Victoria Weimer penned our devotional this week. Be certain to stop by the contributors page to learn more about her!
Have you ever heard an apple tree grunting while it pushes a shiny Red Delicious from its branches? What about a tomato vine? Have you ever heard it crying out as it forces out a nice, juicy tomato? Neither have I.
If it were up to me to grow fruits and veggies for my family, we would starve. One summer, my entire crop of walnut-sized potatoes barely filled a side dish. Thankfully, some brilliant person invented grocery stores.
As a young mom, I used to feel guilty about not having a green thumb. For whatever reason, I thought that producing my own fruit would make me super-mom. I failed to realize that focusing on being the right mom would ensure that my family had food, whether grown or purchased.
Often, Christians fall into that same trap thinking that they need to produce spiritual fruit to be a good Christian instead of focusing on being the right kind of Christian who will naturally produce that fruit.
In John 15, Jesus calls Himself the True Vine and His Father the Husbandman or the Farmer. The Farmer bears the responsibility of the painful purging process for the branches that do not bear fruit. Jesus reminds us that if we do not abide in the Vine, we cannot bear fruit.
In Psalm 1, the blessed, happy, fruitful person lives his life ignoring ungodly advice and avoiding sinful activities. Instead, he delights – enjoys, looks forward to, digs into – the law of the Lord. He repeatedly thinks about it and connects what he has read with what he is doing.
As a result, his life resembles a well-grounded and well-watered tree that produces fruit in the right season and stays healthy in the other seasons. The branch’s main job is to abide in the vine, and the tree’s main job is to stay well-grounded and well-watered. The fruit grows as a result.
But what does that mean as a Christian? Doesn’t producing a lot of fruit make us super-Christians?If we are the branches and Jesus is the Vine, then we need to abide in Jesus. Of course, trusting Jesus for salvation must happen first, but abiding means more than that.
When we read our Bibles, are we doing it to check the “done” box on the taskbar, or are we reading His Word desiring to know Him better? When we pray, are we rushing through a wish list before slapping “in Jesus’s name” at the end, or are we sharing our hearts as a daughter does to her Father?
If a blessed man is like a fruitful tree, then we need to be well-grounded and well-watered like that tree. We need to let the Spirit water our souls with the Living Water in God’s Word and focus on the nourishment that makes us a healthy branch or a healthy tree.
Then the fruit will organically appear. Let the Farmer decide the timing and amount of that fruit. Just stay in the Word, abide in Jesus, and grow in Him. Only then will He produce the fruit in us.
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