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Fruit of the Vine

by Jerry Ousley  
5/19/2017 / Christian Living

            Fruit – something I dearly love but just don’t eat as much of as I should.  Now there’s a definition for you.  I do like fruit.  I like strawberries, peaches, apples, pears, oranges, grapefruit, pineapple and the list goes on and on.  So why don’t I eat as much as I should?  Basically the answer is that I just plain forget.  Deb would buy fruit, prepare it and make it scrumpdillyiscious good.  But unless it is left setting out where I can see it and it’s in plain sight I forget that we have it.  When I do see it, most of the time, I’ll grab a bit of it as I pass by and stick it in my mouth, and man does it taste good!

            I remember a time when I was in the Army and I got sick with the flu.  Man was it bad.  The doctor told me to stay in my room for a few days and gave me some pills to take.  That was fine with me because I felt like I barely made it to the clinic and back anyway.  I couldn’t eat a thing which was a sure sign that I was sick because, well, if you’ve followed my articles very long you know how much I like food.  The only thing that sounded good to me was found in the vending machine down the hall; grapefruit juice – Strangely it hit the spot and I could keep it down.  So for a solid week I ate nothing and drank grapefruit juice.  By Friday I was feeling better even though still a bit woozy (probably from spending so much time in bed and not eating anything).  I managed to crawl out of bed and get dressed; only, the pants I had worn before that was actually fitting a bit too tight were suddenly ready to fall off!  I hadn’t realized that I had put myself on a diet that week!  Folks it was purely accidental.  The combination of not eating any food and drinking nothing but grapefruit juice had melted the pounds off of me in only four days!  But don’t worry; it only took three days to begin getting back to normal again.

            Last time we read the verses from John 15:1-2 which says, “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser.  Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”  These verses establish Jesus Christ as the vine, of that there is no question.  God is the vinedresser who takes care of deciding which branches are to be cut away and which are to be left and pruned – Man, I’m glad that isn’t my job!  Otherwise I’d probably cut off branches that should have been left alone and left branches that should have been cut away.  But God knows exactly which ones to adjust.

            The deciding factor according to this passage is fruit bearing.  Those branches not bearing fruit are to be cut off and those producing fruit are to be pruned back.  Now there’s no question what fruit a grapevine should be producing, but what kind of fruit do we produce as believers in Jesus Christ?  According to Galatians 5:22-23 the fruit of the Spirit includes:  love, joy, peace, longsuffering (patience), gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance (self-control).  These are of course good qualities and traits that we all should have.  Even if a person isn’t a Christian these things should be the rule of life.  But it isn’t always because of evil (through the devil) in the world.

            That’s where being a believer in Christ and having the Spirit of God in our lives comes in.  Only in God can we know that these things are present.  They are compared to fruit because they are pleasant to the spiritual taste and they attract instead of repel.  Fruit is good for our bodies and tastes good too.  So is spiritual fruit.  When we are producing the fruit spoken of in the word of God then we will attract others, we will bring pleasant things into their lives and we will be spiritual nourishment to them.  What an honor to bear fruit for the Vine!

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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