BE
A BRANCH THAT BLOOMS
BREAD
1 “I am the true vine, and my
Father is the gardener. 2 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. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to
you. 4 Remain in me, and I will 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. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me
and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does
not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such
branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain
in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given
you.” John
15:1-7 (NIV)
1 I will sing for the one I love a song about his
vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. 2 He dug it up and cleared it of stones and
planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a
winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded
only bad fruit. 3 “Now you
dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. 4 What more could have been done for my
vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it
yield only bad? 5 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. 6 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.” 7 The
vineyard of the LORD Almighty is
the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he
looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of
distress. Isaiah 5:1-7 (NIV)
7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and
Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of
vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?
8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” Matthew 3:7-10 (NIV)
19 “So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. 20 First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.” Acts 26:19-20 (NIV)
8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” Matthew 3:7-10 (NIV)
19 “So then, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. 20 First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God and prove their repentance by their deeds.” Acts 26:19-20 (NIV)
26 As
the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead. James
2:26 (NIV)
8
For it is by
grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is
the gift of God--9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10
For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good
works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians
2:8-10 (NIV)
BUTTER
“As the
flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.” Richard Whately
“A primary qualification for serving God with
any amount of success, and for doing God’s work well and triumphantly, is a
sense of our own weakness. When God’s
warrior marches forth to battle, strong in his own might, when he boasts, ‘I
know that I shall conquer, my own right arm and my conquering sword shall get
unto me the victory’, defeat is not far distant. God will not go forth with that man who
marches in his own strength. He who
reckoneth on victory thus has reckoned wrongly, for ‘it is not by might, nor by
power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts’. They who go forth to fight, boasting of their
prowess, shall return with their gay banners trailed in the dust, and their
armour stained with disgrace. Those who
serve God must serve Him in His own way, and in His strength, or He will never
accept their service. That which man
doth, unaided by divine strength, God can never own. The mere fruits of the earth He casteth away;
He will only reap that corn, the seed of which was sown from heaven, watered by
grace, and ripened by the sun of divine love.
God will empty out all that thou hast before He will put His own into
thee; He will first clean out the granaries before He will fill them with the
finest of the wheat……Your emptiness is but the preparation for your being
filled, and your casting down is but the making ready for your lifting up.” C. H.
Spurgeon
“The only priority that drives the Master of the vineyard is to
bring us to fruitfulness. He will do
whatever it takes to make that happen.” Wayne
Jacobsen
“As the vine sends its energy through the branch to bear fruit, so
Christ can send His energy through you.” John
MacArthur
“By continually abiding in Christ, the one who has been pruned to
bring forth much fruit will bring forth much fruit.” Elmer
Towns
“It is important to understand that fruitfulness and
growth are the results of focusing on Christ and desiring to honor Him. When growth and change are our primary goals,
we tend to be preoccupied with ourselves instead of with Christ. ‘Am I growing? Am I getting any better? Am I more like
Christ today? What am I learning?’ This inordinate preoccupation with
self-improvement parallels our culture’s self-help and personal enhancement
movement in many ways. Personal
development is certainly not wrong, but it is misleading—and it can be very
disappointing—to make it our preeminent goal.
If it is our goal at all, it should be secondary. As we grasp the unconditional love, grace,
and power of God, then honoring Christ will increasingly be our consuming
passion…The only One worthy of our preoccupation is Christ, our sovereign Lord,
who told Paul, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in
weakness’”. Robert
McGee
“In short, the rod
of Moses was a rod of power, a rod of authority. But it could not avail to hush the murmurings
of the children of Israel; nor yet to bring the people through the desert. Grace alone could do that; and we have the
expression of pure grace, --free, sovereign grace—in the budding of Aaron’s
rod. That dry, dead stick was the apt
figure of Israel’s condition, and indeed of the condition of every one of us by
nature. There was no sap, no life, no
power. One might say, ‘What good can
ever come of it?’ None whatever, had not
grace come in and displayed its quickening power. So it was with Israel in the wilderness; so
is it with us now. How were they to be
led along from day to day? How were they
to be sustained in all their weakness and need?
The answer is found in Aaron’s budding rod. If the dry, dead stick was the expression of
(our) barren and worthless condition; the buds, blossoms and fruit set forth
that living and life-giving grace and power of God on which was based the
priestly ministry that alone could bear the congregation through the
wilderness….Priesthood alone could supply what was needed; and bring fruit out
of a dry rod…..All ministry in the Church is the fruit of divine grace---the
gift of Christ, the Church’s head.” C H Macintosh
“Our actions
disclose what goes on within us, just as its fruit makes known a tree otherwise
unknown to us.” Thalassias the Libyan
“Ultimately the man who comes to obey God will love Him
first…Let us therefore learn that the love of God is the beginning of religion,
for God will not have the forced obedience of men, but wishes their service to
be free and spontaneous…Lastly we learn that God does not linger over the outward
sign of achievement but chiefly searches the inner disposition (motive), that
from a good root good fruit may grow.” John
Calvin
“God has a multitude of reasons for allowing our troubling situations. Perhaps He is working on some of the people in our lives. Maybe He is working out His timing to reap the maximum harvest when His solution comes in the end. Or He could be proving a point to His enemy about His glory, as He did with Job – and your reaction is the key. Maybe He is even working on us – our character flaws, personality issues, or spiritual growth. Unpruned trees bear less fruit, so He must shape us differently. But we’re surprised – and angry – when His pruning hand is not as gentle as we’d like. The question we need to settle in our hearts is whether we believe God is good. It isn’t hard to hold such a belief when His blessings seem bountiful. But the blessing of hardship? We wonder where His favor has gone. We grow distant, resentful, and bitter over the harshness of His loving hand. Like a child who has just been spanked – or simply told ‘no’ – we pout. God just doesn’t seem fair.” Chris Tiegreen
“No man can put Jesus Christ to greater shame than by professing the gospel without showing the power of it. There can be no more vile and sordid hypocrisy than for any to pretend unto inward, habitual sanctification, while their lives are barren in the fruits of righteousness and obedience.” K. H. Von Bogatzky
“As God's beloved
children we have to believe that our little lives, when lived as God's chosen and blessed children, are
broken to be given to others. We too have to become bread for the world. When
we live our brokenness under the blessing, our lives will continue to bear
fruit from generation to generation. That is the story of the saints - they
died, but they continue to be alive in the hearts of those who live after them
- and it can be our story too.” Henri Nouwen
HEART SAVOR
·
He is the True Vine and I only a branch. I can produce no
fruit apart from the achieving power of the Vine flowing through me – apart from
Him I can do nothing of eternal value.
All else is chaff.
·
I was created to produce good fruit.
·
Pruning hurts but it is necessary for
a greater yield.
