Abide.

Have you ever tried to produce fruit without abiding in the vine?

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:5

Today's blog is going to focus on two things: producing and abiding.

PRODUCING.

Are you a Christ-follower? If you are, you should be producing fruit. The problem? Too many of us are producing fruit without abiding in the vine. That means we are producing spoiled, rotten, nasty fruit. It may look nice on the outside, but inside, the fruit is putrid. 

Think about fruit - not apples and oranges, but biblical fruit. Can you name them? Galatians 5:22 tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Each one of the fruits listed in Galatians 5:22 is a character quality that an even an unbeliever can possess. We've all known good, loving, patient, gentle people who have no relationship with Jesus Christ. So what makes this fruit of the Spirit different than plain old good character? I'm so glad you asked!

ABIDING.

Your good character qualities are not the fruit of the Spirit unless you are abiding in the Vine. Your faithfulness is just your faithfulness without the power of the Holy Spirit. Your goodness is just your goodness. And you may look good and faithful for a while. The things you do and say may look like fruit, but if you're not abiding in the vine, your counterfeit-fruit will not last.

A few weeks ago, I decided to do what I thought was a really good thing. Let me tell you, I was about to produce some "beautiful" fruit. I just knew this fruit was going to really help a certain someone and it was going to give God some glory and it was going to just be really good fruit. Only it didn't work out that way. Despite my good intentions, this fruit that I produced, that I thought looked so beautiful when I produced it, was totally rotten on the inside. I hurt someone that I really love, completely unintentionally, all in the name of producing fruit! At first I didn't understand what had gone wrong. I thought I must've really misunderstood a prompting of the Holy Spirit because THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD FRUIT!

Then I opened my Bible.

I read,  "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me."

And just like that, I realized that I was producing my own fruit, completely apart from the vine, so it wasn't actually even fruit at all. I hadn't prayed, I hadn't read Scripture, I hadn't sought the Lord at all in this situation. I acted completely in my own flesh to produce imposter-fruit that looked sweet and fresh on the outside but was completely rotten on the inside because it had not grown on the Vine. Leave it to Scripture to show me my desperate need for a Savior!

Surely I'm not the only one. Have you ever done so much good that you thought "Surely God will be pleased with all of this good stuff I'm doing!" and then realized that it was all empty? That will happen when we produce our own fake-fruit. It fades so quickly. It leaves us empty. Sometimes it even hurts the ones we were hoping to help. 

Here's the good news: This person that I hurt came right to me and told me I'd done some damage and then, get this, offered me immediate forgiveness. This person knew somehow that I didn't mean to cause pain, but wanted to let me know I had so that it didn't permanently hurt our relationship. Oh, I am so grateful.

So of course that made me think of our Father, who offers us forgiveness and reconciliation when we come to Him, admitting that all these GOOD things we're doing without abiding in Him, are all for nothing. 

Make a quick mental list of all the good things you've done lately. I know most of my readers - you're all pretty good people! I bet those lists could go on for miles. But in Philippians 3:7-9, Paul tells us, 

"But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith."

All that fruit-producing you're doing on your own is garbage because your righteousness will never come from you. Your righteousness can only be found in Christ. Only in the work that He did on the cross. So friend, check your heart. Are you abiding DAILY in the vine, allowing Him to produce His fruit in you or are you super busy producing your own fruit?  As painful as it can be, allow the Vinedresser to prune the branches in your life that aren't producing Holy Spirit Fruit. Decide now to abide in Him and just wait for His beautiful fruit to be produced in your life.