Two years ago I met with a man who had left his job to pursue mission work. He had devoted his remaining years to helping other people create a legacy of their lives: to end well and to leave behind bushels of fruit.
Yet he was frustrated by the seeming fruitlessness of his own mission. When he talked with friends, they were more concerned with careers, finances, children, and marriages. He desperately asked my advice about marketing his Life-of-Legacy website (only a desperate man would ask my advice about marketing). He asked, “Don’t Christians know the gospel?”
I wondered what he thought the gospel taught, and he answered: “Go ye therefore and make disciples,” and he added, “That is exactly what I’m trying to do, to help people figure out how to make disciples and bear fruit. But nothing I do seems to work.”
My friend’s problem was gospel confusion. Sure his life verse is in the Gospels, but it isn’t the heart of the gospel. The gospel is never about what we do; it is always about what God does. Jonathan Edwards once critiqued our “doing” mania when he said:
It is true that by our doing great things, something is worshipped, but it is not God.
Our modern Christian obsession with fruit is unfruitful and, frankly, idolatrous.
Counter-intuitive Fruit
C. S. Lewis once said,
You will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth … you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
Lewis’s non-instinctive observation about social and artistic success perfectly illustrates the biblical paradigm of fruitfulness: the more we force it, the less we’ll see it.
Jesus teaches the same counterintuitive process. In John 15, he says “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” So Jesus is in favor of fruit. But when Jesus talks about the “process” for bearing that fruit, he says nothing about: hard work, good planning, legacy-building, or “working smarter not harder.”
Instead he says fruit is born out of intimacy with him. A close connection with him and nothing else. In the four verses preceding “my Father is glorified when you bear fruit,” Jesus uses the word “abide” seven times. It’s like he needed a good editor. But he doesn’t need help with his word-choices, he needs us to think outside of our western, success-driven boxes.
We’ll never make good impressions on people as long as we try to make good impressions, and we’ll never bear fruit “that lasts” as long as we fixate on bearing fruit. God calls us to devotion to a person not devotion to a cause.
Intimate Theology
All of God’s metaphors for his connection with his people are relational: shepherd and sheep, father to his children, and even husband to wife. His metaphors are never impersonal, like a piston to a crankshaft or “May the Force be with you.”
God’s metaphor of the vine and branches is his most intriguing: it’s an inner penetration of his being into ours, it is his life in us that bears fruit (not our fixation on mission). Then, after a season of abundant fruit, God prunes. The pruning—at least in my life—always draws my attention away from the fruit (which is now plucked or pruned) back to the vine, the only source of fruit.
God doesn’t need our fruitfulness, prosperity, abundance or success: he made the hills, valleys, rivers, and vines. But he invites us to participate with him in the co-creation of fruit simply by fixing our eyes on him.
In the counterintuitive alchemy of spiritual life, if we aim for fruit we get barrenness, and if we aim for intimate connection with God, our very lives become the crushed grapes and broken bread which nourish the world.
Sam
P. S. In three weeks, I will be hosting a retreat at my house for men wondering what they should do in this next season of their life. We call it, “Living a 4th Quarter Life.” We will host a similar event for men and women in the near future.
We have two places left. For more information: Click Here.
Learning to Live a 4th Quarter Life
A very needed teaching!
Indeed. Our main goal should be to be with Him and the byproduct of this is fruitfulness.
I wonder if He is trying to tell me something, as the same topic has now reached my ears and eyes in many different ways.
Hi Chris,
I’m amazed at how God will say the “same thing” to me, but in many different ways: friends, books, movies, billboards, and (of course) in Scripture. God speaks and while he speaks gently, he also makes sure to get his point across.
Thanks,
Sam
Sam, Thank you for the reminder.
Thanks, Sam.
I love this! thank you. My personal take on fruit bearing is this. In my natural garden, i plant the seed. It sits in the ground until conditions are ready for it to start growing. I never hear it commanding itself to grow, working to grow, panting and pushing to grow. It grows according to the timetable God put into it. When it is ready to bear fruit, don’t you think we would hear our plot of 20 tomato plants pushing and squeezing, and sighing and grunting to produce tomatoes, if that is what it took! Never heard it, never expect to. I never doubt that God is doing things I can not perceive to make me grow, because I have that picture in my mind.
Hi Karen,
Thanks for your picturesque and hilarious image: of a tomato grunting and groaning to grow.
As I was thinking of your image, I realized that the fruit I want is spiritual, and nothing in my “natural” life can product it (of course, it is VERY good at producing bad fruit, but that’s another topic).
As you said, God is doing things in my life that I don’t understand or expect; because he is God and I am not!
Sam
This scripture came to me the other night before bed. It wasn’t asked for but I had to seek it out. “I came not to be served, but to serve. To give myself as a ransom for many. It’s in Matthew 20. In fact the whole chapter leads up to end of the chapter. That’s what I sense anyway. I have a difficult time learning to rest. His rest. I know it and even sense it now as I share this. Manic depression, as I have been diagnosed with, I believe as maybe a gift. Anyway, thank you for this thread my friends.
Hi Greg,
Thanks for your personal sharing. I really like the passage you picked. We all so often (well, at least I so often) think of how much God needs our service. Instead, he says we really need HIM, and (as you say) we need to rest in that. Any other “serving” of him is just trying to build our self-esteem.
But when we really do rest in him, letting him do what we cannot hope to do, then he invites us into his service. It’s amazing and humbling: to be invited by God out of the life he has put in us.
Thanks for your sharing.
Best blog you’ve written! ?
Hi RunawayWriter (love that name),
I find my best is when I’m writing what God is simply teaching me. It’s sort of like writing down my conversations with God and letting others eavesdrop.
Thanks
Hmm. Fodder for a longer conversation. Jn. 15 indeed. So what IS the gospel anyway. What’s the church, what are we called out for? Seems to me that more often than not our (my) allegiance is to a man, a leader, a tradition, even a theology (theos, logos – a certain understanding of God, or god) and not so much an allegiance to the Christ of God. And maybe it really is not or should be a thoughtful “allegiance” at all but rather a surrender, a dying… a wild branch being grafted into a new intimate relationship. “Without Me you can do nothing…”. But maybe THERE is the rub, “I” still want to do something. Kind of like my relationship with my wife, I want to give things to her, but often end up getting a new vacuum cleaner which was not high on, or even on her list. But what she wants is “me”. My attention, my eyes as she walks into the room, my listening ear, my hand as we walk together, my tears when she is hurt. “God IN us, the hope of glory…” seems instructive here, for me at least. The whole “Calling” conversation is helpful too. Knowing who God is, who I am and what are my gifts, calling and assignments is helpful to know where I fit and what my branch attached to the vine does and does not produce. And, for me at least, gives relief from the frenzy of trying to leave a legacy instead of simply being satisfied with what the vine produces in this branch, even if it is in secret and no one sees.