Aim to Produce
“This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.” John 15:8
In sports, if you want to produce you need to be consistent in your preparation and consistent in your execution. Likewise, if you want to bear fruit for the Lord, which the verse above tells us is exactly what Jesus wants us to do, you must be spiritually prepared and ready to act in obedience to the word of God.
In this regard, consider the parable of “the Sower and the seed” (Mark 4:3-8) and Jesus’ explanation of it (Mark 4:14-20). This parable is for believers and unbelievers alike. For the unbeliever it is a call to salvation. For the believer it is a call to growth, commitment, and obedience. Both the believer and the unbeliever must respond to the word of God that is proclaimed to them, and both the believer and the unbeliever can have negative responses (the first three soils) or positive responses (the fourth soil).
The soil represents how we receive and respond the word of God. If the word falls on deaf ears, it produces nothing. If the word is not taken seriously and put into action by obedience we can easily fall away and be unproductive in the face of trouble or persecution. Similarly, the deceitfulness of wealth and the worries of the world can choke out the word and make us unproductive as followers of Christ. But if we receive the word with joy and consistently put it into practice, we will be fruit bearers for our Lord. As Jesus said, “Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times what was sown.” Follow Jesus and aim to produce as you walk with Him.
Are you receiving the word of God and putting into practice, bearing fruit for the Lord?
Having begun as a guest speaker in 2005, Dan was appointed Interim Pastor in 2008 and has been serving Maple Root Baptist ever since. As a small group leader and Chaplin for the Connecticut Tigers, Dan has a heart for the lost and the God that saves them.