It’s Time for You to Bear Fruit

One of the Holy Spirit’s responsibilities is to make Christ visible in your life.  You and I, on our own, cannot live a Christian life.  Consequently, God had to give us the Holy Spirit, living through us, to produce the life and characteristics of Christ.

Don’t follow your heart, it’s wicked.  Follow Christ.

How much of us does He have?  The more of us He has, will result in more of Christ manifesting in our lives.

Fruit Reflects the Nature of the Seed

1 Peter 1:22-23 (ESV) – Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;

Everything reproduces after its own kind.  This is a principle established in Genesis.  You and I have to reflect the nature of God, since we have been born of an imperishable, incorruptible seed.  Someone had to explain, teach you God’s word.

God Will Inspect the Quality and Quantity of the Fruit

Luke 13:6-7 (ESV) – And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. 

Some of us have to have some stuff cut out of our lives in order to bear fruit.

God Expects Us to Bear Fruit

Luke 13:7b (ESV) – Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?

God’s expectation is that because we have the incorruptible seed of God in us, we should bear fruit.

God Extends Mercy to Us  

Luke 13:8 (ESV) – And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure.

God expects us to bear fruit, yet He extends grace and mercy to us by:

• Giving us a little time.
• There’s some stuff that still needs to happen.

Let God fertilize you.  It is necessary for what you’re trying to product.

The Only Way to Bear Fruit is To Connect with the Vine

John 15:4 ESV – Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

The Holy Spirit needs us to be the conduit to the seed that dwells within us, in order to produce the Fruit of the Spirit in our lives.  In order for us to be that conduit, we must abide in Him.

The branch cannot produce in and of itself.  The devil will do his best to keep you from the vine because if you continue to abide fruit is the natural offspring of abiding.

There are times you will not feel like praying, staying in your word, etc., but you and I must pay the price of abiding regardless of our feelings.  Stick with it!  What you do in secret God will give you an open reward for.

“The seed is at work when you can’t see it.” – Pastor Billy Johnson