Harvest Time

This season of “Harvest” is one of my favorite. I appreciate the smells, sights, and tastes of all that come from it. We’ve already carved pumpkins, gone to a harvest “fair” like the rest of the fairs in the world really, with cheap toys you wouldn’t even want for free, and body-rotting-delicious, sugar-coated EVERYthing; and we’ve even been given riper than ripe grapes right on the vine from a lady in our church whose parents own a vineyard.

I was reading in John 15 when Jesus says that He is the true vine and His Father God is the vinedresser. Every branch that doesn’t bear fruit He takes away; and those that do, He prunes to bear even more fruit!
He tells us “abide in Me, and I in you,” as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself. He says without Him we can do nothing, and if we don’t abide in Him we wither and are thrown out. We may wonder “really nothing?” As a self driven society we must remember that truly all that we have and do is from and for Him.

I’m trying to create for myself an all inclusive picture of what being a “disciple” looks like, as we see much alluding in the Bible to what we are to “do.” Many of us know it is nothing we can do, but that once we receive full belief through Jesus’ mercy poured out on our lives, we show changes that evidence a difference. Our fleshly desires war against our new desires, but when we abide in Him and His Word, we bear fruit. God relieves us through His Word which only makes sense when we actually read it, after trying to reason with things that cannot be reasoned with alone in own sin infiltrated thoughts.

It’s only when we abide in Him and His Word, we may ask and receive, bear more fruit, and can glorify Him as His disciples. Disciples produce more disciples, so in our pruning process we must help one another stand firm to prove that which is truly His!