Fruitful Branches - Part 18

Now notice what Andrew Murray says next:

"Let us begin to think as God thinks.  Let us accept Christ's teaching and respond to it.  The one object of my being a branch, the one mark of my being a true branch, the one condition of my abiding and growing strong, is that I bear the fruit of the heavenly Vine for dying men to eat and live.  The one thing of which I can have the most perfect assurance is that, with Christ as my Vine, and the Father as my Husbandman, I can indeed be a fruitful branch."

No one needs to feel they cannot bear a fruitful branch.  Every person can be a fruitful branch!  Jesus says that if a branch is not bearing fruit, The husbandman cuts it off.  But the Husbandman cuts if off in His Own time and in His Own way--that's His business, not ours.  But every branch that is bearing fruit, He purges it. So the fruit-bearing becomes the real problem in most people's thinking because we are subject to deception and Satan has caused us to misunderstand what fruit-bearing really is.  But here Jesus says that every branch that bears fruit, He purges it, that it may bring forth more fruit.

Remember Galatians 5:22, 23 "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.  These are the fruit we are to bear for Christ the Vine.  Not one of these fruit would be bad to have.  In fact I would love to have all of them, how about you?  God has given me His love in my heart for others but I need more, so I need to pray for more love to others.  He is helping me by giving me more patience, but I can use more of that too.  Once in a while Satan tries to destroy my peace but as a rule I seem to be at peace.  But it wouldn't hurt to pray for the fruit of the Spirit all the time, all of them.  When I wake up in the morning I ask God to help me abide with Him all day, sure makes the day go better, I am so thankful for His unending love for me.  I don't know what I would do without Him.  Life would be so hard to cope with.  With Him it is best if we let Him control things and then they don't get out of hand.  Keep up your studying, it is worth every moment that we spend time with Him.  Grandma Joan