CONVERSATIONS
WITH GOD
The Mighty Works of the Lord: Fruitful Labor
Archived Conversations with God
Day 1
Fruitful Lives
Check out this devotional on fruitfulness:
https://www.touchinglives.org/devotionals/be-fruitful
Obviously fruitfulness can be things like having children or making disciples, but are there other types of fruitfulness? Scripture tells us in Galatians 5:22 "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law." When the Spirit of God enters our lives it produces fruit, and these verses describe the nature of that fruit. If fruit can be anything from peace to a child, how can we define what it means to be fruitful in such a way that the whole breadth of fruit fits in? Fruitfulness can be described as abundant maturity. Abundant because the idea of fruit is multiplication, and maturity because the things that are to be found in abundance are the things that are appropriate to the kind when it has reached its full potential. If I were a beaver, I would cut down trees with my teeth and build dams, but that is not being fruitful for me as a human. God desires us to be fruitful, and there are many areas of endeavor that are required to reach our full potential of fruitfulness. We should not focus on one small area and congratulate ourselves on mastering it, but instead pursue the greatest fruitfulness that we can in as many areas as possible so that we are well rounded and a blessing to others in as many ways as possible. This brings glory to God and joy to us, so there is no reason not to get started on this work right away.
Verses: Genesis 1:28, John 15:1-17, Matthew 12:33-37
Prayer Topics: Abundance, Generosity, Joy
Day 2
The Fruit of Joy
Check out this excerpt from a sermon on Joy preached by Charles Spurgeon on February 6, 1881:
OBSERVE, “the fruit of the Spirit,” for the product of the Spirit of God is one. As some fruits are easily divisible into several parts, so you perceive that the fruit of the Spirit, though it be but one, is threefold, nay, it makes three times three,— “love, joy, peace; longsuffering, gentleness, goodness; faith, meekness, temperance,”— all one. Perhaps ‘Love” is put first not only because it is a right royal virtue, nearest akin to the divine perfection, but because it is a comprehensive grace, and contains all the rest. All the commandments are fulfilled in one word, and that word is “love”; and all the fruits of the Spirit are contained in that one most sweet, most blessed, most heavenly, most Godlike grace of love. See that ye abound in love to the great Father and all his family, for if you fail in the first point how can you succeed in the second? Above all things, put on love, which is the bond of perfectness. As for joy, if it be not the first product of the Spirit of God, it is next to the first, and we may be sure that the order in which it is placed by the inspired apostle is meant to be instructive. The fruit of the Spirit is love first, as comprehensive of the rest; then joy arising out of it. It is remarkable that joy should take so eminent a place; it attaineth unto the first three, and is but one place lower than the first. Look at it in its high position, and if you have missed it, or if you have depreciated it, revise your judgment, and endeavour with all your heart to attain to it, for depend upon it this fruit of the Spirit is of the utmost value. This morning, as I can only speak upon one theme, I leave love for another occasion, and treat only of joy. May its divine author, the Holy Ghost, teach us how to speak of it to our profit and his own glory.
It is quite true that the Spirit of God produces sorrow, for one of his first effects upon the soul is holy grief. He enlightens us as to our lost condition, convincing us of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment, and the first result upon our heart is astonishment and lamentation. Even when we look to Christ by the work of the Spirit one of the first fruits is sorrow: “They shall look on him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, and be in bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness for his first-born.” But this sorrow is not the ultimate object of the Spirit’s work, it is a means to an end. Even as the travail of the mother leadeth up to the joy of birth, so do the pangs of repentance lead up to the joy of pardon and acceptance. The sorrow is, to use a scriptural figure, the blade, but the full corn in the ear is joy; sorrow helps on the fruit, but the fruit itself is joy. The tears of godly grief for sin are all meant to sparkle into the diamonds of joy in pardoning love.
This teaches us, then, that we are not to look upon bondage as being the object of the work of the Spirit of God, or the design of the Lord in a work of grace. Many are under bondage to the law: they attempt to keep the commands of God, not out of love, but from slavish fear. They dread the lash of punishment, and tremble like slaves; but to believers it is said “Ye are not under the law, but under grace,” and “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.” To be in bondage under the law, to be afraid of being cast away by God, and visited with destruction on account of sin after we have trusted in Jesus,— this is not the work of the Spirit of God in believers, but the black offspring of unbelief or ignorance of the grace of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Neither is a painful dread or a servile terror a fruit of the Spirit. Many worship even the Lord Jesus himself at a distance: they know not that believers are “a people near unto him.” They are afraid of God, but they never delight in him; they attend to worship, not because they rejoice in it, but because they think it must be done. Their secret feeling is— “What a weariness it is,” but necessity compels. They know nothing of a child’s joy in sure and full forgiveness, spoken by the Father’s own lips as he pressed them to his bosom. His kiss was never warm upon their cheek, the ring was never on their finger, nor the best robe upon their shoulder; the music and the dancing of the joyous family, who are in harmony with the father’s joy over the lost son, have never charmed their ears. They are still under dread, which is the fruit of superstition rather than “the fruit of the Spirit.” Many thing's they do and suffer, and all in vain: if the Son did but make them free they would be free indeed.
Verses: Romans 15:13, John 16:22, 1 Peter 1:8
Prayer Topics: Peace, Excitement, Freedom
Day 3
The Fruit of Joy (Continued)
More from Spurgeon's sermon on joy:
I know some whom I am very far from despising, but whom on the contrary I greatly value, whose religion, sincere as I know it is, is sadly tinged with gloomy colours. They are afraid of assurance, for they dread presumption: they dare not speak of their own salvation with the certainty with which the Bible saints were wont to speak of it; they always say “I hope” and “I trust.” They would seem to be total abstainers from joy; they are suspicious of it lest it should be carnal excitement or visionary hope. They hang their heads like bulrushes, and go mourning all their days, as if the religion of
Christ knew no higher festival than a funeral, and all its robes were the garments of despair. Brethren, despondency is not the fruit of the Spirit. Make no mistake: depression is frequently the fruit of indigestion, or of Satanic temptation, or of unbelief, or of some harboured sin, but “the fruit of the Spirit is joy.” Constantly looking within your own self instead of looking alone to Christ is enough to breed misery in any heart. I have also known gloomy expressions to be the fruit of affectation, the fruit of the unwise imitation of some undoubtedly good person who was of a downcast spirit. Some of the best of men have had a melancholy turn, but they would have been better men if this had been overcome. Imitate their many virtues: take the pot of ointment and pick out the dead fly. O my brethren, look well to it that ye bring forth the genuine, holy, sacred, delicious fruit of the Spirit, which in one of its forms is “joy.” Do not covet the counterfeit of earthly joy, but seek to the good Spirit to bear the true fruit in you.
I. In speaking upon this joy I shall notice, first, the fact that IT IS BROUGHT FORTH. Brethren, the Spirit of God is not barren: if he be in you he must and will inevitably produce his own legitimate fruit, and “the fruit of the Spirit is joy.”
We know this to be the fact because we ourselves are witnesses of it. Joy is our portion, and we are cheered and comforted in the Saviour. “What!” say you, “are we not depressed and sorrowful at times?” Yea, verily; and yet what Christian man or woman among us would make an exchange with the gayest of all worldlings? Your lot is somewhat hard, my brother, and sometimes your spirit sinks within you; but do you not count yourself to be, even at your worst, happier than the worldling at his best? Come, would you not take your poverty, even with your mourning, rather than accept his wealth with all his hilarity, and give up your hope in God? I am persuaded you would: you would not change your blest estate for a monarch’s crown. Well, then, that which you would not change is a good thing, and full of joy to your heart.
Brethren, we experience extraordinary joys at times. Some are of an equable temperament, and they are almost to be envied, for a stream of gentle joy always glides through their spirit. Others of us are of a more excitable character, and consequently we fall very flat at times. Ay, but then we have our high days and holidays, and mounting times, and then we outsoar the wings of eagles. Heaven itself can hardly know more ecstatic joy than we have occasionally felt; we shall be vessels of greater capacity there, but even here we are at times full to the brim of joy— I mean the same joy which makes heaven so glad. At times God is pleased to inundate the spirit with a flood of joy, and we are witnesses that “happy is the people whose God is the Lord.” We do not dance before the ark every day, but when we do, our joy is such as no worldling can understand: it is far above and out of his sight.
Besides our own witness, the whole history of the church goes to show that God’s people are a joyful people. I am sure that if in reading the history of the first Christian centuries you are asked to point out the men to be envied for their joy, you would point to the believers in Jesus. There is a room in Rome which is filled with the busts of the emperors. I have looked at their heads: they look like a collection of prizefighters and murderers, and scarcely could I discover on any countenance a trace of joy. Brutal passions and cruel thoughts deprived the lords of Romo of all chance of joy. There were honourable exceptions to this rule, but taking them all round you would look in vain for moral excellence among the Caesars, and lacking this thing of beauty they missed that which is a joy. Turn now to the poor, hunted Christians, and read the inscriptions left by them in the catacombs; they are so calm and peaceful that you say instinctively— a joyous people were wont to gather here. Those who have been most eminent in service and in suffering for Christ’s sake have been of a triumphant spirit, dauntless because supported by an inner joy: their calm courage made them the wonder of the age. The true Christian is a different type of manhood from the self-indulgent tyrant; there is almost as much advance from the coarseness of vice to the beauty of holiness as there is from the chimpanzee to the man. I do not know how much Tiberias and Caligula and Nero used to sing; happy men they certainly were not. I can hardly imagine them singing, except at their drunken orgies, and then in the same tone as tigers growl; but I do know that Paul and Silas sang praises unto God with their feet in the stocks, and the prisoners heard them; and I know also that this was the mark of the Christians of the first age, that, when they assembled on the Lord’s-day, it was not to groan, but to sing praises to the name of one Christos, whom they worshipped as a God. High joys were common then, when the bridegroom comforted his bride in the dens and caves of the earth. Those pioneers of our holy faith were destitute, afflicted, tormented, yet were they men of whom the world was not worthy, and men who counted it all joy to suffer persecution for Christ’s sake. Now, if in the very worst times God’s people have been a happy people, I am sure they are so now. I would appeal to the biographies of men of our own day, and challenge question as to the statement that their lives have been among the most desirable of human existences for they possessed a joy which cheered their sorrows, blessed their labours, sweetened their trials, and sustained them in the hour of death.
To Be Continued!