Tag Archives: fruit

Two Realms

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TWO REALMS

“So, my brothers and sisters, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God. For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” Romans 7:4-6.

Two realms – the natural, physical realm and the realm of the unseen – are operative in the universe. The physical realm is more real to us because we function in it in our everyday lives. But, with the harnessing of the energy waves in modern times, for example, microwaves, wireless, light etc., we have become much more aware of the unseen realm. It amazes me how, with a single touch on the screen of my android tablet, I can order a book from an internet company anywhere in the world and in a few minutes, via energy that I can neither see nor understand, the book appears on my device and I can begin reading!

It is not difficult for us to understand, then, that we can live in two realms spiritually. We have bodies that relate to and function in the world. We eat food from the ground, and our bodies convert it into energy which drives our systems. But we also function in an unseen dimension which is just as real. The world we live in is immersed in the presence of its Creator. The Bible says that He fills heaven and earth. He is fully involved in what happens on earth, and that includes us.

The very breath we breathe is His breath – life. When He removes our breath we die. We have no life apart from Him. If it were possible, scientists could put all the elements of a human body together but they cannot produce life because both physical life and spiritual life come from God.  That means, of course, that if life comes from Him then we are dependent on Him and accountable to Him whether we acknowledge it or not.

And so, He has the right to dictate the way our lives are to be lived. When we confirmed our forefather’s disobedience by our own, we suffered that same consequences as he did – alienation from God. But God did everything to put us back on track and to restore the connection between the seen and the unseen realms.

So, Paul says, we were cut off from the power of the sinful world to influence us when we died with Jesus. It is a fact. It’s real. It happened. God did it in the unseen realm when we turned to Him through Jesus. We died to our old lives and the power of sin to keep us enslaved. But the reality of it is activated by faith – that unseen power, like the unseen waves of energy that network our planet and our universe, has connected us to a new power – the power of God.

From what were we cut off? Paul said we were cut off from the power of the law. Why the law? Because the law has the mysterious power to arouse sin in us. We know how this works. Just tell a kid not to do something and he will do it! Before you told him not to, he didn’t even think about doing it but, the moment you said, “Don’t,” that’s when he wanted to! Take away the prohibition and the desire to do it goes as well. That’s how we were wired by the sin nature in us with which we were born “in Adam”.

But Jesus destroyed that perverse nature by His perfect obedience to all God’s “prohibitions”. He killed the desire, then they killed Him but He rose again and would never be subject to temptation again. Now, through faith, we are in Him, and have the potential to live as He did. On top of that, He took away the necessity to have rules and regulations, and replaced them all with one “rule” if you like – the law of love. Then, on top of that, just to make sure that we will follow that law, He gave us His Holy Spirit to produce love in our hearts…

…which makes it all about Him and not about us. Paul said, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” That means that Jesus in us by His Spirit makes it possible for us to reflect His character in the way we live. The old, rotten fruit of self-centredness and greed has been replaced by a new life of pleasing God by caring for others.

It’s the power of heaven breaking into the earthly realm and showing us what God is really like. It’s about having God’s will done on earth as it is in heaven. It’s about us being mirrors of Jesus.

Acknowledgement

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Chosen For Friendship

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CHOSEN FOR FRIENDSHIP 

“‘My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

“‘You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit — fruit that will last — and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.

“‘This is my command: Love each other.'” John 15:12-17 NIV.

Love… friends… fruit… ask…

Is there a progression in these words? Jesus was looking into the faces of eleven men who did not exactly love each other as He wanted them to do. There was constant bickering and competition between them; vying for top spot in the new government of the kingdom; James and john tried to get in first by sending their Mom in to speak for them. Perhaps they thought she would have more clout with Jesus!

“Love each other as I have loved you.”  That was a tall order for a group of guys who were as different as chalk and cheese and as far from each other in their experience and business lives as east is from west. Some were fishermen; one was a tax collector; some were political activists; some were nobodies — no pedigree given; a heterogeneous group brought together to follow their rabbi and become like Him.

Did He really think it were possible for them to love one another as He loved them!? Although it was written into the constitution of ancient Israel — “Love you neighbour as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18), it was not big on the agenda of God’s people. In fact, oppression of their own people was one of the reasons why they were sent into exile.

“The faithful have been swept from the land; not one upright person remains. Everyone lies in wait to shed blood; they hunt each other with nets.” Micah 7:2 NIV.

No wonder, then, that Jesus had to give them a “new” commandment and repeat it over and over in the hopes that it would sink in! Like everything else He was teaching them in these last hours before His arrest, both their remembrance and their understanding depended on the Holy Spirit who was to live in them and empower them to be what Israel could never be. Although they had the commandments, they had neither the will not the power to fulfil them.

Friends! Imagine that! Jesus was elevating them to a new status, offering them friendship with Himself, with all the privileges that friendship offered. This new standing with Him, though, had one condition — obedience. What does that mean? Was He looking for master/servant obedience while offering them friendship status? That does not make sense.

The friendship that He was seeking with them had a much more intimate basis than mere blind obedience. He was asking that they would become so one with Him that His values would become their values –that they would be walking together and looking in the same direction so that His vision became theirs, His desires, intentions, plans theirs.

This union would become so strong that they would begin to resemble Him in both character and lifestyle — what He called “fruit”. The closer they were to Him, the more fruitful they would become. And that was the prerequisite for answered prayer. To Jesus, prayer was not about “Give me; do this for me; help me; me, me, me.” Prayer was about discovering what He wanted, what the Father had planned, and entering into it with Him so that His kingdom would come to earth and His will be done on earth as it was done in His realm.

In this unity of love between us and Him and between us as His followers, there is power to accomplish everything He has set out to do so that, what He set out to do in the beginning, will be accomplished and His kingdom setup on earth for His glory.

The True Vine

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THE TRUE VINE 

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:1-5 NIV.

Jesus and His disciples had left the upper room where they had eaten their last Passover meal together. They made their way through the dark streets of the city towards the olive grove called Gethsemane. As they walked slowly through the vineyard outside the city wall, Jesus must have stopped and fingered the vine leaves, recalling His intimate knowledge of the Scriptures.

Israel was symbolically God’s vineyard. In Isaiah 5, the prophet sang a song about His vineyard – “I will sing of the one I love, a song about His vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut a wine-press as well.”

Imagine God’s disappointment when, after all the preparation and care He had given His vineyard, it produced a crop so bad that it was worthless to Him. “Then He looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and people of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it only yield bad?”

Because His people had failed to fulfil His destiny for them, He had no option but to send them into exile, away from His presence in His temple and from their land so that they would learn to distance themselves from the idols and the wickedness of the surrounding nations.

“Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard. I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed; I will break down its wall and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and briers and thorns will grow there. I will command the clouds not to rain on it.

“The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines He delighted in. And He looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.” Isaiah 5:1-7 NIV.

There was only one “vine” that could satisfy the desire of the Father for good grapes and abundant fruitfulness — Jesus Christ, His own Son. Instead of Israel, He was the true vine that represented and took the place of God’s people who had failed to live up to His expectation. Jesus was not only the true vine but the way for God to replant His vineyard and reap crops of good grapes through those who would believe in Him.

The way of fruitfulness is the way of abiding or remaining in union with the true vine. Being joined to the vine and remaining in fellowship with Him is the only guarantee that we will produce the fruit that will bring delight to the heart of the Father. The vine, the stock, is perfect and needs no cultivation. It is the branches that need constant attention so that they will be as fruitful as they can possibly be.

The vine-dresser has ways of improving the fruitfulness of the branches. He lifts up, cleans and reattaches the branches that trail down into the dust, not “cutting them off” but treating them so that they will become fruitful again. He prunes the fruitful branches, removing everything that will hinder the production of grapes.

The branches have no other responsibility but to remain in the vine. As long as we are attached to the vine and receiving the sap of its life, we shall be fruitful — revealing the nature of the vine in our lives. The Father’s role is to cultivate and prune the branches according to His skill as the vine-dresser so that the fruit we bear is the fruit that reveals the true nature of the vine.