Bear the Fruit

To abide or remain requires an active decision on our part. We have to decide to not be moved from where we choose to remain, which is becoming increasingly more difficult in a world that keeps trying to push us around.

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.” John 15:4-6

You will bear the fruit of what you’re connected to.

When we choose to remain connected to the true water of the Spirit, we will produce spiritual fruit. “Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.” (James 3:10-11). Where we choose to remain through our habits becomes the place that our fruit ripens from. We can tell what we are connected to by what fruit you are producing

You do not incorporate God into your life. You give your life to Him.

Being a Christian isn’t adding something to your life. It is losing your life so that you can find it (Matthew 10:39). When we surrender our life to God, we allow Him to bring new life in us. We change from being an olive tree to a grape vine. An olive tree cannot continue in its life and add producing grapes to its routine; to produce grapes, an olive tree has to completely rework how it exists.

You cannot kill a dead man. 

By accepting Christ’s death on our behalf, we have died to sin. “How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:2-4). Since we have already given up our life for Christ, there is nothing else the world can take from us. God is the given and taker of life, we do not have to fear anyone who can kills us, for if they do, God will raise us up. We have already died, death does not have control over us any longer.

You have died to sin through Christ.

Sin has as much power as you give it. We are not slaves of sin, we are free to live for Christ. Our freedom was bought at a great price—the infinitely valuable cost of the life of Jesus. While ewe can never afford to pay for the price of sin our own, we can choose to let our dead sin die and walk in the newness of life. We become slaves of righteousness (Romans 6:22) by choice instead of by obligation. God values freedom of choice, use it wisely.