Bear Fruit

“As the vine sends its energy through the branch to bear fruit, so Christ can send His energy through you.” John MacArthur

“Our actions disclose what goes on within us, just as its fruit makes known a tree otherwise unknown to us.” Thalassias the Libyan

“No man can put Jesus Christ to greater shame than by professing the gospel without showing the power of it. There can be no more vile and sordid hypocrisy than for any to pretend unto inward, habitual sanctification, while their lives are barren in the fruits of righteousness and obedience.” K. H. Von Bogatzky

“By continually abiding in Christ, the one who has been pruned to bring forth much fruit will bring forth much fruit.” Elmer Towns

“A primary qualification for serving God with any amount of success, and for doing God’s work well and triumphantly, is a sense of our own weakness. When God’s warrior marches forth to battle, strong in his own might, when he boasts, ‘I know that I shall conquer, my own right arm and my conquering sword shall get unto me the victory’, defeat is not far distant. God will not go forth with that man who marches in his own strength. He who reckoneth on victory thus has reckoned wrongly, for ‘it is not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts’. They who go forth to fight, boasting of their prowess, shall return with their gay banners trailed in the dust, and their armour stained with disgrace. Those who serve God must serve Him in His own way, and in His strength, or He will never accept their service. That which man doth, unaided by divine strength, God can never own. The mere fruits of the earth He casteth away; He will only reap that corn, the seed of which was sown from heaven, watered by grace, and ripened by the sun of divine love. God will empty out all that thou hast before He will put His own into thee; He will first clean out the granaries before He will fill them with the finest of the wheat… Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being filled, and your casting down is but the making ready for your lifting up.” C. H. Spurgeon

“It is important to understand that fruitfulness and growth are the results of focusing on Christ and desiring to honor Him. When growth and change are our primary goals, we tend to be preoccupied with ourselves instead of with Christ. ‘Am I growing? Am I getting any better? Am I more like Christ today? What am I learning?’ This inordinate preoccupation with self-improvement parallels our culture’s self-help and personal enhancement movement in many ways. Personal development is certainly not wrong, but it is misleading—and it can be very disappointing—to make it our preeminent goal. If it is our goal at all, it should be secondary. As we grasp the unconditional love, grace, and power of God, then honoring Christ will increasingly be our consuming passion… The only One worthy of our preoccupation is Christ, our sovereign Lord, who told Paul, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness’." Robert McGee

“A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love.” St. Basil

“Cut out that which seems good to invest in the best. It is the law of life: Early sacrifice for later bounty. It can be hard to prune good things that are blooming. It can be hard to remember why you are pruning. Because there’s a counter-intuitiveness to it, this plucking off certain life activities that will yield good fruit. Some might even think it foolish to pare back, when the bloom and gifting apparent; a good harvest inevitable. Yet it’s the pruning of seemingly goodleaves that can grow a betterlife. To allow later seasons to yield the longed-for abundant crop. It takes courage to crop a life back —but it’s exactly the way to have the best crop of all. What seems like hard work that’s taking an eternity today — is exactly what may makethe most difference in eternity.” Ann Voskamp

“God has a multitude of reasons for allowing our troubling situations. Perhaps He is working on some of the people in our lives. Maybe He is working out His timing to reap the maximum harvest when His solution comes in the end. Or He could be proving a point to His enemy about His glory, as He did with Job – and your reaction is the key. Maybe He is even working on us – our character flaws, personality issues, or spiritual growth. Unpruned trees bear less fruit, so He must shape us differently. But we’re surprised – and angry – when His pruning hand is not as gentle as we’d like. The question we need to settle in our hearts is whether we believe God is good. It isn’t hard to hold such a belief when His blessings seem bountiful. But the blessing of hardship? We wonder where His favor has gone. We grow distant, resentful, and bitter over the harshness of His loving hand. Like a child who has just been spanked – or simply told ‘no’ – we pout. God just doesn’t seem fair.” Chris Tiegreen

“Consider for a moment just how much control we have? Rightly so, we make our plans yet we all must agree that we clearly have no idea what the day will bring forth. All too often our plans go awry for something as mundane as a cancelation of a flight, a child throwing up or a traffic jam that delays everything. If we cannot even control twenty-four hours or even twenty-four minutes or even twenty-four seconds (for that matter) what in the world makes us think we can control a lifetime? The wise look up. The wise rest in His Authority and receive their marching orders from Him seeking to abide in the center of His good and pleasing and perfect will. We make plans, but they are not authoritative plans – He often overrides them – yet all for our good and His glory never one surpassing the other. The important thing to learn is that He has a plan for every life and we want to walk in it. It may seem very difficult and not of our choosing (and more often than not this is the case) but it is always for our best – always. And in the end, it brings forth much fruit not to mention perfect peace and contentment.” BHY

“‘The best memories are still to come.’ I doubt anyone who came to Ray’s funeral will forget those words. Every so often you get to see with your own eyes the fruit of a life lived with sacrificial faithfulness. All the life that comes from an actual, old-fashioned dying-to-self. It’s staggering. It pulls me back to reality. No matter how glamorized the choices and desires of one’s individual Self and the temptation to organize your life around getting what you think you want, that’s not how God set up the universe. It’s just as Jesus said. The grain of wheat that falls into the ground like a dead dream becomes a field of such bounty it stretches into the horizon. You can hardly get a seat at the funeral. So in those moments that no one would notice but you, when you have to die in some small way to what you’d really rather do in order to care for your children, or your aging mother, or when you go out of your way to strengthen someone else’s hand in God, and you think none of it matters much and you will never turn out to be anybody special, and the ‘sacrifice’ of something you cherish appears a bit dumb by current standards, remember my friend, Ray. As will I.” Paula Rinehart

“As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.” Richard Whately