Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: FRUIT (05/26/22)
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TITLE: Known By The Fruit Produced | Previous Challenge Entry
By Doug Laird
06/01/22 -
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Being distracted by the prosperity of the wicked (1) can be a difficult hurdle to overcome.
The quality of the post (after) salvation life of a born-again believer is not measured by worldly standards, but by the quantity (2) of the spiritual fruit that God (3) produces in and through (4) the advancing disciple.
Through discipleship, good fruit is produced in our own lives, and planted in the lives of others. This is what glorifies God, and this is the measure of our spiritual success.
We can all speak of what we or others could have, should have, or would have, done. But at the end of each day, it is what actually was done that determines the quality of one's post salvation spiritual life (5).
The good fruit comes from the Word of God (6) that we plant in our own soul structure and sow in the lives of other people. The bad fruit comes from anything that opposes or contradicts the Word of God.
In the harvest time, these different seeds produce a crop of good or bad fruit (7).
“Watch over (what you store away in) your heart with all diligence, For from it (the good seeds) flow the springs (fruit) of life (Proverbs 4: 23 NASB parentheses mine).”
“…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control… (Gal. 5: 22, 23 NASB).”
“For out of the (bad seeds in the) heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders (Matt. 15: 19 - 21 NASB).”
From the bad seed planted in the heart come a crop of, “…immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these… (Gal. 5: 19 - 21).”
The most dangerous fruit is the type that appeals to the eye (8), but whose end results is destruction or death.
Here in the Church Age, the primary fruit, that the Church (and each individual member of it) was commissioned (9) to produce, are saved and edified souls.
There is a time and place for such things as humanitarian projects and environmental management, but such things do not produce the type of fruit that has eternal value.
Atheists can accomplish such things.
We “farmers” have a day of reckoning coming, when each one of us will give an account for the type of crop that we were commissioned to produce.
Should a server who brings to the table a totally different meal than what the customer ordered, expect a good tip?
We are to produce what God orders.
God has a master plan (10) for the Christian Community, and an individual (11) part in that plan for each Church Age member.
Many “Christians” prioritize alternative activities over participating in the Great Commission, but planting apple seeds will not produce bananas!
“You will seek Me (and My plan) and find Me (and My plan) when you search for Me with all your heart (Jer. 29: 13 NASB parentheses mine).”
God places each born again believer in all walks and circumstances, in order for him or her to produce spiritual fruit while in those places.
The devil counterattacks by promoting, “… the worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful (Mark 4: 19 NASB).”
Only a minority of Church age believers become, “… among those are the ones on whom seed was sown on the good soil; and they hear the word and accept it (for themselves, and (later) bear fruit (a crop of) thirty, sixty, a hundredfold (saved and or edified souls)." Mark 4: 20 NASB (parentheses mine).
A 2Cor.13: 5 self-examination will reveal if and where any given Church Age believer currently is in the master plan, and in the individual plan, that God has in mind.
One’s participation will be evidenced by the fruit (saved and edified souls) that God is producing in and through the one we face in the mirror.
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(1) Psalms 73: 2ff (2) Mark 4: 20 (3) 1Cor. 3: 7 (4) John 15: 5 (5) Mark 8: 36 (6) Mark 4: 14 (7) Gal. 6: 7 (8) Gen. 3: 6 (9) Matt. 28: 19, 20 (10) Matt. 28: 19, 20 (11) 1Cor. 12 (12) Matt. 28: 19, 20
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