Do You Know How To Bear Fruit Each Day?
Good Morning Friends,
I understand that from the sermon on Sunday that the Hebrew word for fruit sounds a lot like the Hebrew word for end. Some scripture from Amos 8 plays on the words and serves up a basket of fruit to indicate the end times. So today we focus on a fruit that is never out of season. Today we focus on the joy of being in the Kingdom of Jesus… and about the prospect of possessing what one desires… about a joy whose roots extend down deep into the bedrock of eternity…about the emotion evoked by well-being and how it relates to bearing fruit that lasts. Friends, today we are about finding a way to help another person that in turn helps the world. It is about feeding the world but not consuming it to the point it becomes unlivable. Today is about love’s solution and discipline. Do You Know How To Bear Fruit Each Day?
Scripture: This is what the Lord God showed me—a basket of summer fruit. He said, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A basket of summer fruit.” Then the Lord said to me, the end has come upon my people Israel; I will never again pass them by.
Amos 8:1-2 (NRSV)
Jesus said, “Go and bear fruit — fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. This is my command: Love each other.”
John 15:16-17 (NIV)
The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the LORD; they flourish in the courts of our God. In old age they still produce fruit; they are always green and full of sap, showing that the LORD is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.
Psalm 92:12-15 (NRSV)
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
1 John 4:7-16 (NRSV)
Through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
Revelation 22:2 (ESV)
Message: I was raised in the breadbasket of the world in Illinois, but it had its seasons. Then I came to Florida where stuff grows all the time and old folks retire to play golf and tomatoes are grown for the salads of people on winter cruise ships. Then I went to Israel and saw an old olive tree and was amazed at the beauty of the wood that Jesus would have carved… whose shades of red and cream and black and its stripes and cuts that remind of Jesus on the cross and I wonder at the reality of a tree 1,700 years old still bearing fruit… of a cross upon which the seed of our faith has been planted. Friends, no one in all of history has been as joyous as Jesus and had more reason to be miserable. No one has produced more fruit…not because of what He did alone but because of who he was and is today in our lives. Friends, the strawberry plant produces strawberries. The apple tree yields a harvest of apples. What kind of fruit are you producing? If you are graphed on to the vine of Christ you too can produce fruit that lasts. The fruit of love. There is really so much to learn about God, but there is nothing more critical than learning the law of the kingdom, that we are to love one another. Christians of course, are not immune to the problem of not being loving. We too have much trouble loving God and loving each other. Knowing is not doing. A friend of mine put the problem this way… “we end up not doing anything, because doing good is so hard.” That is just one reason we fail and yet regardless of our separating sin of choice, we must eventually realize that Jesus has the answer to all of them. Because God has a higher calling for us… because God’s love has our names on it… because He first loved us…. as a father to his children, He therefore encourages us to respond. He is lovingly saying, love one another and you will produce a fruit that lasts…a fruit that is never out of season. Friends, the time has come for us to do something great because nothing else will do. We must learn to love, for God has commanded it. The statement, “God is love” is simple and yet profound. For the experience of love…God’s love… is many things. It is personal, pure, proven, perfect, and powerful and preserving…it is patient and providing just what we need. Today we are encouraged to love the world around us with His love. That is our only salvation.
Pray that we learn to love God, pray that we learn to love one another…responding to His revelation in our life with obedience to His law of love. Pray that we find nourishment in the bread of life. Pray we experience the resurrection in our life when we love others. Pray we embrace the truth as love. Pray we bear fruit not just feed off the vine. Pray we are connected to the true vine bearing the fruit of love. Pray we abide in Christ allowing Him to do the producing. Pray we trim the branches of our lives that do not bear fruit. Pray we graph on new ones that do. Pray we realize that there is no real love without doing. Pray we share our faith, if only one mustard seed at a time. Pray we confess our selfishness and realize the misery it causes. Pray we not just seek surface nourishment. Pray our roots go deep into the life giving water. Pray we be authentic, producing each day the unique fruit God has planted in our lives. Pray we love each other.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 