We didn’t choose Messiah because of our great wisdom or because of our great moral clarity. It was by His choice we saw the truth of His Word and the truth of our moral condition and acted upon those truths. And it is also by His choice that we bear fruit:

Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. (John 15:16 KJV)

We have been chosen as Messiah’s people for a reason: to bear fruit. What variety? The best kind. The kind that endures! In other words, the kind of fruit that has lasting value. And we have been promised whatever resources we need to bear that fruit. We merely have to ask for what we need. So why doesn’t it feel that way so often?

Perhaps it’s because we are trying to bear fruit as an act of the will or by manipulation rather than by letting it just be a natural occurrence based upon who we are. Perhaps we should focus our attention on cultivating the “tree” and allowing the “fruit” to occur as a natural by-product of a healthy fruit-bearing tree.

When we plant a fruit tree, fruit is not produced as an act of our will. Rather, fruit-bearing is the natural outcome. We can only work on giving the tree the best growing conditions and proper care possible whereby it can proceed to producing fruit naturally. The same is true in our faith.

We definitely have been equipped to bear fruit in our lives. In fact, that is our purpose. We have been ordained to bear fruit. But we can’t produce fruit as an act of the will. What we must do is seek the best conditions for our faith to bear “fruit” naturally.

We can find some great clues as to how to do that by reconsidering the parable of the Sower. You can find that in Mark 4:3-20. That parable should more appropriately be called the parable of the “soil” because that was the determining factor in success of the seed sown.

Though the parable of the soil addresses the fate of sown seeds of faith, it also holds clues useful to us. Our faith grows and is established so much better, and is thus able to naturally bear more fruit, when we give our attention to the “soil” in which our faith lives and grows.

To keep our “soil” good we do well to paying attention to the rocks, weeds, and predators that enter even after our faith has taken root and is established. We have been uniquely equipped to do this by the Holy Spirit. He is our “master gardener,” so to speak, and we do well to attend to those things He tells us in order to keep our faith healthy.

In due season, a healthy faith will produce good fruit. Bushels of it! So let’s consider some lessons learned from the parable of the soil to which we may look to the Spirit for direction in care of our already established faith.

We gain depth in our faith when our heart is kept “soft” to His word. We must allow the Spirit to carry out all work necessary to break up and remove the “rocks” in our lives which prevent our faith from becoming deeply rooted.

Sin is the rock in our hearts which block out the roots of faith. Some rocks are removed easily, others require some digging. But once removed, roots grow happily and eagerly. So too with our faith.

By being freed up to become deeply rooted more easily, our faith has more energy to devote to fruit production. Most importantly, thus deeply rooted, our faith is able to withstand the inevitable “droughts” that we will all experience.

We must also be sure to attend to “weeds” the Spirit points out to us as soon as we are made aware of them. We can’t let them take root or they will spread until they have overgrown everything.

In the parable we are considering anew today, the weeds are the cares and lusts of the world and the deceitfulness of riches. And those will definitely keep an established faith from full fruit production. They usually end all production.

I have seen countless believers’ previously established faith choked out completely by cares and lusts of the world, and also the deceitfulness of riches. You likely have too. There is no fruit born in their lives today because all energy of their faith is choked out. There may never be fruit again. We can only pray the Spirit will revive what has been severely neglected.

We further protect our faith when we heed the Spirit’s warnings and instructions about predators. Seeds get eaten by birds. But there are all kinds of other predators that will destroy a seed after it has begun to grow, and indeed throughout every stage of its life.

So too, Satan the bird in the parable becomes Satan the rabbit gnawing at the base of our tender growth in the faith. He becomes Satan the deer who eats the leaves off our branches and starves our roots. He becomes Satan the worm, that bores into our established roots, or Satan the worm that infests what little fruit we see come forth. There are all kinds of ways predators, all motivated by the anti-messiah, tries to destroy our faith and our ability to bear fruit in Messiah’s Kingdom.

But remember too what happened with the seed sown in the good soil. It produces fruit! But also remember this: The plant doesn’t go from seed to fruit overnight. Especially the lasting, or valuable, kind. There is a period of growth before its fruit bearing stage begins. To get to that stage as healthy as possible, and thus in a condition to be able to bear as much as possible, fruit tree keepers work hard.

But they work hard on other things than on producing the fruit. They work hard at making and maintaining the best conditions possible for the tree to grow in a healthy and unhindered way. And that results in the desired outcome: abundant fruit!

We should do the same with out faith. We can’t force fruit, but we can cultivate the conditions for our faith in which fruit production may best become healthy and abundant. With real fruit we care for the fruit tree. With the fruit of our faith, we care for our faith. We do that by paying heed and following the directions of the the Master Gardener of our faith: the Spirit!

Abba, Father, we ask that you would reveal to us new things by your parable of the soil. By your Spirit, help us see the condition of the soil our faith grows in today and help us heed His instruction so we may have improved soil in which our faith may grow and produce much fruit for your Kingdom. We ask these things with much love and thanksgiving in the Name of Yeshua our Messiah, Amen.

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Copyright 2010 Jim Zboran. All rights reserved.
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