When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father
—John 15:8
Scripture:
One of the first things we do as Christians is produce spiritual fruit. Jesus said, “When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father” (John 15:8 NLT). If we are really disciples of Jesus, then we will have spiritual fruit, or evidence, in our lives.
For example, you stop doing sinful things and instead do godly things. That will intrigue some people in your life, and it might even perplex them. But it’s one way to produce spiritual fruit.
Another way is to give praise and thanks to God. Hebrews 13:15 tells us, “Therefore, let us offer through Jesus a continual sacrifice of praise to God, proclaiming our allegiance to his name” (NLT). When you’re in church singing praises to God, that is producing spiritual fruit.
A change in your conduct and character is also spiritual fruit. The Bible tells us, “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” (Galatians 5:22–23 NLT).
However, spiritual fruit doesn’t grow overnight. For instance, you wouldn’t pull up a chair in front of a fruit tree and just sit there waiting for fruit to appear. Of course, you could do that, but you wouldn’t see anything.
But if you were to set up a camera with time-lapse photography in front of that tree, you would see dramatic growth. The same is true with spiritual growth. We may not see any changes happening because it takes time. We need to start by saying, “I want to take up the cross daily and follow Jesus because I want to find the life God has for me.”
And we will find our purpose and meaning in life by putting God first.
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