Jesus Christ gives us along that line is that we must abide in Him. He says, “Abide in me. Unless you abide in me, you cannot bear fruit.” He already describes our relationship with Him as that of the vine and the branches. And as branches cannot bear fruit unless they abide or remain in the vine, we cannot bear fruit unless we remain in Him.
How then do we remain in Him? One main way to remain in Him is to allow His Word to remain in us. We must give room to His Word in our lives. If we will not give room to His Word in our lives, then we will not be able to bring forth the kind of fruit He wants us to bring forth. It’s not about struggling to do this or to do that. It’s about abiding in your source. It’s about remaining connected to your source, the source of your fruitfulness.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the source of our fruitfulness. The child of God must keep that in mind. The child of God must know that. In fact, when somebody becomes a Christian, that’s the first thing he must be educated in. Otherwise, he may struggle. He may struggle in his Christian life, struggling to please God. It’s possible that even you are struggling to please God this morning. You are struggling to be the person He wants you to be. You are struggling to walk in love. You are struggling to be patient, kind, humble, gentle, self-controlled. Something is missing. What is missing is the fact that you are not abiding in your source.
You are not supposed to struggle. I’m not saying you are not to make effort. That’s not what I’m talking about. But struggling to be the person God wants you to be shouldn’t be happening in your life. And it will not be happening in your life if you are drawing from the source of your fruitfulness.
Now as I said before, one way to draw from Him is to meditate on His Word. Keep meditating on His Word. If it’s been hard for you to do certain things that He wants you to do, then, it may just be that you have not meditated long enough on what His Word says about that thing. It may just be that you have not become one with His Word as far as that thing is concerned. So, you don’t need to become discouraged. You don’t need to become disheartened. You don’t need to give up in your quest to becoming what God wants you to become. You only need to give yourself more to His Word.
Solomon says, “If you faint in the time of trouble, your strength is small.” If you don’t want to faint in the time of trouble, what do you do? You get more strength. You go for more strength. So, you need to give yourself more and more to the Word of God. It’s not a one-off thing. It cannot be a one-off thing. And that’s one of the reasons Jesus says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Cf. Proverbs 24:10; Matthew 4:4)
Interestingly, Jesus, when He said that, was quoting Moses. It was Moses that first said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” That means the word of God is your very life; you have no life apart from the word of God. Thus, the word of God is not something you give attention to once in a while or when you feel like doing so. The word of God is something you must daily give attention to. It’s something you must every moment give attention to. (Cf. Deuteronomy 8:3)
So, you must labor to know everything the word of God says about you, about how to live to please God, about how to walk in the light of His presence. You must give yourself to knowing this. You will not know these things automatically. You will have to give yourself to learning from Scriptures what they say about you.
Even Jesus Christ had to do that. Even Jesus had to give Himself to Scriptures. And everything He did was based on what Scriptures said about Him. Even when He was going to describe the life He lived to His disciples after His resurrection, the Bible says He took them to the Scriptures, beginning with Moses, to show them that everything that happened to Him was consistent with what is in Scriptures. (Cf. Luke 24:25-27)
If Jesus Christ had to live like that, in order to live a life that was well pleasing to God, don’t think you can do otherwise and live a life that is well pleasing to God. It is not going to work. So, you must be prepared to give yourself to the word of God every day, every moment, if you are going to bring forth the kind of fruit He wants your life to bring forth.
Then you must also learn to express your dependence in God. Don’t forget Jesus says, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” That means it is impossible for you to do anything that will please God apart from Him. Again, as I pointed out before, you may do some things apart from Him. You may have been doing a lot of things apart from Him. And there are many people today in the world that are doing all kinds of things apart from him. But the day is coming when they are going to realize that everything they have done apart from Him is nothing. It will be summed up as nothing. It will have no praise from God.
See, for God, it is not just for us to get involved in all kinds of activities — God is also interested in what is motivating those activities. He is also interested in where we are drawing the strength to carry out those activities. So, if you have agreed that apart from Him you cannot do anything, that apart from Him you cannot bear the fruit He wants you to bear, be the person He wants you to be or do the things He wants you to do, then you must learn to express your dependence in Him.
How? Through prayer! I have been talking about drawing from your source in order to live the kind of life God wants you to live. And this is of course something you must be interested in doing. I can’t remember the number of times I have said that while sharing with us in this series. You must want what God wants for you. You must desire to be what God wants you to be. If you don’t desire to be what God wants you to be, it is not going to happen. And the scriptures are abundantly clear about that. God is not going to force you to be the person he wants you to be or to have whatever it is that He wants you to have. You must want to have what He wants you to have. You must want to be what He wants you to be. Because that’s one of the things that will motivate you to go in the right direction.
So, do you want to bear fruit? Do you want to bear the fruit of the Spirit that Christ speaks about, the fruit of love, joy, peace, faith, self-control, patience, humility, gentleness, brotherly kindness and generosity? Do you want to bear much fruit? If you want to, then, you must also be willing to draw strength from the one, the only one that can make it happen. You must be willing to draw wisdom, understand or whatever it is that you may need from the only one that can make it happen.
Therefore, you must be willing to pray. You must be devoted to prayer. You can’t bear the kind of fruit God wants you to be abundantly if you are not devoted to prayer. That’s because there are forces in this life that are working against you. There are forces in this life that do not want you to bear fruit. There are forces that do not want you to be the person God wants you to be. The Word of God is very clear about that. It says that we are in a struggle, we are wrestling, not with human beings but with demons. And you better keep that in mind.
There are people who don’t believe in the supernatural, of course. And that’s unfortunate. Because the supernatural is all around them. There are people who don’t believe in the existence of Satan or in the existence of demons. And that’s unfortunate again because Satan and demons are all around you. Demons are all around us. And I am not saying that to make you afraid. That is because just as demons are all around us, we also have angels all around us. They are coexisting. We too are coexisting with them. They are our neighbors. I’m telling you. Demons are your neighbors. There’s nothing you can do about that, just as angels are your neighbors. They are all around us. (Cf. Ephesians 6:12)
Well, the word of God says we are in a struggle with them. And that’s why we have to be strengthened every moment. We have to be strong every moment. For us to be the persons God wants us to be, for us to live the kind of life He wants us to live, we have to be strong. We cannot afford to be weak. We cannot afford to be feeble. And to access strength, we must be given to prayer. Strength is available in God. You must understand that. Wisdom is available in God. Everything we need is already present in Christ. And since we are in Him, we have access to everything we need. That’s what the word of God tells us. We have access to His fullness.
Paul is talking about this in Colossians chapter 2 when he says you have been given fullness in Christ. It means we have access to His fullness, the fullness of His life. But the point is that we don’t always take advantage of His fullness. It’s something we have to learn to do. If we all are daily taking advantage of His fullness, our lives would have been a lot better.
Now this goes beyond just confessing it. This, of course, again is where certain Christians are missing things. They confess the word of God. And that’s good. They confess the fact that they have been given fullness in Christ. But see, your confession of the fullness of Christ is just a declaration of the truth. It’s not your confession that will make what has happened true. What has happened has already happened. The fullness of Christ is already yours. Your confession of it is not going to make it any more yours, because it is already yours.
Fine, it is good to confess what God says. It’s so that your spirit can agree with that reality. But what has happened has already happened. What ‘is’ is already is. It’s not your confession of it that is going to make it more real. So, confession is just confession. A confession of the truth is just a confession of the truth. You must apply the truth for it to work. If you don’t apply the truth, the truth will not work.
You see, if you don’t take steps on the basis of the truth you know, the truth will not automatically work. Jesus says you will know the truth and the truth will make you free. That is the reality. But for the truth to make you free, you must act on it. Today you have access to the fullness of Christ. You must take advantage of the access that you have to His fullness. And I’m saying that one of the ways to take advantage of your access to His fullness is being devoted to prayer.
So, if you find that certain fruit of the spirit is not manifesting in your life, apart from meditating on what the word of God says about that fruit of the spirit, you must also pray for the manifestation of that fruit in your life. That is because it is supposed to be manifesting in your life. Now this is what James is talking about. Look at James chapter 1, from verse 5, which says:
“If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.” (NIV)
Did you see that? It says, “If any of you lacks wisdom.” Now of course, some Christians have problems with this. They believe that James is not reasoning like a New Testament preacher. Why? It’s because Paul says Christ Jesus has already been made wisdom unto us. So, they think that this is conflicting, that the reasoning of the Christian or of the New Testament believer should be that wisdom is already his. And it is true. Wisdom is already yours. Wisdom is already yours in Christ. Christ has been given to us as wisdom from God. He is our wisdom. (Cf. 1Corinthians 1:30)
But the question is, “Do you always manifest that wisdom?” The things you say, are they always words of wisdom? The decisions you make, have they always been decisions of wisdom? The week just ended yesterday. All the decisions you made last week, were they decisions of wisdom? All the steps you took last week, were they steps of wisdom? All the words you spoke last week, were they words of wisdom? You took last week. Were those types of wisdom? Can you confidently tell yourself that everything you did last week was wisdom-based or wisdom-motivated? If it is not so, then something is wrong with your understanding of Scriptures or your application of it.
Look, the fact that the word of God says that Christ has been made to us wisdom doesn’t mean that we are always walking in wisdom. What the word of God wants us to know is that wisdom has been made available to us in Christ Jesus. But we must not know how to access that wisdom. We must know how to access it and utilize it. Otherwise, even though we have access to wisdom, we are going to be doing foolish things.
There are many believers that are doing foolish things; they are continually taking silly steps. It’s not because wisdom is not available to them. It is simply that they are not taking advantage of it or they have not learned how to take advantage of it.
So, James is not saying something contradictory to what Paul says. James is only showing us how to access the wisdom that is already ours. And he says, “If you lack wisdom, if you can see that you are making foolish decisions, that the decisions that you are taking, they are not moving your life forward, what should you do? Talk to God about it.”
Or if you find yourself in a situation and you don’t know exactly what to do. It’s not every time that we don’t know exactly what to do. That’s because the wisdom of God is already present in our lives. But you know, there are times that we come in contact with certain situations and we don’t know exactly how to handle them. You are asking yourself: “What do I say here? How do I decide here? What step do I take here?” You don’t know.
Now you don’t sit down, worried about the situation. That won’t work. You don’t pace the floor, trying to wrap your mind around the situation. Sometimes that may work; there are times that it may not work. Because, of course, if wisdom will be operational in your life, you must learn to think. The word of God also tells us that wisdom will not always readily work in us, if we are not going to use our head. The reason God has given you that mind to think is so that you can think; it’s not so that somebody can do your thinking for you. Yes, of course, you may employ people to do your thinking for you; that’s good business. People do that all the time, employ people to do their thinking for them so that they can think. That’s even thinking on its own, to know that you can employ people to do your thinking for you in certain areas of life.
Well, we are saying that if wisdom will work, you must think, because it is as you think that wisdom is released. When you read the books of Solomon, you will find things like ‘I ponder’, ‘I think,’ ‘I consider’. So even though God blessed Solomon with wisdom, wisdom wasn’t just naturally or automatically manifesting in his life; the man had to use his head for the thing to work.
But even if you are using your head, there are times you still won’t know what to do. You will think and think until you are probably wanting to have a brain damage. Then you can tell that your brain is tired or exhausted. Yet your problem is not solved. What should you do? Pray to God for the needed wisdom!
I said all of that to draw your attention to something, because what James is speaking about here is not applicable to accessing wisdom alone. There’s a principle there that can be widely applied. The word is: “If any of you lacks something.” It may be anything. In this case, he’s speaking about wisdom. But what you lack may not be wisdom. What is not finding expression in your life may not be wisdom. It may be joy that is not finding expression in your life. It may be love. It may be gentleness. It may be humility. It may be self-control. You know from the word of God that this thing is meant to be finding expression in your life, but it is not. What should you do? You pray.
Maybe you have found yourself caustic. People can’t interact with you without getting hurt, without getting injured. There are people like that. Even though they are Christians and attend church meetings, you cannot have a normal interaction with them without getting hurt. They will say something that will hurt you. They will just do something that will hurt you. If you live with them from morning till evening, they will have hurt you a number of times before the close of the day.
If you are like that, something is wrong. That’s not who you are. You are acting contrary to what you are and you need to accept the fact that you are already acting contrary to what you are. The fruit you are bearing is not the fruit God wants to see. And you don’t have to be making excuses for yourself. But you can be doing that. You may not confront yourself with the truth about what is happening in your life, which is contrary to the will of God. You may say, “I’m just who I am. I can’t change.”
See, if you want to make an excuse for yourself for possessing a bad habit, you will have an excuse to make for it. If you want to make an excuse for being impatient, you will have an excuse for being impatient. If you want to make an excuse for having a short fuse, you will have on. At the slightest provocation, you get angry, you get upset, you are shouting, you are screaming at somebody. You can say that’s how you are in your family. You can say it’s just that I don’t like people being cheated. You can say that. You know it’s an excuse. I can’t just tolerate anybody cheating on me. That’s your excuse for having a short fuse.
But the truth is it’s not acceptable. And once you don’t agree that it’s not acceptable, you are not going to deal with it. But when you agree that it’s not acceptable and say, “I cannot continue like this, getting angry every minute. I cannot continue like this,” what do you do? You go and pray. That is because the strength to be patient with people is available in Christ.
Perhaps those around you think of you as loveless or as unfeeling. That’s because it’s just obvious that you are unkind to those around you. The child of God cannot have that kind of reputation. You cannot have the reputation of being unkind. But that may at the moment be your reputation. You’re unkind. You’re unfeeling. What are you going to do about that?
First, of course, you must meditate on the Word of God, what the Word of God says about relating to people. The Word of God already tells us to live a life of love. And the Word of God has shown us that we can live a life of love. The Word of God says God, by His Spirit, has poured His love into our hearts. Romans 5, verse 5, says, “God has shed abroad His love into our hearts.” So, the love of God is in your heart, if you’re a child of God. It is there, resident in your heart. Your life may not manifest it. Your words may not show it. Your look may not even show. But His love is in your heart already.
To say the fact, there’s a look of love. Some Christians don’t have. There is still some wildness in their look. Somebody may be wild before becoming a Christian. And his is one of the ways you know that the Word of God has affected some people. If you knew them when they were not Christians, you could tell that they were wild. But now that the love of God has taken charge of their lives, that wild look is no longer there.
See, if there is no love in you, there is that look that comes with it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a man or a woman, that wild look will be there. And it’s uninviting. So, it doesn’t matter where people meet you, they will notice it. Maybe you’re an attendant in a filling station. When somebody is coming to buy fuel, and the person looks at your face and looks at the face of another attendant, he knows where to go. Can you relate?
Now the child of God cannot be like that. You can’t be wild in your look. You can’t. Because the love of God is in your heart. So, if it’s not manifesting, something is wrong. And you can’t be making excuses for not manifesting love. So, what do you do? You’ve got to pray about it. I am saying that if you lack love, you have to pray. Because you have access to love, the love of God. You will only need to pray about it. And it will begin to manifest in your life.
Why are you praying about it? You are praying about it because you have realized that apart from Christ Jesus you cannot manifest love. You have realized that apart from Him, you cannot manifest any fruit of the Spirit. And you want to manifest all the fruit of the Spirit spoken of in Scriptures. So, you talk to Him. You express your dependence in Him by talking to him. You will say, “I want to see this manifestation in my life. You have told me that you have poured out your love into my heart. Now I want to see that love in expression. Fill me with the strength to love. Fill me with the strength to be patient. Fill me with the strength to be humble.” And He will answer you.
Really, it takes strength to do these things, spiritual strength. And you have to draw that strength from Him. But it cannot be a one-off. There are things that told to do in scriptures that are not one-off. It’s not that you do it today and you don’t do it tomorrow. It’s not that you do it for one week and you don’t do it again. You have to do these things all the time.
For instance, how often should you meditate on the word of God? The bible says, “Day and night!” You know what that means? It means all the time. It means when you’re walking in the street, you’re meditating on His word. It means when you sit at the meal table, you’re meditating on His word. Every little chance you get, you meditate on the word of God. You are talking the word to yourself. You are thinking the word to yourself. There must be a commitment to it. Otherwise, the word of God will not find expression in your life.
The same thing goes with praying. We are taught to pray without ceasing. You know what that means? It means praying all the time. It’s not something you reserve for church meetings. It’s not something you reserve for your family prayer time. It is something you do all the time. I try to do that all the time. I’ve not gotten to where I want to be yet. But I want to get there. So, I give myself to praying all the time. And I’m telling you that it is beneficial. But it’s not something you do for one year and stop. This is what you do all your life. Because doing it is what is going to take you to where God wants you to be.
You may not be there today. You may not even be there tomorrow. You may not even be there next year. But you can be there. You can be that person He wants you to be, that man that He wants you to be, that woman that He wants you to be, that husband or wife that He wants you to be, that citizen of your country that He wants you to be. You can be it. But it’s going to be a lifetime devotion. You’re making a lifetime commitment to doing these things.
So, you’re praying without ceasing. You’re drawing from Him without ceasing. Walking in the streets, you’re praying and talking to God. You sit at a table, you’re talking to God. Because as matters of life are coming to you, you’re talking to Him about them. And it will not be long before those around you begin to feel it. And regardless of the forces that come against you, if you are like that, they cannot win. They cannot overcome you. Yes, at some point, you may feel like they’re going to overcome you. But they are not going to overcome you. They are not going to win. They are not going to defeat you.
The bible says those who hope in Him will have their strength renewed. Those who are constantly expressing their dependence on God will always have their strength renewed. They will always have access to the needed wisdom, to the needed understanding, to the needed strength, to the needed boldness.
But this is not for the lazy. The Christian life is not for the lazy. It is hard work. And you have to be willing to do the hard work. But see, there’s nothing you want to do that is harder than what Jesus Christ has already done for you. He has accomplished what God needed Him to accomplish for us. Our own is to access and enjoy what He has already done for us. So, if you are determined to access and enjoy what He has done for you, then, be ready to do that hard work of accessing it.
Let’s spend some time to pray this morning.
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