A Fruitful Life預覽

WHAT IS A FRUITFUL LIFE?

INTRODUCTION

Christ is the vine, and God is the gardener who cares for the branches to make them fruitful. The branches are all those who claim to be followers of Christ. The fruitful branches are true believers who by their living union with Christ produce much fruit. But those who become unproductive – those who turn back from following Christ after making a superficial commitment – will be separated from the vine. Unproductive followers will be cut off and tossed aside.

SHARING

We have to realize that apart from the vine (Christ), we can do nothing. In John 15:4-5, Jesus tells His disciples that drawing life from Him is essential, using the picture of branches united to a vine. To “abide” is to live, continue, or remain; so, to abide in Christ is to live in Him or remain in Him. A modern-day illustration would be to consider ourselves as light bulbs. Our light will not shine unless we are plugged into the energy source. The first letters of the phrase “Always Believing In Divine Energy” is ABIDE. As we abide in Jesus, He supplies His divine energy to us so that we can bear fruit. It is the Lord who energizes our life every day! What is a fruitful life?

1. A fruitful Life is Life abiding in the Love of God

Great and wonderful are the promises of God, but they will not work for you without His love. God does not work without love. Even when He is giving judgment, that judgment comes through love. God is love (1 John 4:8)! You cannot separate God from love. Jesus told His disciples that as His Father loved Him, He also loved them and they are to abide in His love (John 15:9). It’s not enough to have Christ’s love only at times; you must abide in it. To abide in the love of Christ means to keep His commandments (John 15:10), and to keep his commandments means to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:37–39). One way that we display our love for God is through our trust, prayer, and devotion to Him. We are also to love each other the way Jesus loves us, and He loves us enough to give His life for us. We may not have to die for someone, but there are other ways to practice sacrificial love: listening, helping, encouraging, giving. When you abide in God’s love, your prayer life falls into wonderful communion with God. Prayers are answered (John 15:16). When you abide in God’s love, you will bear much fruit.

2. A fruitful Life is Life Walking Daily with God

Physically, humans must have certain basic needs in order to survive, which are food, water, and air. Just like we require certain basic needs for our bodies, we also require certain basic needs to live our spiritual life, a life in relationship with God. Unlike our physical body which is temporal, our spiritual life is eternal as long as we abide in Christ.

The first of our basic needs for our spiritual life is the Word of God. Deuteronomy 8:3 says, “man shall not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.” The Word of God is the bread of life, the living water that nourishes, sustains, and strengthens our spiritual life. Just like we need food daily to survive, we also need to read our Bible which is the Word of God for our daily bread. It nurtures our spiritual needs in a way that benefits us eternally, rather than merely providing temporal relief from physical needs. Throughout daily walk with God by reading the Bible, we can maintain our close and personal relationship with God as He communicates to us through the Bible.

The second of our basic spiritual needs is prayer. We need to have a consistent prayer life so that we can communicate with God. Paul commanded us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17-18 to “pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” Paul is not referring to non-stop talking, but rather an attitude of God-consciousness and God-surrender that we carry with us all the time. Every waking moment is to be lived in an awareness that God is with us and that He is actively involved and engaged in our thoughts and actions. When our thoughts turn to worry, fear, discouragement, and anger, we are to consciously and quickly turn every thought into prayer and every prayer into thanksgiving. As we go through the day, prayer should be our first response to every fearful situation, every anxious thought, and every undesired task we faced. A lack of prayer will cause us to depend on ourselves instead of depending on God's grace. Unceasing prayer is, in essence, continual dependence upon and daily communion with the Father.

3. A fruitful Life is to be a Pleasing Sacrifice to God

Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” When we are crucified with Christ by faith in Him, we are to completely surrender every selfish desire and ambition to the perfect will of God. Self-promotion and self-pleasing desires are the greatest obstacles between man and God because it is the nature of man to want to please himself, and this self-recognition is a building block for sin. All sin erupts from the desire to please self, and this is what must be crucified with Christ in surrender to the will of God before salvation can bear fruit. Fruit cannot bear any fruit unless it dies in the ground and grow to be a tree that bears even more fruit. Similarly, we need to die to our flesh and allow the Holy Spirit to work within us so that we bear much fruit in Christ. This is an ongoing process because the sinful nature, which has been crucified with Christ, still resides within the flesh, which is still very much alive.

Having been crucified with Christ, we are to live each day not for ourselves but as a pleasing sacrifice to God (Romans 12:1).  We are a living sacrifice for God by not being conformed to this world. How can believers NOT be conformed to the world? The only way is to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2). We do this primarily through the power of God’s Word to transform us. We need to hear (Romans 10:17), read (Revelation 1:3), study (Acts 17:11), memorize (Psalm 119:9-11), and meditate on (Psalm 1:2-3) Scripture. The Word of God ministered in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, is the only power on earth that can transform us from worldliness to true spirituality.

REFLECTION

1. Have you been walking daily with God by reading the bible every day and praying unceasingly? 

2. What can you do to be a pleasing sacrifice to God?

3. How have you been loving yourself more than your neighbors? If so, think of someone in particular who needs this kind of love today and you may be of help that you can be a blessing to the person.

CONCLUSION

When a vine bears much fruit, God is glorified, for daily He sent the sunshine and rain to make the crops grow, and consistently He nurtured each tiny plant and prepared it to blossom. What a moment of glory for the Lord of the harvest when the harvest is brought into barns, mature and ready for use! He made it all happen. This farming analogy shows how God is glorified when people come into a right relationship with Him and begin to bear much fruit in their lives. We are to continually live a fruitful life to bring glory to God.