Morning “The branch cannot bear fruit of itself.” / John 15:4
How did you begin to bear fruit? It was when you came to Jesus and cast
yourselves on his great atonement, and rested on his finished righteousness.
Ah! what fruit you had then! Do you remember those early days? Then indeed the
vine flourished, the tender grape appeared, the pomegranates budded forth, and
the beds of spices gave forth their smell. Have you declined since then? If
you have, we charge you to remember that time of love, and repent, and do thy
first works. Be most in those engagements which you have experimentally proved
to draw you nearest to Christ, because it is from him that all your fruits
proceed. Any holy exercise which will bring you to him will help you to bear
fruit. The sun is, no doubt, a great worker in fruit-creating among the trees
of the orchard: and Jesus is still more so among the trees of his garden of
grace. When have you been the most fruitless? Has not it been when you have
lived farthest from the Lord Jesus Christ, when you have slackened in prayer,
when you have departed from the simplicity of your faith, when your graces
have engrossed your attention instead of your Lord, when you have said, “My
mountain standeth firm, I shall never be moved”; and have forgotten where your
strength dwells–has not it been then that your fruit has ceased? Some of us
have been taught that we have nothing out of Christ, by terrible abasements of
heart before the Lord; and when we have seen the utter barrenness and death of
all creature power, we have cried in anguish, “From him all my fruit must be
found, for no fruit can ever come from me.” We are taught, by past experience,
that the more simply we depend upon the grace of God in Christ, and wait upon
the Holy Spirit, the more we shall bring forth fruit unto God. Oh! to trust
Jesus for fruit as well as for life.
Evening “Men ought always to pray.” / Luke 18:1
If men ought always to pray and not to faint, much more Christian men. Jesus
has sent his church into the world on the same errand upon which he himself
came, and this mission includes intercession. What if I say that the church is
the world’s priest? Creation is dumb, but the church is to find a mouth for
it. It is the church’s high privilege to pray with acceptance. The door of
grace is always open for her petitions, and they never return empty-handed.
The veil was rent for her, the blood was sprinkled upon the altar for her, God
constantly invites her to ask what she wills. Will she refuse the privilege
which angels might envy her? Is she not the bride of Christ? May she not go in
unto her King at every hour? Shall she allow the precious privilege to be
unused? The church always has need for prayer. There are always some in her
midst who are declining, or falling into open sin. There are lambs to be
prayed for, that they may be carried in Christ’s bosom? the strong, lest they
grow presumptuous; and the weak, lest they become despairing. If we kept up
prayer-meetings four-and-twenty hours in the day, all the days in the year, we
might never be without a special subject for supplication. Are we ever without
the sick and the poor, the afflicted and the wavering? Are we ever without
those who seek the conversion of relatives, the reclaiming of back-sliders, or
the salvation of the depraved? Nay, with congregations constantly gathering,
with ministers always preaching, with millions of sinners lying dead in
trespasses and sins; in a country over which the darkness of Romanism is
certainly descending; in a world full of idols, cruelties, devilries, if the
church doth not pray, how shall she excuse her base neglect of the commission
of her loving Lord? Let the church be constant in supplication, let every
private believer cast his mite of prayer into the treasury.
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