Bear Fruit with Patience

Hey brothers and sisters,

For any of you who have been frustrated in not seeing fruit in your life as at many times I have been, I wanted to encourage you with a verse that spoke to me a couple days ago.

In Luke chapter 8, Jesus tells the parable of the sower and of how seeds sown land on the path, on rocky soil, among thorns, and finally on good soil. The good soil is the only soil that produces a crop, and Jesus explains to his disciples, "As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience" (Luke 8:15).

In reading this passage, it is key to take note, first off, of God's tremendous grace in this. The seed is the word of God and he has sown that seed in our hearts. That's the Gospel in us. We have heard that Jesus died and rose again. That's grace. We need to remind ourselves and let that be planted in us every day. That's the first and most important thing.

But then once we've had that seed planted in us, we need to let it flourish and let it produce fruit in us. In the past, I've wrestled with this because that puts pressure on our end of things to think that we need to produce fruit, but what stuck out to me in reading it and thinking on it these past couple days was the word patience. We bear fruit with patience. The analogy of a seed growing into a plant is so perfect because 1) it does it naturally. It doesn't exert itself to produce fruit. I've never seen a plant have to strain to push out fruit, it just does. 2) It doesn't happen right away. It is a slow process that sometimes is not visible at all to the eye. So take heart my brothers and sisters when you don't see fruit in your life. Seek the Lord and pray that he would move in you and till the soil of your heart. Seek God who is light earnestly just as a plant grows and stretches and reaches for the light of the sun, and then wait on him with patience for fruit to crop up.

Love you guys. More than you know.
MTL