What does it mean to bear fruit?
As Christians we have become so concerned with our own salvation. We focus on what makes us righteous or unrighteous. What is acceptable and what is not. We draw lines in the sand that are supposed to guide our actions and decisions. We talk about being the body of Christ but we are only concerned with ourselves. We even do this with our spiritual lives. We ask others for prayers and share our stories, but are we actually praying for or with one another. We have even drawn lines about what it means to be in community with one another. We want to care for one another and be interested in their lives, but when things go really wrong we will go to our corner and pray for them and push them to their corner to communion with God. Is that really what it means to be the body of Christ? Can we not encounter God with one another?
Scripture doesn’t say, first look out for yourself and then love others. It says “Love God and Love one another.” But we make it about us. I don’t know if it is fear that drives us to this place or if it is just a strong personal desire to be connected to God? Whatever it is, I think we are going about it the wrong way.
We are called to bear fruit.
We are called to abide in Christ and abide in love.
We are not called to bear fruit for ourselves in order to ensure our own salvation and sanctification. That should not be our motivation.
We are called to bear fruit for God.
And we do that through caring for God’s sheep.
We are called to encourage one another, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, care for the sick and the imprisoned.
We are called to do these things not as a means of securing our own place in heaven, but we are called to do these things out of love.
Love for God. Love for Jesus. Love for our brothers and sisters.
Love is the foundation.
And that love can not be found except through God.
We come to God as children that do not know how to care for themselves. We come to God with our thumbs in our mouths and tears swelling in our eyes. We come to God desiring to be embraced. To be swallowed up in the blankets of God’s arms. To be told “Yes, I love you and I will care for you. I will teach you how to walk and how to talk. I will pick you up when you fall and scrape your knee, I will come to your side when you are awoken by a nightmare. I will comfort you when you are overwhelmed and don’t know what to do. I will help you see the gifts that you have been given. I will help you to use those gifts. And when you think you have it figured out I will celebrate with you. And when things go wrong and your entire world collapses around you, I will be there to hold you up and protect you. I will always listen to you. I will always be with you. I will always love you.”
God is where we find our love. God is where we learn to love. We learn to love unconditionally. The type of love that loves those that we would otherwise not choose to love.
So it is through God and God’s love that we are able to bear fruit.
It is through God that we are able to care for God’s sheep. That we are able to truly care for one another.
But this cannot be done apart from God. We must truly abide in God. We have drawn the lines in the sand and have created this image of what we think it means to be a christian and what a relationship with God is supposed to look like.
God has been desperately convicting me that our images our too small. God desires more. Not only more of us but more of our imagination.
We have limited God’s ability to relate and connect with us. But God is calling us to imagine more.
So then what does it mean to abide in God?
Does it mean that we only read scripture everyday, pray, and go to church?
Or is God calling us to more? Is God calling us out of what we have been taught is a faithful life into something more?
I don’t necessarily know what it looks like, but I do believe that as a Church we have settled. We have settled for what others have done before us. We have stopped imagining new ways to encounter God in our daily lives. We have created a Christian formula that has trapped us and separated us from God’s sheep. I believe we are being called to reimagine what it means and what it looks like to be a Christian and child of God.
Are you being called to reimagine your relationship with God? Would you even be willing to reimagine what it means to be a Christian? Maybe we can do this work together? Maybe we can do this work together as the body of Christ that we were designed to be.
The World Race is one way that God has called me to reimagine what it means to be a Christian and what it means to abide in God. I am looking forward to new experiences and situations that will allow me to see and experience God in new and exciting ways, and to see how Christians around the world worship God in different ways. I hope and I pray that you would also join me on my Race through my blog, emails, and prayer.
