While recently speaking on the theme of God’s increase in our lives, a memory came to mind. When I was a child there was a poster hanging on a wall in my parent’s bathroom. The poster was hung directly above the bathroom scale, so as you stepped upon the scale you saw this pudgy, pink pig also on a scale, bannered with the verse John 3:30, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Yet I am fairly certain that the poster did not depict what John the Baptist meant by what he said.
I love the heart of John the Baptist. He understood that the calling on His life was not about him, and he never forgot that his purpose was to point others to the Messiah, our Savior, Jesus Christ. The increase of favour or influence upon his own life was for the glory of God. Although he was a public figure and had many followers, his desire was for the glorification of the Lord. As his Kingdom's role was coming to an end he could joyfully say that Jesus must increase and his role must decrease because he knew that he was simply a vessel for the gospel message.
So as we think about the theme of God’s desire for us to be fruitful, and increase in becoming more effective in our personal lives and ministry, I want us to remember that the entire purpose for walking in God’s increase or bearing greater fruit is for the glory of God. It is for the name of the Lord to be lifted high. John 15:8 says, “By this, my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.” Any increase that He bestows upon us is for the increase of His name and glory upon the earth!
I have a few questions to get you thinking.
Has the work of the Spirit been continually growing in your life?
Are you a tree planted by streams of water, yielding fruit in season? Your leaves do not wither, and you prosper in all you do because you allow the word of the Lord to be your nourishment? You have allowed the living word to cut through the hardness of your heart, through the joint of the bone, to reach the inner marrow, bringing transformation to your soul, as the thoughts and intentions of your heart are laid bare before the Lord.
Can you see evidence of the Lord taking you from strength to strength, from one degree of glory to another?
Or have you found yourself within a season of striving to produce, striving to make a difference, striving to be effective in life or ministry?
Remember Zerubbabel had been assigned the task of rebuilding the temple. The Lord wanted to encourage Zerubbabel that the tasks needing to be completed would have a supernatural grace upon them. That it was not going to be by might, nor by power, it would not be done by human strength, but it would be accomplished by the power of the Spirit. Have you tasted the truth of these words? Have you tasted this supernatural empowerment, this kind of grace for the day, that enables you to have a greater impact than you ever could on your own?
Some of us have grown weary in doing good, and the Lord wants to encourage you that He will release a supernatural grace through the power of His Spirit, into the call of God on your life. He wants to breathe renewed life upon your heart and soul.
The Lord says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit.” God’s plan is for us to be fruit bearers, producing an abundant harvest. God gives us a very clear directive in Scripture when it comes to growing in fruitfulness and having increased effectiveness in this life. He gives us instructions so that we can thrive in a world that is not our home. Spend a moment to read John 15:1-17 before we look at a few truths found in this passage.
#1 – FRUITFULNESS IS A BY-PRODUCT OF ABIDING.
John 15:5 (ESV), “whoever abides in me and I in Him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”
Jesus begins by talking about branches that bear no fruit, then he says some branches have some fruit, but he prunes them to produce even more fruit, and then here in verse five we see that abiding will produce much fruit. So the fruit we bear can grow in increasing measure.
The word to abide, or to remain, is an imperative verb. It is an action word with a command attached. Imperative verbs leave no room to discuss the matter. It was not as though Jesus said to the disciples, “I think I have come up with a good idea for how you can be effective and increase in fruitfulness. I would like your input.” No, Jesus knew what must happen. He was giving them a command to act, to abide in Him, in His word and His love.
Here again, we see the beautiful reality of co-labouring with God. It is by God’s grace that we have been grafted into the vine, and even have the desire to abide, drawing life from Him on a moment-by-moment basis. So it is foundationally a work of God, yet we also have a role to play and we must take action to abide and remain in Him.
2 Peter 1:3-8 also requires action on our part if we are to grow in fruitfulness. In our culture, it can become so easy for us to lose sight of our need to remain in Him, to quiet ourselves in His presence, to soak up the truths of the Word, and listen for His directives. We turn our focus onto the tasks of the Kingdom, and we become so busy attempting to produce fruit, that we have no time to simply be in His presence. This is where we begin to strive in our strength. We miss the mark, and our measuring stick for success needs to be brought back into alignment with the word of God.
Looking at the end of verse five, have you experientially discovered the truth that apart from Him you can do nothing? What a humbling reality. We train up our children to become strong and independent yet when they come to faith in Christ they have to relearn the powerful truths of weakness and dependence.
Fruitfulness will be found in humility, in meekness, where Christ’s strength shines through our weakness, and where we recognize that we are not the source, but that we are utterly dependent upon Him for increase and fruitfulness. To abide in the vine is to receive everything we need for life from the vine. A branch can only be a vessel through which living waters can flow. The act of abiding involves obedience to His voice, moving when He says to move, resting when He says to rest. When our striving ceases and we learn to rest in His presence, we can seemingly be doing less, yet by supernatural means, we are producing more, for His glory.
Your prayer life, your act of remaining in His presence and His Word, will reveal the level of your humility and meekness. Are you acutely aware today that you need Him?
Put your focus into abiding and you will not have to even worry or think about whether or not you are producing fruit. It is a simple by-product of abiding. Fruitfulness is a direct result of intimacy with the Father.
#2 – THE FATHER PRUNES US SO WE PRODUCE MORE FRUIT.
Vs. 2 - “Every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”
If you think about a farmer caring for his grapevines, the farmer does the work of pruning. He knows when to prune, and where to prune, how much to prune. He prunes with careful attention. God our Father tends to His vineyard with the same careful attention. The pruning work is a cleansing work. God is not reckless in how He prunes you, but He does it with utmost care. He sanctifies us so we can bear even more fruit. If we want an increase in our lives, pruning is necessary for that increase.
As we remain in Him we are better able to recognize the pruning work of the Lord, instead of interpreting situations and difficulties wrong. If we are not in fellowship with the Father we can end up repeating seasons of testing, seasons of pruning because we did not discern what the Lord wanted to do in our hearts.
I often hear statements, and have made statements like, “I must be on the right path since I am experiencing so much warfare, so much attack from the enemy.” There can be truth to this statement because the enemy is out to seek, kill and destroy. But there is a danger that begins to happen if we are too quick to assess every difficulty as being a work of the enemy. We will end up becoming stunted in our growth. At times difficulty may be an attack of the enemy, but at other times God may be trying to get our attention to root judgments out of us, to bring us into greater humility, or to bring us back into alignment with His plans. If we are prone to interpret difficulty as the enemy’s work, in response, we can muster up all the strength we can, and soldier on, at times completely down the wrong path.
Sometimes we have become so out of touch with what it means to abide, that when we make statements such as these, what we are actually doing is resorting to finding affirmation for our call or direction, based upon what we think is an attack of the enemy, instead of finding that affirmation in the secret place with our Father.
By surrendering to the process of sanctification, God will receive even greater glory, as our branches become thick with fruit. So invite His pruning work in your life. The Lord yields a harvest from our lives when we are yielded to the work of the Spirit in our lives.
#3 – AS WE ABIDE WE WILL GROW IN LOVE FOR ONE ANOTHER.
Did you know that as a believer in Jesus Christ you do not get to pick and choose who you love? Jesus instructs us in verse nine to abide in God’s love. He then goes on to command us in verse twelve to love one another as He has loved us. His love is a sacrificial love even to the point of death. It is interesting to note that these instructions to love, that Jesus gave to His disciples, came just before He tells them that the world is going to hate them. Without the prior command to love, it could be easy for the disciples to respond in the same spirit of hatred that they would encounter.
How many of you know how easy it is to come under the same spirit that is operating in someone who is opposing you? Someone curses us, and we curse them back. Someone slanders us, and in response, we slander them. Someone hates us, we hate them back. We become offended, by people who take offence! To those who have withheld love from us, we withhold it from them.
We have become a culture that teaches us to stay far away from toxic or unsafe people. We have concluded that only those who love us and treat us well, should deserve our love. We build protective barriers around ourselves keeping at a distance anyone who does not make us feel good about ourselves, anyone who does not love us the way we want to be loved. We act with self-preservation in mind. Our culture says this is freedom, but in reality, it only reveals how weak we are, how defenceless we are against being swayed by someone’s attempt to oppress us. It is a fear response, believing that we are too frail and easily influenced by the dysfunction of another.
Imagine if we all lived according to this teaching? As a believer in Jesus Christ, you are a child of light. We have been called to take the light and love of the gospel into dark places. We have not been called to just fellowship in the light. We are called to take sacrificial love into broken hearts who know nothing of what it means to walk in love.
Where are the brave ones, so firmly rooted in the knowledge of who God is, so firmly standing upon the truth of Scripture that the evil you face in another's life, does not cause your light to dim, does not cause you to come under the influence of the spirit it is manifesting, but in fact causes the light you carry to shine all the more brightly?
As a child of God, we bring influence instead of being influenced.
Living in our small man-made boxes is not freedom. The darkness has still won if we do not venture out, dying to self-preservation for the sake of another soul lost in darkness.
Luke 6:32 says, “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.” Verse 35-36, “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, and expect nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for He is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful even as your Father is merciful.”
When we abide in the love of the Father, when we grow in our knowledge of Him, we will grow in knowing how to love others even to the point of death.
Father God wants your life to be so fruitful, so effective, that He has given us His Spirit to produce fruit in our lives. You see fruitfulness results from our position in Christ. It is the work of the Father.
Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is LOVE, JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, KINDNESS, GOODNESS, FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS & SELF-CONTROL.”
Do your branches reach far and wide with these attributes? Are they ever-increasing in your life? Each one of these attributes is recognized most gloriously when standing face to face with difficulty. Broken relationships, difficult seasons, uncertain times are the conditions needed for these attributes to have the opportunity to grow in increasing measure.
We tend to shy away from pain. We fear pain and so make for ourselves an idol. Yet if you want to see the manifestation of God's glory, of His attributes in action, you will find them amid the pain. It is in the midst of difficulty that these fruits begin to shine, giving glory to the Father.
You cannot have real love apart from someone in need of deep grace or forgiveness.
Real joy is evident in the midst of our suffering.
Peace is most recognized in the presence of looming chaos and fear.
Patience is apparent when you would rather explode in rage.
Kindness is beautifully expressed in moments of deep need.
Goodness is displayed amidst the selfishness of humanity.
Faithfulness is gloriously revealed amid betrayal.
Gentleness is triumphantly present when faced with expressions of brutality.
Self-control is demonstrated when the circumstances of life threaten us.
Are you ready for a new season of divine enablement?
Are you ready for the capacity of your heart to grow in love, as you abide in love?
Are you ready for your life to be a vessel for increase, to the glory of God?