Finding Rest in Christ: Producing the Fruit of an Abiding Life

Unless you have been born from above, you cannot bear the fruit of the Spirit. Your unsaved children cannot bear the fruit of the Spirit; your unsaved family members and coworkers cannot bear the Spirit's fruit; and we cannot bear the Spirit's fruit either unless God has made us His own and given us the Spirit in our hearts. Only then will God's Spirit work in us to change us .... but it has to be from the inside-out.

Years ago, I memorized the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). However, for a long time I didn't understand that the fruit of the Spirit is the abundant outpouring of a life lived by abiding in Christ, not just another list of Christian qualities that I need to work on.

I remember when I was about 12 years old, I wrote one fruit for each day in the little squares on my wall calendar so that when I woke up every morning, hanging beside my bed was the fruit for me to "do" that day.

Maybe the fruit to work on today was "peace," so I tried very hard not to worry about anything that day. Maybe the fruit the next day was "kindness," so I worked on being especially nice to my sister that day. Maybe the calender said "self-control," so I tried to limit how many cookies I ate.

"But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh." Galatians 5:16 Rather than seeking God to know and abide in Christ, trusting Him to work His goodness in me, I instead worked very hard to produce the various fruits in my life.

What I did not understand was that, although we ARE called by God to pursue obedience to Him and imitation of Christ, my "job" is not to work up in myself the fruit of an abiding life, but rather to focus on Jesus Christ and abiding in the Vine. I need Christ today as I seek to walk in the good works He has prepared for me (Ephesians 2:10) just as much as I did that day of salvation when He rescued my soul from death and judgment.

"Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so 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, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing." John 15:3-4

In John 15, Jesus explains the relationship of fruit-bearing-disciples as being a branch whose Source is the Vine. We know that no branch of an apple tree produces apples if the branch is lying on the ground trying very hard to produce an apple. No, it only produces an apple if it is being fed by and is abiding in the Source -- the branch has to be connected to the tree. And so, we must be grafted into Christ (born from above) and stay connected to and abiding in our True Vine in order to produce the fruit of His Spirit.

Through moralistic effort and selfish ambition we CAN show patience on our own. We CAN perform loving acts apart from God's Spirit residing within us, and our children can be taught to behave kindly and treat their younger siblings with gentleness. But we must remember that "good works" apart from the work of the abiding Spirit in our lives are still filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) if they proceed from a sinful and spiritually dead heart --- and we must teach our children this truth as well.

Do not get me wrong -- if the branch produces no fruit, the Father takes it away, for it is not a true branch of the Vine (John 15:2-3). I'm not teaching a Christian life where you and I are free to serve ourselves and indulge our flesh. But, may we not lose sight of the truth that, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can we unless we abide in Christ.

The fruit of the Spirit is the RESULT of an abiding life, not the means thereof.

And so, as Christian women, we must abide in our Savior. We must seek HIM and seek for His words to abide in us. We pursue and love Him with all of our hearts because He is the One at work within us.

Rather than struggling and striving with the lost and unsaved among us to start producing some divine spiritual fruit, we have to recognize that they (and we) need the gospel -- not moralism, good works, and "getting their act together."

And then, THEN.. rather than producing the fruit of a striving, try-hard life, we produce the fruit of a Spirit-led, abiding-in-Christ life.

"..If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit." (Galatians 5:25)

I'm praying today that we will rest in Christ and strive according to His power working within us (Colossians 1:29), eyes fixed on the Author and Finisher of our faith..

With love, amanda