Morning, November 13
Go To Evening Reading
“The branch cannot bear fruit of itself.”
John 15:4
How did you begin to bear fruit? It was when you came to Jesus and
cast yourselves on his great atonement, and rested on his finished
righteousness. Ah! what fruit you had then! Do you remember those
early days? Then indeed the vine flourished, the tender grape appeared,
the pomegranates budded forth, and the beds of spices gave forth their
smell. Have you declined since then? If you have, we charge you to
remember that time of love, and repent, and do thy first works. Be most in those engagements which you have experimentally proved to draw you nearest to Christ , because it is from him that all your fruits proceed. Any holy exercise
which will bring you to him will help you to bear fruit. The sun is,
no doubt, a great worker in fruit-creating among the trees of the
orchard: and Jesus is still more so among the trees of his garden
of grace. When have you been the most fruitless? Has not it been when
you have lived farthest from the Lord Jesus Christ, when you have
slackened in prayer, when you have departed from the simplicity of
your faith, when your graces have engrossed your attention instead
of your Lord, when you have said, “My mountain standeth firm, I shall never be moved”; and have forgotten where your strength dwells—has not it been then that your fruit has ceased? Some of us have been taught that we have
nothing out of Christ, by terrible abasements of heart before the
Lord; and when we have seen the utter barrenness and death of all
creature power, we have cried in anguish, “From him all my fruit must be found, for no fruit can ever come from
me.” We are taught, by past experience, that the more simply we depend
upon the grace of God in Christ, and wait upon the Holy Spirit, the
more we shall bring forth fruit unto God. Oh! to trust Jesus for fruit
as well as for life.