In the last message Jesus gave to His disciples, He told them that the way to fruitfulness and not - the "secret" to the Christian life - was to abide in Him. They wouldn't produce "abundant fruit" by reading books, intensifying their self-discipline, memorizing Scripture, or getting in accountability groups. Those things all have their place, but real fruit comes only from one place; abiding in Jesus.
"Abiding in Jesus" may sound like siritual mumbo jumbo to you. It always did to me. I assumed that when you were "abiding in Jesus" you'd walk around with an ethereal glow in your eye and inexplicably wake up at 4 a.m. strumming passion tunes on the golden harp you keep beside your bed. But the word abide is much more straightforward than that. The Greek word meno means literally "to make your home in." When we "make our home in" His love - feeling it, saturating ourselves with it, reflecting on it, standing in awe of it ' spiritual fruit begins to spring up naturally from us like roses on a rosebush.
Spiritual "fruit," you see, is produced in the same way physical "fruit" is. When a man and woman conceive physical "fruit" (i.e., a child), they are usually not thinking about the mechanics of making that child. Rather, they get caught up in a moment of living intimacy with one another, and the fruit of that loving intimacy is a child.
In the same way, spiritual fruit isn't made by focusing on the commands of spiritual growth. You can't just grit your teeth and say, "I will have more loving feelings for God! I will be more patient! I will have self-control!" I'll explain the role for denial of the flesh and self-disciplines, but true spiritual fruit comes from getting swept up in intimate, loving encounters with Jesus Christ. His love is the soil in which all the fruits of the Spirit grow. When our roots abide there, then joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control grow naturally in our hearts.
So if you want to see spiritual fruit in your life, don't focus primarily on the fruits. Focus on Jesus' acceptance of you, given to you as a gift. Focusing on spiritual fruit will usually produce only frustration and despair, not fruitfulness.
Have you ever looked at your life and thought, "Why am I still so impatient? How could I really be saved and still have such a problem with self-control?" I certainly have. If anything, the more I have walked with Jesus the more aware I have become of my sinfulness. Jesus, however, did not tell me to "abide" in my fruitfulness. He told me abide in Him - in His acceptance of me, given to me freely as a gift.
Abiding in Jesus means understanding that His acceptance of us is the same regardless of the amount of spiritual fruit we have produced. Ironically, it is only when we understand that His love is not conditioned on our spiritual fruitfulness that we gain the power to become truly fruitful. Only those who abide in Him produce much fruit. In other words, those people who get better are those who understand that God's approval of them is not dependent on their getting better.
So what U really want to help you do is abide in Jesus. The by-product of abiding in Jesus is that you will become more patient in your marriage; you will develop self-discipline; you will become generous. Abiding in Jesus will produce all of the fruits of the Spirit in you - but not by having you concentrate particularly on any of those things. You concentrate on Jesus. You rest in His love and acceptance, given to you not because of what you have earned, but because I'm what He has earned for you.
