I was looking at fruitful this morning. It started with ‘the Branch’ then it went to ‘you are the branches.’ I wondered about being cut off, withered and burned or being pruned for more fruit. I realised plainly I was afraid my life was fruitless.
I read John 15&16 and wondered just what fruit was. I thought, ‘if fruit is only how many people you gather, then isn’t that just a kind of works? Cause we’re all going to meet him and all will have to abide and obey him now in order to not shrink back in shame (1 John 2:28). Since not everyone is a minister, there must be more to fruit than numbers of people or numbers of churches.’
I thought of fruit of the Spirit and indeed Jesus talking in John 15 is at it’s foundation telling them to love each other. What if everyone’s life, regardless of what they do, is at it’s own foundation just an opportunity for them to obey their own opportunities to love and bear discipling fruit wherever their relationships and connections take them?
Jesus said go into all nations and make disciples. That’s a bigger matter than numbers of people. (Depth and breadth.)
He said to do this by baptising INTO the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. That reads that putting them into the three is the arena the baptism takes place. That’s different and separate than a water baptism; which of course is important.
Maybe every word and action you bring, from love, that brings or recalibrates people back into the disciplined belief of living from those three is fruit.
Maybe we can be as fruitful as we’re ordained and called to be by living a life of spiritual and relational investment into those open to us. And maybe that’s not a failure.