BEARING FRUIT.
BY CARRIE F. JUDD
I am the true Vine
and My Father is the husbandman. Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He
taketh away, and every branch that bearith fruit, He purgeth it that it may
bring forth more fruit. –St. John xv: 1, 2.
How many of us,
dear friends, are fruit-bearing branches; and if we are bearing the fruit of
the Spirit in our lives, how many of us are willing to bear “more
fruit”?
That perfect Son
Who ever sought the glory of Him that sent Him, says to us, “Herein is my
Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be My disciples.”
Are we willing to be such disciples, willing to bear “much fruit” to the glory
of our Heavenly Husbandman?
With yearning
eyes of faith we look forward to the Spirit’s fruitage, the love, the joy, the
peace, the meekness (Gal. v: 22, 23), and our eagerness to bear “much fruit” is
voiced by earnest prayers, while anticipations of the soul’s autumnal glory,
causes us to forget the growing time of spring and summer.
But our faithful
Husbandman does not forget; while the holy vigor from the Vine is coursing
through our souls, causing us to bring froth fruit, He is patiently, tenderly
purging us, that in answer to our God-given prayers, we may bring froth “more
fruit.”
Are we startled
now, on looking at the text again, to find that there is only one alternative
for the branch-that being “cast froth and withered”? Oh, forebear not to purge
us, dear Lord; any discipline we can bear with Thee; only let us not be cast
from the vine!
And if in human
trembling we find ourselves shrinking from the Pruner’s knife, the life of the
Spirit within unites us closer and closer to the Vine, and even while our
useless and dangerous offshoots are being severed, we are enabled to cry in
joyful anguish, “At any cost!”
And what is the
cost? Nothing less than a complete death to self, that so if the “life more
abundantly” may flow unhindered though our souls, manifesting continually the
fruit of the Spirit in our lives.
To quote from and
English writer: “What is the purging but pruning, and what is the pruning but
discipline, and what is the discipline but dying, daily dying? It is the Lord
cutting off this and that, staying, checking, controlling, guiding. And it is
my Father’s knife, for He is the Husbandman, and I can trust it in His hands.”
Dear friends,
when we thoroughly recognize the necessity of this purging, and realize that though
“grievous” now, it will “nevertheless afterward yield the peaceable fruit of
righteousness”; when we perceive the never-failing love of Christ which shows
us by a view of our own helplessness, that without Him we can do nothing
(John xv: 5), then shall we patiently await the end of the Father’s culture,
when the Saviour shall say to each of His purified ones: “I have chosen you,
and ordained you that ye should go and bring froth fruit, and that your
fruit should remain, that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name,
He may give it to you.”
