Fruit – Easter 2010

Grace Fellowship

Buddy Hoffman

April 11, 2010

Fruit

John 15; Psalm 1

Good morning. Everybody have a good spring break? How many of you went out of town? Oh, that’s cool. We enjoyed you guys being out of town. We didn’t miss you or anything, but isn’t it kind of nice, like the roads aren’t as crowded? You can go into the restaurants and sit down. I think everybody ought to take turns going out of town…yeah, anyway.

If you’re here this morning, you don’t have a Bible with you, slip up your hand, and I want to put a Bible in your hand. And I want you to have the blue handout sheet too. You need that because there is like probably 100 verses on there, and there are some fairly large passages of Scripture that I’m in no way going to get to this morning. But I would like for you to consider this week, maybe as part of your quiet time, just reading through some of those passages of Scripture and just seeing what the Lord may be saying to you.

And if you’re a guest with us for the first time, and you’re kind of wondering, Okay, what does this look like? This is what it looks like for us. We’re going to open the Bible, and I’m going to read several passages of Scripture, one fairly large passage of Scripture, and then we’re going to just kind of think about what is the Lord telling us in that. And then after that, we’re going to take some time and just respond whether that means you’re going to sing the song that everybody else is singing, or you want to just sit down quietly and think about it. But we don’t want to just run right out and not take some time to think about this.

Last week, I…you know, Easter is kind of a hard week if you’re a pastor because it’s like every year you know this is what I’m preaching on…is the resurrection. And there is like five passages that you can preach from on it, and you kind just go, “Okay, we’re preaching on the resurrection.” And I had just given a whole lot of prayer time and thought about that resurrection message because I think sometimes people that just come on Easter miss out on the big, whole story.

Do you remember what I preached on last week? No, it wasn’t on a Chevelle. I saw two of you…several of you…Chevelle…you preached on a Chevelle last week. Remember the Chevelle out front…the Super Sport? Remember…by the way, it was a ’69 not a ’68. I said it was a ’68, and several of you enthusiasts corrected me on the way out. I was told it was ’68. I just believed it was a ’68. Okay, the back…the lights are different. I’m sorry.

But the idea was…and is…that Jesus is the first fruits of the new creation. He is the new Adam. He is what God is doing and going to do. And you probably have seen me do this before, but I’ll probably do it dozens of other times because I want you to really get it. Genesis, chapter 1, is the creation story. “In the beginning…,” what? “God…,” what? Created. And there is key word that He uses there over and over again, and that word is good. Amen, you guys are such good learners.

And Revelation 21 and 22 is the new creation. This is the creation as God designed it. Oftentimes, we’re guilty of kind of reducing the gospel. And we start the gospel in Romans, chapter 3, which is…”For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” That isn’t really where the gospel story begins. Where that gospel story begins is what God had in mind.

And this is what we talked about last week…restoration. If you’re going to restore something, where you start is where it began. What was it supposed to look like? What was God’s original intent in His mind? And here, in Revelation 21, 22, you have this city, this New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, and God is going to recreate this new creation. And what happens in the resurrection is Jesus is the first fruit of that new creation. As Jesus rose from the dead, we are going to be resurrected. The Bible says when He comes for us, we’re going to be like Him because we’re going to what? See Him as He is. This is in anticipation of what God is going to do.

So I’ll tell you what happened to me. I was contemplating that whole issue of fruit, and what that means by first fruit? And I was just kind of going…churning…through my concordances and passages, and I was looking at the whole issue of fruit and fruitfulness. And you really can’t go very far when you start looking at and thinking about fruit and fruitfulness without going to John, chapter 15.

So open your Bible to John, chapter 15. And I want you to think about what’s going on here. This is the night before the crucifixion. Jesus is the first fruit of this new creation. And Jesus has all His disciples there in the room, and He starts talking to them in verse 1 of chapter 15. Now I’m going to read out of the New Living. I actually like this out of the ESV better, but it reads just…as far as the passage…it reads a little better.

“I am the true grapevine…,” now, that’s fairly significant because the symbol of Israel is that they are God’s vineyard. This is the illustration that Isaiah uses…God created Israel as a vineyard. And He says, “I am really the real vineyard.”

“I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce…,” and look. What’s the word here? Fruit. This theme is going to come through here. He cuts off the ones that don’t produce fruit, “…and he prunes the branches that do bear…,” what? “…fruit so they will produce even more.”

Now for you that didn’t go out of town, you probably worked in your yards. How many of you worked in your yards? How many pruned something? How many of have ever pruned something back so harshly that your wife said to you, “You have killed that bush?” Yeah.

I remember one…I’m not a yard worker at all. When I get out in the yard and start working, my eyes swell up, and I can’t breathe. I mean, I really ought to go work in the yard with like Hazmat equipment on. But I remember one year, the bushes in front of our house, I actually took a chainsaw to them and just zipped them right off. And she goes, “You have killed all the bushes in the front yard,” and actually, I did. But you’re not supposed to.

But generally speaking, if you do it at the right time, when you trim something back and you prune something, what happens is it grows back at a furious pace. And if it is a fruit bearing tree, the limbs that are out there, just kind of hanging out there absorbing the energy of the roots, the fruit itself will be so much better. It’s not like a torturous thing. It’s something that is designed to really help.

But if you…any of you have dandelions? Dandelions are evil. That’s part of the curse. Dandelions were not in the original creation. But you can sit around; you can pull dandelions off. You can cut them down. But you know what? They just keep coming back because that’s not part of what happens.

“You have already…,” verse 3…I am moving on. “You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine…,” that’s so important. If you’re not rooted into the root structure, you cannot produce fruit.

“…You cannot be fruitful unless you remain in Me. Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in Me, and I in them…,” now, look at this…this is a promise, “…will produce much fruit.” Now when you read that, how do you hear that? Do you hear that as a, Oh, my goodness. I must not be fruitful, or I must not be in Christ because I’m not producing fruit. Or do you hear that as a promise to just, Okay, relax in Me.

Understand, If you will just remain in Me, you will produce…and notice what the phrase there…you’re going to produce a lot of fruit. “For apart from Me you can do nothing.” Now that’s an important phrase. He doesn’t say, “Apart from me, you can only do a little, or you cannot do as much.” He says, literally, “Apart from Me, you can do nothing.”

“Anyone who does not remain in Me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in Me and My words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted!”

Now honestly, if I had been standing there, and I had been coaching Jesus on this sermon, I would have said to Jesus, “I don’t think you should say that because somebody’s going to misinterpret that. Somebody is going to take that into a kind of name-it-and-claim-it, extremist idea. And Jesus, You better make sure that You expand on that a little bit more because somebody is not going to get that.”

And you know what? I do believe that it’s possible, and I have seen people take this and twist it around. But what He is saying very clearly…that if we remain in Him, the things that we are going to want, He even wants them more. See, the things that are going to be flowing through our veins, the prayers that we are going to pray, the desires that we are going to have, the hungers that we’re going to have, He says, “They’re going to be my hungers, and that want, that passion that you have, it’s going to be given to you.”

“When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father.” Do you believe that’s true? Say, “Amen,” even if it’s hard…that God really wants you and I to have really fruitful lives. Now here’s where I’m going to go with this. I’m going to spend the next, just even 15 or 20 minutes, talking about this one, single point. And I want you to just kind of wrestle with it and think about it in your mind as we read passages and think about it.

It is the heart of the Creator, God, for us to be fruit bearers, to be fruitful, to be just full of fruit. Now I think sometimes we turn that into a commandment. That is, we feel guilty because maybe,Oh, I don’t have enough fruit, so I must be doing something wrong. And Lord, I repent because I don’t have fruit. What is being stated here is not so much a command…although, I think it is a command…it’s really a law of life that is just how the Creator designed it. He designed it so that if you will dwell in Him, then you’re going to produce fruit. That’s what’s going to happen to you.

My grandfather on my mother’s side, his name was Fred. I loved him. I just thought he was the coolest man that ever walked the planet. Whenever I would go down and spend the night at my grandparent’s house, man, I wanted to know what Fred was doing. And Fred, he, every year would…there were some four or five acres up behind the house, and he would raise a garden.

And he had one of those little tillers that you walked behind, and he was tough as, I mean, nails. And he would till up the entire, several acres with this little hand tiller, and then he would plant all this stuff in there. And at the end of every row, whatever he had planted, he put a stick in the ground with the seeds in it that had…what the seeds had come in…a picture of what was in that row. Like, there was the okra, and there were the crowder peas, and there were the corn.

And I remember thinking as a kid, I think he just doesn’t remember what he planted, so…and then I thought, Maybe they don’t know what they’re supposed to look like, so they just stick their head out and look down…Oh, that’s supposed to be okra. You know what I really realized, as I got older, was that this was his sort of anticipation of fruit. He knew what was coming up, but he would walk down there, and he’d look at those pictures, and he’d see a…Right down this row right here, there is going to be some squash come up. There is going to be some lettuce come up.

And this is just the law of the Father of creation, and He says…listen…”If you will just remain in Me, then you’re going to produce, really, lots of fruit. And it’s going to bring glory to the Father.” Verse 9, “I have loved you even as the Father has loved Me. Remain in My love.” What does that mean? What does that mean? It means, very carefully, that we are to remind ourself constantly how much we are loved by God. That’s what we’re to do. We are to constantly remind ourself. We’re to soak in that reality that we are people who are loved almost insanely. Do you understand that?

Honestly, if you don’t ever think about the nature of grace and go, I’m not sure that could be true, you really don’t have grace yet because grace doesn’t make sense. Grace is overwhelming. Grace is…I mean, when Paul talks about the love of God, he talks about the height and the depth and the breadth, and then he just kind of like throws up his hands and says, “Who can measure this? This is an immeasurable reality.”

And I honestly think that sometimes, what we do in religious circles is remind everybody how bad they are. Now is there really anybody here that you don’t really know how bad you are? Anybody here think, You know what? I’m not a sinner; I’m really, pretty…a decent kind of guy? No, no, we really know if we’re honest.

Now there is probably like three psychopaths here. And you think you’re okay and nobody else is. But you know what? You need counseling. But most of the rest of us, we know we do not deserve God’s love. We have failed Him miserably, and God has loved us in spite of it in overwhelming ways. Verse 10, “When you obey My commandments, you remain in My love, just as I obey My Father’s commandments and remain in His love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with My joy.” Now look at this…”Yes, your joy will overflow!” Now do you see that? Do you know what it means for something to be absolutely full?

If I’m walking around in the foyer out there with a cup full of coffee, which has happened, and one of our multitude of kids come running through and hit my arm, and I have a coffee cup full of coffee, and my cup goes…what comes out of it? Whatever is in it, right? Whatever it is…thank you, Bud…whatever is in it, comes out of it.

Have you ever been driving down the road, and you accidentally pull out in front of somebody? Or you’re in a parking lot, and you accidentally cut somebody off, and you kind of go, “Sorry,” you know. And they just like say words you haven’t heard since…you know. I mean, and you go, “Sorry,” and then they just like keep on going, and they’re just mad, mad…you know why anger comes out? Why does anger come out? Because anger is in there…because that’s what got…whatever is in there.

Have you ever cut somebody off, and you go like this, and then they laugh at you? And they just go, “Sure, go ahead,” you know? You know why they do that? Because they’re happy people. They’re insane…because they’re happy people. I would love to tell you that every time anybody ever cuts me off or does me wrong, the first thing I do is just go, “Oh, wonderful, I love Jesus.”

I can’t honest…I mean, I would be the biggest hypocrite in the world to say that. I mean, awhile back…I mean, like down here at Chick-fil-A…Chick-fil-A for goodness sake…I mean, Truett Cathy’s church, you know? I mean, I pulled in there, and there was like this guy in this big, white truck. And I’m sitting there waiting for a parking place…you know, waiting, waiting, waiting…and that place needs more parking. Amen. I mean, that’s a problem. They need more parking.

And anyway, that’s another subject. Who are we to complain about people’s parking, you know? That’s like the…that’s a problem, you know? That’s hypocrisy if you have ever seen it, right there. But I’m sitting, and this big, white truck just pulls right into my parking place I have been waiting for. I mean, man, that just makes me so mad. And so another one opened up, and I just pulled in there.

And on the way in, I just looked over, and I said, “You know, I was actually waiting on that parking place.” And he goes, “I know, but I got it anyway.” He says, “My truck’s bigger than yours.” You know what I said? I said, “Have you ever wished that birth control was retroactive?” And man, he started yelling at me, and you know what? I was yelling at him…in the parking lot.

I’m a pastor…a pastor. Like half the kids that work in there go to this church. Now you know why anger came out of me? Because anger was in me. Now here is what the Holy…this is what Jesus is saying…Jesus is saying, “Listen, if you abide in My love, you know what? Then that love and that joy is going to overflow out of you.” And you know what? When that love and that joy overflow out of you, that is such odd behavior. People are going to go, “Whoa, that’s not the fruit of this kind of life.” Verse 12…by the way, if you’re here and driving that truck, I apologize. It was a nice looking truck.

“This is My commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than 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 slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves.”

Now notice what He says, “Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. You didn’t choose Me. I chose you.” Now that’s an important phrase not only just in theology, but in terms of just reality. See, if the issue was they chose Jesus, and they gave up on Jesus, then it’s over. But if Jesus chose them, and Jesus doesn’t give up on them, it’s not over.

Aren’t you glad that your faith isn’t based on you? If our faith is based on our faithfulness, I’m guaranteeing you we’re sunk. We are. We are completely without hope. But if our faith is based upon the faithfulness of God, His faith, His faithfulness, His trustworthiness, His abilities, they never fail.

Now look at this…”I appointed you to go…,” look at this, “…and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using My name. This is My command: Love each other.” Have you ever been in one of those seasons of life where your heart just felt withered, just felt dry and withered, and it felt like everything was just sucked out of you?

I have a pastor friend that I was talking to awhile back, and he said, “I feel like I’m this shake, and everybody’s got their straw stuck in my shake. And everybody’s just sucking all the shake out, and I feel like my life sounds like…,” and it wasn’t funny at all. It was pitiful, and I felt so deeply for him. But let me tell you something. You aren’t enough to be a shake for anybody. Only Jesus can fill those needs. And if you have got your straw stuck in somebody else’s shake, I’m going to promise you, you’re going to get to the bottom and still be hungry. You’re going to get to the bottom, and you’re still going to be thirsty.

If you’re shake is stuck in Grace Fellowship Church…listen…we don’t have enough nourishment for you. We don’t. We don’t. I don’t. I don’t have enough nourishment for myself. The only place that we can really get refreshed, the only place we can really get water, the only place we can take that withered soul and just to reconstitute it, is Jesus Himself and the Holy Spirit. That, by the way, won’t happen sitting in church. It won’t. You can get the inspiration to do it, but it’s going to happen when you get by yourself in the Word, and you just soak, and you saturate, and you listen to the Holy Spirit, and you take that time to be alone with the Word and just let that…the nature of God and the heart of God…and learn to be loved by God. And then, you’ll be able to love other people. Amen?

Now here’s where I’m trying to go with this…it is the heart of God for us to be fruitful. That’s God’s heart. God’s heart for us is not for us to be a wasteland of withered hearts. God’s heart for us is not for our souls to be just scorched and shriveled up. That’s not God’s heart…not from the beginning, not all the way from Genesis, chapter 1, all the way to Revelation, chapter 22.

You know what? All the way through the Scriptures, you know what God’s heart is? For you to be fruitful…for you to be fruitful…for you to be fruitful, and you go, “Well, you know it’s just so much…it’s so hard to bear fruit.” No, no, no, it’s not. It’s not hard to bear fruit. Fruit should just come.

Can you imagine somebody walking through like an apple tree, and you see some apple grower out there, and he’s out there yelling at the tree, kicking the tree, “Give me an apple! I want all of them apples out of you! Apples…man, we need apples…apples! And you guys over there, oranges, I need oranges…more oranges!” And so the orange tree says, “Okay, I got…,” no, you just kind of throw a bunch of fertilizer on them and water and wait. And apples will drop right out of the tree and hit you on the head. You’ll be calling the trucks in, Man, we have more apples than we know what to do with. We have more oranges than we know what to do with.

Listen, if you want to bear fruit…and listen, this is organic. It’s natural. It’s supposed to be that way. Have you ever been around people that spiritually, I mean, they had this gravitas, this reality? They may never win a beauty contest, or they may never be put on the front of a magazine somewhere. But they just have this spiritual gravity that is just obvious. This is what the disciples had.

The disciples were not like handsome GQ guys. They didn’t walk into town, and everybody said, “Hey, get a load of John, man, he’s…wow. Hey, Paul, man…Paul, he’s like…,” the only descriptions we have of Paul…the written descriptions…and there is actually this photo in Ephesus that…I mean, not a photo. That would be a little weird, wouldn’t it? A painting…he wasn’t particularly attractive. He wasn’t even…like four-foot-eight or something, and his legs were bowed, and he had a big chest and kind of a bald head and bulging eyes.

He wasn’t some kind of attractive guy. But when people saw the disciples, you know what they said about them? He said, “They were unlearned, uneducated. They were not of the higher rabbinical schools.” But here’s what they said…”They took note of them because it was obvious they had…,” what? “…Been with Jesus.” They had been with Jesus. I think that’s our problem. We just don’t spend time with Jesus. We don’t let the Holy Spirit just invade our life and saturate us.

If you have that handout sheet, I could go for a long time on this. Colossians 2:6, notice what it says, “And now just as you trusted Christ to save you, trust Him, too, for each day’s problems; live in vital union with Him. Let your roots grow down into Him and draw up nourishment from him. See that you go on growing in the Lord, and become strong and vigorous in the truth you were taught. Let your lives overflow with joy and thanksgiving for all He has done.”

Now when you read John, the Gospel, John’s description of the life of Jesus actually has a literary structure under it that is reflecting the creation account. Did you know that? In John, chapter 1, remember how it starts? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And he talks about…”the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.” And there is this whole process that it actually is following a literary pattern of the gospel…of Genesis.

In the crucifixion, you find John specifically saying, “…on the first day of the week….” And you again, you’re going back to the garden, and the lady things that she is seeing the gardener, but she’s actually seeing Jesus Himself. And Jesus is this first fruit of the new creation.

Genesis, chapter 15, is also echoing back to the creation. God created mankind, and God created the garden and all of creation. He says, “I have given you these seed-bearing plants.” The nature of reproduction, the idea of being fruitful, was built into the very DNA structure of what God created. And when God created mankind, do you remember the very first words that He said to mankind? Adam and Eve…what did He say? Be fruitful. “Be fruitful and multiply….”

Now that’s about the only command we really have down well. We do that one. But it’s more than just having children. It’s more than just reproducing children. It’s a whole idea of fruitfulness. If you have that handout sheet, let me just give you these big points here. The heart of Creator God is that we are fruitful, and our lives are fruitful. The promise of the Covenant God is fruitfulness.

If you go down through here, each of these commandments…here’s what God says to Noah; here’s what God says to Abraham…”Be fruitful and multiply. I will bless you. I want you to bless others.” This is what He says to Isaac and Jacob. And it’s an interesting way He even says it to Jacob. He says, “I am the Lord God Almighty.” He’s telling them, “I am the one that supplies everything. Be fruitful and multiply.”

When you go through with…even with Joseph, who is in this land of famine…his child, he names his child Ephraim, which literally means you have made me fruitful in the land of my affliction. All the way through there, the dream of the prophets of Israel was for Israel to be a fruitful people.

And there is this great passage there in Ezekiel, chapter 36, and Ezekiel, chapter, 37. And Ezekiel’s walking through this valley, and he’s walking through this valley, and he’s stepping on dry, broken, brittle, bones. And God says to him, “Can these bones live?” Can these bones live? And you know what? Ezekiel doesn’t even have the courage to answer. He goes, “Only You know, Almighty Lord.”

And you know what He says? “Prophesy over these bones….” And you know what he does? So he  prophesies. He says, “Bones, live!” And you know what? This scary thing happens. All of a sudden, the bones just start coming together. Man, and you know, that’s that whole song…”And the knee bone’s connected to the…,” you know that whole…I mean just all sort…but now, he’s living in this valley where skeletons are there.

But you know what? Then the wind blows, and there is flesh that comes upon those dry bones. Listen, that is what God wants to do for you. Those dry, broken bones of brittle religion and brittle religiosity and legalism and brokenness, God’s Spirit can breathe life into those things. The kingdom of God is described as fruitful living. Matthew, chapter 13, and they said to him…they said, “What’s the kingdom like?” He says, “It’s like this farmer, and he just goes out, and he sows seed.”

The call of Jesus to the disciples were to bear fruit. When He took the disciples on that short-term mission trip over into Samaria, and they’re over there just trying to figure out…What can we eat here that won’t kill us? He just says, “Look, the fields, they’re just white unto harvest.”

The early church was described as fruitful, and even that same word is used that’s used with the commissions of the prophets…”Be fruitful and multiply….” Paul wanted to go to Rome, and the reason he wanted to go to Rome…he makes it very clear…he didn’t say, “I have been really wanting to get to Rome. I have heard there is a real cool coliseum there. I would like to take a tour. There are some major ruins, and I’d like to see some of that.”

He says, “I have this passion, and the passion that I have is that I can get to Rome because I want to have some fruit that is among you.” The work of the Word is fruitful. When the Word is in you, it produces fruit.

The expectation of giving is fruit. Philippians, chapter 4, he said to the church at Philippi, “You have given to me. You gave when nobody else gave.” And he says, “It’s not so much that I even care about the fact that you are giving.” He says, “What I’m really hungry for is that fruit should redound to your account.”

We should pray for our young people to be fruitful. You that are moms and dads, my…you know, I found my mother’s Bible years ago, and she had written my sister’s and my name down beside this in her Bible. Psalm 144:12, “May our sons flourish in their youth like well-nurtured plants. May our daughters be like graceful pillars, carved to beautify a palace.” And of course, those are idioms. It’s just talking about that they’re in the right place, and they are perfectly fit.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with these other passages. Look at this…”May our barns be filled with crops of every kind. May the flocks in our fields multiply by the thousands, even tens of thousands, and may our oxen be loaded down with produce. May there be no enemy breaking through our walls, no going into captivity, no cries of alarm in our town squares. Yes, joyful are those who live like this!”

Dare we pray that kind of prayer? Dare we, in the middle of the worst economic downturn that Georgia has seen…at least that they say they have ever seen and that they have kept records of…dare we pray, “Lord, make us fruitful. In the midst of this famine, Lord, make us fruitful. Give us fruit?” You know what? Do you think that God is not pleased that we would pray that kind of prayer? “Oh, God, I don’t think it’s fair for me to pray that kind of prayer.” No, I think God wants us to pray that prayer.

Listen, do you think it’s wrong for us to pray, “Lord, we would like crime on our streets to disappear.” Do you think that’s wrong? Do you think it’s wrong for us to say, “You know what? We’d like to see a city where homeless people didn’t just wander around and where there was really…where there was peace.” You know, we…I can’t even…I don’t know. I won’t even get off on that.

Look at verse, Psalm 71. “Now that I am old and gray, do not abandon me…,” look at this, “…O God. Let me proclaim your power to this new generation….”

Psalm 92:12, “The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God.” Now look at this…”

They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright; He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”

This is the big picture…this is the big thing I want you to just wrap your mind around for a minute and maybe even for this next week…If your soul feels shriveled up, if your heart feels withered, the heart of God is to flood that with life…flood it with life. That’s the heart of God. He wants you, spiritually, to be so full of who He is that the very nature of your life just overflows with fruit. And I do not mean just the fruits of the Spirit. I mean, that your life be fruitful.

Now I do not mean that every time anything that happens your life that’s not…that God doesn’t…that God’s against you or something. But I really do fear that we have bought into Satan’s lie about the Father. In the garden, God created the garden a fruitful place, overflowing with fruit.

And you know what Satan said to Adam and Even? “You have to grab your own fruit. You have to take care of yourself. God doesn’t have your best interest mind. You have to do it your own way. You have to jump in here and grasp this stuff for yourself.”

And God’s saying, “Listen, I have given you the greatness out of My heart…is to give you this reproducing fruit that isn’t a mentality of scarcity, but it is a mentality of multitudes.” Does that make sense? Now the only answer to that…pure, plain, and simple…is Jesus. He’s the vine. Nobody else is. Let’s pray.

Lord, thank You for You. Lord, Your Word says that You are life, and You have come to give us life with just absolute abundance. You want us to be full of joy and shalom. Lord, You want us to be full of forgiveness. Lord, I pray this next week, Lord, I pray for maybe some here, even right now, who have never trusted You as their Lord and Savior, that today they’ll find that truth in You.

Maybe over in this prayer room on my right, Lord, I pray that they’ll just make their way over there, and elders will be waiting to pray for them. But some this week whose soul is just shriveled, and they maybe even felt a little splash of You, Lord, I pray that we’ll just saturate ourself, allow You to just remake that life relive within us, that we’ll come to know Your heart. In Your Name we pray, Amen.