Encouragement In Bearing Fruit

John 15:16-17

Encouragement In Bearing Fruit

     “You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give to you. This I command you, that you love one another.” -Jesus

     I really want to encourage everyone this week that God will bless every action and every prayer that you make on behalf of your family, your neighbor, or your friend. He will bless your efforts to draw them into the Kingdom of God. Jesus says that He has appointed us to bear fruit and that the fruit will remain. He is encouraging us to earnestly ask for their salvation and to step out in faith that He will answer. Every little seed of truth that you sow into their lives will come up and bear fruit. I know that we all get discouraged when after years of praying for someone we don’t see any changes in their life. We have an enemy that wants you to give up in your prayers for that person and he will do anything he can to discourage you from praying with your whole heart, for he knows that God will answer if you persist.

     This is a great word of encouragement for those of us who have been asking the Lord for years on behalf of others and going out of our way to draw them into God’s kingdom. It seems like we can go forever and still see no good coming from it. But let us look at the example that Jesus has left us with. When He hung on the cross all of His disciples had deserted Him and the Jews whom He had tenderly cared for and ministered to were crucifying Him. There was no earthly hope of seeing any good fruit from all of His work. He was staring at a total loss even of His own body and yet, the day He died, all of the seeds He had planted started to come to life! His church grows bigger by the day and there will be no end to the fruit for which He has labored. So for us – we need to take courage from this example He has left us with, and not despair or let go of our prayers for people or stop going out of our way to draw them to God even when we see no fruit. Jesus has promised that there will be fruit!

     So let us step out and start thinking of what kind of seeds we can be planting. There are seeds of action like visiting neighbors or nursing homes or going out into our local communities and helping out. We could be writing letters to friends and family in which we share the love of God with them. We can hand out tracts or join a group that is spreading the Gospel in our communities. I just want to encourage you that anything you can come up with to do for someone, will grow and bear fruit. So let us seek God earnestly today that He will give us new ideas for what we can be doing to spread His kingdom so that we will have fruit for our labors at the end of this age and that the fruit will remain for all of eternity.           God bless you all!

The Joy Of Christ

John 15: 9-11
The Joy Of Christ

     “Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”- Jesus

     The question for today is, why does Jesus say that we are to keep His commandments in order to abide in His love? What is the love He is talking about? Jesus gives us a point of reference when He says, “I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” This love that Jesus is telling us to abide in is our source for being alive. It is the kind of life, bubbling up inside, that causes us to be excited to be alive. Jesus says that if we keep His commandments our joy is going to be made full. He equates keeping His commandments with abiding in His love.

     We have a funny teaching in our churches called – “God knows we will never be perfect in this life.” Yes it is true that we stumble and sin all the time but it is not an excuse to not commit ourselves to trying. Jesus says to resist the Devil’s temptations and he will flee from us. All besetting sins are temptations and within our power to resist by God’s help. God doesn’t want us to use the excuse that we will never be perfect. He is pleased with us when we resist, and the harder it is to resist the more pleased He is when we overcome it. It delights His heart to see the faithfulness of His child to persevere under such challenges. 

     When we resist the temptation to break the commandments there is a purity that comes into our lives, and with each passing day that we hold fast, our lives start to get more exciting. Think of an alcoholic. Everyday that he doesn’t drink he is able to think and work and get his life back together. Everyday builds on the last and his life becomes exciting. But if he is constantly falling back into drinking he is always starting from square one with nothing to build on. So our lives become more exciting the more we build them on keeping the commandments. God has built a great reward into each of His commandments if we keep them, an eternal reward with promises like He gave to Abraham that will last forever. We serve a God Who has great wisdom which He desires to pass on to us, but it is a wisdom that can only build off of obedience. I used to pray for wisdom all the time (I still do) and God would teach me many things, but His wisdom always affected my life, causing me to have to change the way I lived and I used to think – wisdom is only as good as it is made use of. If God teaches you something and you don’t use it, it does you no good and He is not going to give you more until you use what He has given you already. Keeping the commandments is the foundation stone to all wisdom. If we keep them our joy will be made full because we won’t always be starting from square one but will be building on those principles that bring peace and order in our lives so that we can learn new things.

     There is no fun in learning the same lessons over and over again and as we keep the commandments we will abide closer with Jesus, ever growing in His character and love. The Ten Commandments are like sight to the blind, they give understanding as to why our lives keep falling into trouble and they show us the path we should walk on in order to keep from doing it again. The commandments were given for our blessing, so let us meditate upon them and live in the fullness of joy that Jesus has promised for all those who would walk in them.         God bless!

Number Your Days

Psalm 90:12

Number Your Days

So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Today, take a moment to examine your life. Where are you going? What are your goals? What is the end result of the life you are trying to build for yourself? Are you happy? Have you ever been happy? Do you think the next thing you are seeking is going to make you happy? These are very good questions to ask ourselves and in doing so we will begin to draw conclusions about things that we have rarely stopped to think seriously about and learn from.

The word in this Psalm is asking these questions. He says, teach me to know and understand that my time might be very short and how am I spending it? It also may be long, and how am I spending it? It may be long?? Why would that help me think? I thought that life being short is the scary part because I might die before getting my life right with God or without accomplishing something good for Him? Yes, your life might be long. Why is this scary? It is scary because it means that every decision you make will have long consequences for you. So when you wake up after a party where in the moment you chose to do a reckless thing, you find that you can’t shake the consequences. Or if you had an abortion your life goes on and now you find out everything they don’t tell you at the clinic. Regret, guilt, the feeling of having actually committed murder intentionally. Did you know that most of the people in jail will never have the regret that you do or the intense guilt because their crimes were relatively harmless compared to yours. Most of them have actually never killed a person before and if they did, they usually have a motive against someone for something they did to them, but you have chosen to kill someone who never harmed you. These things will stay with you forever. So if you live for the moment as though life is short, you will find that life is long and every day that goes by feels like a lifetime.

We now realize that if we had known that life would go on we would never have done the things we did. We would have considered our days that we might have chosen more wisely. This despair and guilt is why so many people want to end their lives early. The consequences of their actions won’t leave them. They just go on and on. There are so many things we can do that have horrible consequences. These are just a couple, but I’m sure you can think of more. They make life miserable don’t they? 

Here is the miracle. Jesus has offered us a way out. He has offered to take the pain, guilt, despair and suicidal thoughts from us and to replace them with peace,  joy and rest for our weary heart. This is the miracle of salvation. He takes our destroyed lives and begins to rebuild them. He takes away the spirit of despair we are under and gives us a new joy and a reason to wake up in the morning. Those who have received Christ know exactly what I’m talking about. You wake up in the morning and your just actually glad to be alive! Nothing outward has changed. Your life is still full of the consequences of your actions but suddenly the weight is gone and your glad to get up! Maybe for the first time that you can ever remember! This is just the beginning! Jesus will give you a desire to live, and a joy to begin living for Him. He will reshape your life and turn the worst things you have done into something beautiful. He will take the humility of your heart as you give it to Him and grow something new and beautiful out of it. He will save you from your despair and give you a joy that you never knew was possible.

So for all of you who have never experienced this, take some time to consider and remember your days. Jesus can make you brand new today if you humbly come before Him right now and say, “Jesus, please take away my old life and all its horrible consequences, please forgive me and give me a new one that is full of Your joy and peace. I want this joy that I have just been reading about. Please make me a new person in Jesus.” If you take some time and do this, I guarantee your life will never be the same.

And for all who know Jesus, take some time to consider your days. Don’t waste time on things that only please the flesh. Consider how little time you have before Jesus returns and seek to do all you can for His sheep before He comes. Let us be found faithful when He come back, that He would be able to say to us, “Well done My good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master.”

Abiding In The Vine

John 15:1-4

Abiding In The Vine

     “I Am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He (God) takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me.”- Jesus

     Jesus is showing us the emphasis that God has placed on bearing fruit and that it is the outward sign of where our hearts are. Anyone can call themselves a Christian but it is the fruit of our lives that will show whether we truly are. In fact, God says that every branch in Him that does not bear fruit will be removed which is even more thought provoking. For if a branch already was with Him but stopped abiding in Him it would cease to bear fruit and be removed. Certainly a word of warning to us not to take our daily walk with God for granted. Ezekiel 33:13 puts it even more clearly. “When I say to the righteous he will surely live, and he so trusts in his righteousness that he commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered; but in that same iniquity of his which he has committed he will die.” This is where the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom as Solomon says.

     So what does it mean to abide in the vine and how do we do it? To abide in the vine is to take our time for seeking the Lord, seriously. It is to make time for Him everyday where we put aside everything in order to be with Him. What friendship have you ever had where spending time with that person no longer mattered? A true friend desires to spend time with you even when it is not possible because of time or distance. So also, our relationship with God does not grow without an effort to make time for Him. So why can it be so difficult to make time for God? It is because we have an enemy who tries to fill our time with pressing things, and other loves that will consume our time that we could use to spend with the Lord. We pursue a sport or a romance or our career as if these things are truly the only thing that will keep us alive or are worth living for. How can we tell if these things have become too important? Look at your reaction if they are taken away. We fall into despair – you got injured and your future in that sport is lost forever, the person of your dreams has left you, someone has seen your business idea, liked it, copied it, and is now undercutting your business. Just look at your response to these things. Anger, despair, getting even, anger at God for not stepping in, these reactions show what our hearts are in love with.  The only way to let go of them is to start spending time with God on a daily basis. As we spend time with Him He places His hand upon us and removes the despair and bitterness and frustration from our spirit and replaces it with His peace. He is able to do the impossible – which is to bring peace and contentment back into our lives. Our hearts let go and are free to take hold of Him and to enjoy His company. The more faithful we are to spend time with Him the more often we enjoy this peace and contentment and the more we look forward to being with Him. This is the beginning of true love for our Savior. Not just the first love of being saved by what He did for us, but a sustainable and ever-growing daily love relationship with Him. The more time we spend with Him the deeper it grows and we find it is not possible to get to the end of it! With the pleasures of this world you reach the maximum it can offer in literally moments, but with God you can never get to the end of it. With God’s love you will never find the end where you feel empty and have to find some new love.

     So let us start spending more time with Him and enjoy the everlasting blessing He has given us which is to have a personal relationship with the Creator of the universe! And let us bear much fruit which grows so naturally as we abide in Him. God bless you all!

Patience While Being Pruned

John 15:1-2

Patience While Being Pruned

     “I Am the true vine, and My Father is the Vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, that it may bear more fruit.”

     “Every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, that it may bear more fruit.”    Jesus has called us His branches and said that His Father tends us and prunes us that we might be healthy and bear fruit. However, this pruning that God does is not pleasant and often leaves us feeling less than loving thoughts towards Him. We are going along trying our best to serve Him when suddenly the world falls apart around us and we lose our most precious earthly possessions. At first we feel like God has abandoned us in spite of our constant pleading with Him for help, but far from this being the truth, our Heavenly Father is jealously tending us that we might bring forth fruit abundantly. 

     God’s pruning sets us free from the excesses we have let grow up around us that take up all of our time and energy. He prunes things that our hearts are attached to so that we might be free to set our hearts on the treasure in Heaven. Jesus says it well in Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” As we draw close to God very often there are things that we know we need to let go of and yet we can’t do it and we leave them in our lives for a period of time. However, God is faithful to remove those things for us as He watches and sees that we truly desire to be free from those things and yet cannot let go. He steps in and prunes us.

     Many times, however, He prunes us from things that we have no desire to let go of and this is where we can get angry with God for His work in our lives. There are things we have that we feel we could never live without and God says, – “They are holding your heart hostage to the earth which is passing away and I have promised to set you free and preserve you for eternal life.” I call this pruning – A Severe Mercy – a blessing that we only truly appreciate years after He has done it. However, it is not fun for Him. He listens to our anger towards Him and endures it for our good. We are very often not grateful for this pruning process! If only we could bless His heart by patiently enduring it with a cheerful and hopeful heart. However, this hopeful heart is only attained by having our treasure in Heaven and it is our treasure on earth that He is pruning which means that our heart is being torn in the middle of it.

     So what can we do to more quickly come to peace with this pruning process? Surrender – we need to surrender the things that God is pruning rather than trying to re-grow those branches. The pain remains while we fight to re-grow what He has pruned, but if we surrender and focus on our roots – digging deeper into Him and drawing from His Living Water, we will grow and mature our roots so that we will be able to support the fruit that will come forth as the season changes to summer in our lives.

     I want to encourage you to not resist God’s pruning in your lives, but embrace it and bear it patiently. Set your heart on our treasure in Heaven so that your heart will be at peace and no longer feel the loss of this temporary earthly life. May God bless and encourage you in your walk with Him!

The Oil of the Holy Spirit

John 14:16-17

The Oil of the Holy Spirit

     “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you, and will be in you.” – Jesus

     Jesus says that He will send us the Holy Spirit and the world cannot receive Him or know Him, but we will know Him because He will abide in us. I think that it is interesting that Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will be our Helper forever. That means that He desires to be part of our lives and to instruct us in the ways of our Heavenly Father for all time. In other words, the Holy Spirit will truly be our closest companion. Think about what that means, the Spirit of Righteousness and Truth abiding in you. You will never be without a constant reminder of what it truly means to live a holy life before God. However, not only will He teach us what righteousness is but will be our helper in being obedient and in overcoming our sinful desires and weaknesses. He will both convict and overcome our sinful nature. What a wonderful blessing.

     Now let me ask each of you, have you truly in your heart desired such a Holy Being to be in your life? One with whom you can never get away with any sin because He stands there with conviction in His hand? It is the most fearful and yet the most desirable thing in the world to have Him reside in you and to have His Holiness upon you. You will truly never be the same again. It’s amazing how much compromise we desire to have in our lives even after we have become Christians. There are parts of our old lives that we hope we can incorporate into our new lives with Christ. However, to have the Holy Spirit dwell in you is to know that you can never pretend ignorance to the sin you desire to keep in your life.

     Brothers and Sisters, it is time to rise and wash our sin stained robes once again and pray for a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit and to recommit ourselves to the changes He wants to bring into our lives. We need to go back to the days when we first were saved and wanted to be free from sin more than anything else in the world. Over the years we have fallen back into the sleepiness of the world’s distractions and temptations and have become unfruitful. Jesus gave us the parable of the ten virgins who fell asleep. Brothers and Sisters, it is time to wake up for our Savior is coming soon! Not only do we need to stop sleeping but we need to wake up everyone around us that we might refill our lamps and not be caught without oil at His return! 

     Time is short and our brothers and sisters need us to rise and wake them. Let us ask God to refill us with the oil of His Holy Spirit! God bless you all and may you go forth and bear much fruit for our Lord and Savior!

A Wake-Up Call

John 14:12-15

A Wake-Up Call

     “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father. And whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it. If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”- Jesus

     “The works that I do shall he do also.” Let us explore the works that Jesus did which He has for us to do also. As we look through the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John we see that the miracles Jesus did all related to helping others, and when someone asked Jesus if he could join Him Jesus replies by saying that He has no place to rest His head. In other words, He has no home and the life He leads will be an uncomfortable one. When Jesus sent His disciples out two by two they were not to take any money or extra clothes with them but to live wherever they were welcomed and to eat whatever was set before them. Jesus was not concerned with His own comfort and support. His every effort was for the sake of other’s needs and salvation.

     If I could I would just like to open our eyes as Christians to show us how selfish we have become. We complain to God for every inconvenience that comes upon us and we strive every day to make our lives more comfortable. We rarely have time for a neighbor in need or a sick family member. As brothers and sisters of Jesus – these things should not be this way! Jesus was only concerned with His neighbors and never took a thought about Himself. His life was so busy helping His neighbor that He would have never even had the time to think about Himself. Can we see how far from our Savior’s example we have come?

     Jesus is not speaking poetically and romantically when He says, “Sell all you have and come follow Me.” Jesus is turning our lives as we have known them upside down, and every fleshly love is getting scraped off of us. We think we know Jesus already, but is He removing your foundation from under you right now? Are terrible things happening in your life right now and your’re finding yourself saying, “These things aren’t coming from the God I know”? I tell you – don’t resist this upheaval in your life. Your God whom you thought you knew is real, and He is changing your comfortable view of what it means to be a Christian! You say, “This is not the God I know.” You are right for you have not known Him as well as you thought and He is shaking out your false foundations so that He might replace them with His solid Rock.

     Give your lives anew to Him and say – Lord, your ways are above mine and Your wisdom for my life is higher than mine and from now on I will no longer create You in my image but will become like You! Show me who You are! God has to shake us out of our sleepiness. We need to be out on the streets serving Him with passion. We need to speak boldly to our coworkers and really care that they are heading for eternity in Hell!

     Brothers and Sisters, wake up! Turn off your TV’s and go out and see the world as it is, full of sin and hopelessness. Rise up and save this upcoming generation that has no hope of escape from the constant bombardment of sin and temptation!

     Where are my brothers and sisters of God? Rise up and take back this country! Get on your knees and pray like you have never prayed before! We have been asleep in this world’s pursuits but the time for sleep is over! Wake up and save our land! These are the works that Jesus did and greater things will He do through us!
     God bless you all and fill your lives with new life and encouragement!