Roots and Fruit

Colossians 2:6 And now, just as you accepted Christ Jesus as your Lord, you must continue to follow him. 7 Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.

There is almost nothing better than walking into an orchard with ripe fruit hanging on the trees, ready to be eaten and harvested.  I mean, to see the ripe fruit at the end of the bearing process is a wonderful thing.  The fruit that comes to bear in a believer’s life is a wonderful thing to see as well.  You remember a time in your life when God was a distant thought in your mind and through a conversion experience we are ushered into the presence of God on a daily, yet moment by moment basis and the end result is amazing.  This fruit we see is not the result of us “doing” anything, but much more the Holy Spirit coming alive in our lives.  In his letter to the Galatians, Paul writes it like this:  Galatians 5:22 22 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.  We have nothing to do with the fruit production and all of that is produced by the Holy Spirit in our lives, so don’t try to take credit where credit is NOT due.  It is all about God, through His Spirit, producing continuous “life change” in our walk.

This Godly wisdom is imparted to us through the Holy Spirit, so it must mean we must daily give access into our thinking, our living, and our walk-in life to the Holy Spirit and walk in Him.  The end result is the Wisdom of God.  Out of that wisdom comes the “fruit” and that fruit is good.   A lost and confused worldly mindset will never get this and the best way for them to see it is in a believer’s life.  Paul wrote to the church at Corinth about the world’s misunderstanding of the Spirit-Led life.  1 Corinthians 1:18 The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God.  

The important lesson to get from all of this is that fruit, Godly fruit comes from God.  And the Holy Spirit is God, and He directs us in every area of our life and we must bury our roots deep in Him to see the fruit He wants to produce.  In a sense, we have to push the Holy Spirit out of our thinking to miss this radical change and that is a step in the wrong direction!!  To bury our roots deep in the Holy Spirit all we are doing is surrounding to His leading and submitting our life to His promptings.  In a way, it is like living in total freedom because religion and man-made reasoning is replaced with Spirit-filled living and that is true freedom.  The result of that true freedom is not looking at anything from a fleshly, or worldly perspective.  Everything and every part of our being are under the total control of the Holy Spirit and the Spirit produces fruit. But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives:

Don’t you think it is time to quit trying to self analyze, and self propel ourselves into a deeper relationship with Jesus, and just get out of the way and let the Spirit have total control?  I do!!  Put up the white flag of surrender and let God have total control and live the Spirit-filled life we were intended to live!!  Today is the day!!

The Pilgrimage continues.

David Warren