Are You Bearing Spiritual Fruit?
Good Morning Friends,
In today’s scriptures, there is too much to unpack. Each word, each phrase offers more and more and more. It is in many ways some of the most fruitful scripture written because it is tied to the life of Jesus and His passion, to His garden, to His vine of Israel, his vine of salvation, to the water of life and to the nature of our very senses. We begin to see that Jesus not only speaks the word of God to His disciples and to us, but that He is the Word of God to everyone. So it is not just a drop of water on a towel cleaning the feet of a disciple, a cup of water shared with a woman at the well of Jacob or a shallow river as you are baptized, but a mighty ocean with great waves breaking on the shoreline that extends beyond the horizon connected, connected and joined in the deep, deep waters. All we can do is to fall into its flow of eternity saying, “I believe.” So dive into this message layered on a message and be swept into its cleansing waters….its life giving waters. The first is the story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. The second setting is in the upper room or on the way to the garden following the last supper. Judas is busy betraying the Lord. Jesus tells how we can be pruned, disposable or fruitful vines. They combine as an unfolding story of the power of the passion…of our need and of Jesus’ need for disciples. We read that the Father prunes (sanctification) and the Son has cleansed (justification) and how His intimate relation with us, joins us together like the waters of the world so we might have an abundant harvest. We are to make ourselves at home in His deep, deep love and in the Messiah’s words so we too can have deep roots in the promises of God. Are You Bearing Spiritual Fruit?
Scripture: So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
John 4:5-15 (NRSV)
[Jesus] cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’ ”
John 7:37-38 (NRSV)
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.
John 15: 1-8 (NRSV)
Message: Without Jesus we can do nothing. So be thankful that God is pruning you. And know that Jesus has need of you to risk rejection. He has need of you who thirst for a life giving renewal to drink deep. Like the Samaritan woman at the well, He has need of you to worship wherever you walk in witness to reality of the Messiah… a walk, a worship that comes out of your very being, a walk that engages your very spirit in the pursuit of the truth. Here in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, we face the truth that the disciples were bigots. Here we meet a woman who was living on the margin, nearly an outcast herself in an outcast community. And yet Jesus had need of her not only for some water but more importantly for her to become a disciple and share the message. She responds through the heroic and courageous act of facing the reality of her situation. Here we too face the truth that Jesus needs the Good Samaritan in you. He needs the Good Samaritan in me to recognize our common roots. Here we learn that the water we drink comes from the same well and that the spirit of this water of life that cleans us renews us and quenches our thirst is designed to overflow in our life, becoming a river of living water that blesses others as we tell our story and His story. Friends, ask for, receive and share with others your experience of spiritual thirst and your experience of the drink that satisfies. Ask for, receive and share the experience of producing spiritual fruit.
Pray that you Lord would make our lives like a well-watered garden with springs that never fails. Pray our lives overflow with your pure water of love for the unloved. Pray we share for a great harvest of souls for the kingdom and the wisdom to know when the season of harvest has come. Pray that God would give us an overwhelming thirst for Jesus. Pray that God would make our lives like well-watered gardens with springs of water that never fail. Pray that our spirit overflow with your pure water of love for the unloved. Pray there be a great harvest of souls for the kingdom. Pray we read and share God’s word each day so we do not become drought stressed. Pray we drink freely of God’s grace and forgiveness in the joy and satisfaction only Jesus can provide. Pray we drink of the Jesus water and share it. Pray we grow in the Lord. Pray we are productively pruned. Pray we bear fruit. Pray we become disciples connected to Jesus.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 