“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.

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Producer: Todd Adkins
Voice Artist: Ian Cullen