Fruitful Hearts
Fruitful Hearts
The apostles did their work well and churches were planted in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and in the Gentile world (Acts 1–10). In spite of heresies on the inside and persecutions from the outside, God’s people continued to herald the gospel and many of our forbearers were faithful, so there is still a church in the world. The enemy has not overcome, and the Lord continues to build His church.
But what kind of church is it? For the most part in the Western world, it certainly isn’t the dynamic fellowship described in the book of Acts. In Jerusalem, the believers were together in a united fellowship (Acts 2:44), while today we are divided and competitive. The lives the early Christians lived and the good works they performed attracted attention, and people were hearing the gospel and trusting the Savior daily. The early believers had none of our modern media or promotional techniques we boast about today, but the gospel spread and the churches grew.
We glorify God by revealing Jesus in our walks, words, and works before a watching world. But if that’s what it means to be a Christian, then something has gone wrong somewhere. Most of our “Christian activity” goes on in a building (also called “a church”), but we don’t always see much evidence of the Lord in the home, the marketplace, or the corridors of power. Statisticians tell us that there is little difference between the divorce rate of professed Christians and that of unbelievers outside the church. All of us are embarrassed by the immorality of religious leaders—and this includes evangelicals—and we even have “Christian scams” that rob people of their money. The early church also had to contend with some of these things, but today we wish the incidents didn’t occur so often.
I hear Christians complaining about the moral and spiritual darkness in the world, but if there were more light—Christian light—there would be less darkness. Experts say that things are decaying in our society, and I believe it; but if we had more salt—Christian salt—we would have less decay. “So justice is driven back, and righteousness stands at a distance; truth has stumbled in the streets, honesty cannot enter” (Isa. 59:14). We have a horrible traffic jam that neither the police nor the courts can solve! The problem lies with us, the people of God, and “it is time for judgment to begin with God’s household” (1 Pet. 4:17).
What we need is revival. I know that revival is an ancient word that may not be politically correct these days. It’s not used much among Christians, unless it means “an annual evangelistic crusade.” By “revival,” I mean “new life, renewed life” among the people of God. Not all that we call “blessing” is from the Lord; too often it’s only the result of talented human effort and not the Spirit of God; and people receive the praise, but God doesn’t get the glory. In the early church, the people were “filled with awe” (Acts 2:43), but now we settle for tired business as usual.
A true blessing from God is something that God gives, says, or does that glorifies Him and meets our needs, and you can’t always explain it! Needed money arrives unexpectedly at just the right time. The person you desperately need to see is sitting in a booth in the restaurant where you go for a cup of coffee. The old book you’ve been searching for shows up on the shelf of a store you didn’t plan to visit. You may call these events “minor miracles,” but they can be major when it comes to honoring the Lord; I know because all of them have happened to me. Bob Cook used to remind us in our Youth for Christ ministry, “If you can explain what’s going on, God didn’t do it.”
Let’s get back to John 14:6 and our desperate need for fresh life from heaven—what my friend Pastor Jim Cymbala calls “fresh wind, fresh fire.”
One of God’s recipes for revival is Psalm 1:1–3. It describes the type of person that God blesses and uses, and this description parallels our Lord’s words in John 14:6.
Jesus is the way.
Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
Jesus is the truth.
but whose delight is in the law of the LORD,
and who meditates on his law day and night.
Jesus is the life.
That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—
whatever they do prospers.
In order to receive God’s blessing, we must be obedient people, the kind of people He can bless. “For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favor and honor; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless” (Ps. 84:11). We must be separated from the world—what John described as “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16)—and instead walk with the Lord and the Lord’s people. But if the wicked, the sinners, and the people who mock the things of God are influencing our hearts and minds, then we are forfeiting the blessing of God. If we are walking in the shadows or the darkness and not in the light, and lying about it, the Lord cannot bless (vv. 5–10). God doesn’t listen to our prayers if we harbor sin in our hearts and do nothing about it. “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (Ps. 66:18).
A pastor friend phoned one day and said, “Pray for us next Sunday afternoon. The church is calling a solemn assembly of confession and prayer. There’s something wrong here, and only the Lord can find it and cleanse it.” Along with hundreds of other people, we did pray for him and the church, and we heard later that God sent the blessing they were seeking.
I once heard a preacher say, “Years ago, we used to hear sermons about being separated from the world, but we don’t preach like that today. We’ve matured a lot and don’t need that kind of stuff today.” I wanted to say to him after the service, “What you called ‘that kind of stuff’ is what helped to make the church what it was, a church that produced saints and soul winners.” God’s Word still says, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” (Read 2 Cor. 6:14–18.) Whether people like it or not, the Bible clearly warns us about the dangers of compromise with the world. “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God” (James 4:4). Being friendly with the world leads to “being polluted by the world” (1:27), and before long we start to “love the world” (1 John 2:15–17). This drifting eventually makes us “conform to the pattern of this world” (Rom. 12:1–2). If we don’t repent and seek God’s forgiveness, we will be “disciplined so that we will not be finally condemned with the world” (1 Cor. 11:32).
If you need confirmation of this sequence, review the life of Lot. As the nephew of Abraham, Lot had a wonderful opportunity to learn about the Lord and share in the covenant blessings, but he chose to pitch his tents near Sodom (Gen. 13:10–13), and then he moved into Sodom (14:1–16). Abraham rescued him once, but Lot went right back to Sodom (19:1). When the Lord was going to destroy Sodom, he sent two angels to rescue Lot and his family, but they had to take him, his wife, and two daughters by the hand and pull them to safety (ch. 19). Lot lost everything when God destroyed Sodom! Paul called this being saved “yet so as through fire” (1 Cor. 3:15 NKJV).
One philosophy today insists that the church must become more like the world in order to attract the world to the church, but this belief does not come from Scripture. To begin with, the early believers had no church buildings to attract people to, because the command was to go out where the people were and witness to them about Jesus. But the less we are like the world, the more we will attract the world! When you are different, you attract people; when you are odd, you repel them; when you are a cheap imitation, you invite their scorn. When unsaved people come into contact with Christians, they expect them to be different. When unsaved people visit a church, they expect the service to focus on God and not feel like they are in a religious nightclub.
This leads us to another essential for God’s blessing: delighting constantly in the Word of God, for Jesus is the truth. The people God blesses don’t simply read the Bible; they meditate on it and enjoy it. God’s Word is seed (Luke 9:11), and when it is planted in the heart and cultivated—that’s where meditation comes in—it takes root, grows, and bears fruit. Christian believers who ignore the Word or give it minimal attention are unable to bear fruit and therefore are not much of a blessing to others.
A saint who was totally yielded to God’s Word wrote Psalm 119, and almost every verse in the psalm mentions the Word of God. I once read slowly through Psalm 119 and made a list of the images the writer used to tell us how much God’s truth meant to him. I discovered that he would rather have God’s Word than food (v. 103), 2 wealth (vv. 14, 72, 127, 162), sleep (vv. 55, 62, 147–148, 164), or even friends (vv. 51, 95, 115)! Please look up these verses, think about them, and ask yourself, “Do I love the Word of God that much?”
What we delight in is what we will sacrifice to enjoy. If we delight in the Word of God, we will gladly sacrifice sleep to be awake each morning, as did David (Ps. 57:8; 108:2) and Jesus (Isa. 50:4; Mark 1:35). We will gladly invest money in tools for Bible study, and if our witness and obedience to God’s truth costs us some friends, we pray for them and trust God to give us new friends (Ps. 119:63, 74, 79). The way we treat the Bible is the way we treat Jesus, for He is the living Word and the theme of the written Word.
Jesus is the life, and abiding in Him gives us the grace and power we need for serving and obeying. The image here is that of a fruitful tree, a meaningful picture of the faithful follower of Jesus Christ. In today’s world, the ideal image of many believers might be that of a tumbleweed, “blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming” (Eph. 4:14).
A healthy tree is rooted, stable, beautiful, fruitful, and useful. The roots reach to the streams of water provided by the Lord, and the believer is “rooted and grounded in love” (Eph. 3:17 NASB) as well as “rooted and built up in him [Christ]” (Col. 2:7), absorbing the water of the Holy Spirit (John 7:37–38). The vital root system brings nourishment to the trunk and branches and holds the tree steady as it grows upward. The leaves transform the sunlight into living plant tissue, and in due season, fruit appears.
The most important part of the tree is the root system, the part that nobody sees; and the most important part of the believer’s life is the “root system,” the part only God sees. “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matt. 6:6). I don’t envy any child of God who is too busy to take time to be holy, whether it’s in a morning watch or an evening vigil.
The tree doesn’t serve itself but lives for others, and that’s the attitude each Christian should have toward life. Trees don’t eat their own fruit but offer it to us. (I will elaborate on the message of fruitfulness later in this book.) Trees stand in the sun and freely provide refreshing shade for the traveler. In the autumn, their leaves help to nourish the soil, and all year long their roots help to hold down the soil. The tree is healthy, and its leaves don’t wither and die when they should be flourishing. During my years of pastoral ministry, I have had the sad experience of watching some of God’s “trees” slowly wither, in spite of everything the congregation and I did to try to bring back spiritual health. Then the storms came and over they went.
The phrase “whatever they do prospers” refers to the blessings God sends to those whose lives He can bless. It parallels Deuteronomy 29:9: “Carefully follow the terms of this covenant, so that you may prosper in everything you do.” Godly Joseph prospered (Gen. 39:2), and so did Joshua (Josh. 1:8) and Daniel (Dan. 6:28). Isaiah used a similar image: “The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail” (Isa. 58:11). I have noticed in my long life that some Christians can take a dying ministry and turn the desert into a garden, while some other believers will turn a garden into a desert—and the difference isn’t necessarily because of talent or education. The difference is the blessing of God on a life that can be blessed.