Bear Fruit or Else

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE

BEAR FRUIT OR ELSE

Luke 13:6-9

6 Then he told this parable: "A man had a fig tree, planted in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it, but did not find any. 7 So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, 'For three years now I've been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven't found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?' 8 "'Sir,' the man replied, 'leave it alone for one more year, and I'll dig around it and fertilize it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.'" 

NIV

God planted us on his earth, and He is looking for us to produce fruit, and if he does not find that we are not producing any fruit for his pleasure we are in danger of being cut down. Of course, we have some time, and God sent Jesus to dig around our lives and feed us the word of God, the good news about the kingdom of God, but we still are supposed to bear fruit, or we are in danger of being cut down. Jesus has told us that he is the vine, and we are the branches and apart from him, we can do nothing, that is we cannot bear fruit. We can see this truth as plain as our hands in front of our faces. There are many times man is referred to as a tree, here being a fig tree and in other places some kind of fruit tree, such as in the 1^st Psalm and in Jeremiah 17. It is always about bearing fruit or bearing much fruit. Then we have the narrative about the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians to add to the point that if we have accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior and have been baptized in the Spirit, having him dwell within us, the result will be that we will bear fruit and thus will never be cut down. We live in the vineyard of God, however, we usually call this vineyard the Kingdom of God, and as the tree, the Spirit is tending to us, to make sure we bear the fruit. We wonder if we do not see any love, joy, peace, goodness, kindness, gentleness, patience, or that dreaded self-control that we should be paying more attention to the tending of the Spirit in our lives. We think that it is the issue of self-control that may be the center of many problems and could be the cause of not bearing any fruit at all.  When we want the ‘self’ to control our choices in life, which includes all our choices, as in where we work, which would include our career path, the choice of where we live, and yes, where we attend church. These should be God’s choice if we have surrendered ourselves or our ‘self’ to God. After all, we are in His vineyard, the one that He owns, and it is He who planted us here, or we could say God is the one who started this work in our lives. Therefore, we are His to do with as He desires and it is desire that we bear much fruit.