Fruitfulness is the ultimate in the development of a living thing. The purpose of a thing is its fruit. The delivery of expectations is fruitfulness. Whatever the expectation delivered is the fruit. It is the ultimate output of an entity or system which determines the success of the entity or system.
In Christian ministry, fruits are the purposes for which we were called. The expectations God had when He called us. It is safe to call it the hope of His calling. God invested and keeps on investing in us as ministers, to derive certain benefits from the operations going on with and within us. He created the system and fuels it to perform in such a way as to deliver expectations.
[My Offline Bible] John 15
16. 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.
[My Offline Bible] James 5
7. Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.
God has general expectations of Christian ministry as an entity, He has expectations from the particular ministry office and has expectations of particular minister. That's the three fold expectations of God from Christian ministry.
For ministry, generally, He expects that by our obedience to preaching and teaching the word of God and speaking that truth in love, we will all come in the unity of the faith unto maturity to the measure of the fullness of the stature of Christ.
Ephesians 4:11-13,15 New International Version (NIV)
11 So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers,
12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up
13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.
So the fruit of ministry generally is that we become like Christ in every respect as His body, as people get saved, discipled and equipped to take their places and positions in the body of Christ to receive and to give what God has sent for personal and general conformity to Christ.
But this can only happen when the fruit of each part is delivered. The apostolic ministry must bear the fruit of ground breaking and setting authority in place, the Prophetic ministry must bring its fruit of revealing the mind of God for the church per time, the evangelistic ministry must bring forth its fruit in bringing nations and individuals into Christ, the pastor must bring forth the fruit of gathering, tending, feeding, grooming and watching over the flocks, while the teaching ministry must bring forth the fruit of revealing and explaining the mysteries of Christ for light and for understanding for the life, the light and love of Christ to be lived and shown to the world by the body of Christ and so achieve the conformity to Christ, the ultimate vision.
This won't be achieved except each of us brings forth his or her own fruits. Though many are called into the same office, each has his specific calling and divine expectations to fulfil in obedience towards the general fruitfulness of the office.
Divine expectation from each of us is unique to each one. The uniqueness is seen in the places and the people one is sent to, the method of delivery of the message and the mode of operation of the individual minister. An apostle to the Gentiles can not present the Jews as fruits, a teacher of ministers cannot present a church congregation as fruits even if there are teachers sent within local churches who must bear their own fruits of teaching within the local churches.
Each of us must discover what fruit is specifically expected of us. The grace available makes it easy for us to quickly discover. It is the grace we labor with. The grace will manifest not just in what God can do through us but in what God does around us and the opportunities and the kind of open doors of ministry we receive. Here we have to be sincere with ourselves to know that the opportunities and the open doors are from God and not self made.
These opportunities constitute flowers and foliage on our trees, they may be what's most easily visible to people to attract them to us for ministry, we must know that they aren't the fruits. The graces given are for work and for enhancements of the assignment, they aren't the end products. We are given grace so we can bear fruits. We won't be rated by the amount of grace we have but by the work and the fulfillment of the assignment given to us to be accomplished by that grace. Fruits must be according to the grace given.
We don't need to boast in the grace given for work, it isn't our doing, it is the gift of God and so we can't boast. A tree doesn't boast because it has been manured, it is what it does with the manure that matters if it conforms to the expectations of the farmer.
God will purge us often for us to bring forth more fruits, the flowers and the foliage must give way to necessary levels for fruitfulness. We will be recognized by the fruit we bear not by the foliage or the flowers. Our existence are only necessary by our faithfulness to our fruitfulness instead of just flowering and shooting great foliages. When we stop fruit bearing, the husbandman, who owns the vineyard may decide to remove us from the scene. We must focus on delivering His expectations and not be distracted by other things.
We may be able to do a lot of things but we must never veer off from the specific purposes for which God has called us from where He expects fruits from us.
Every tree growing in us encumbering the ground while not bearing fruits must be cut off for our fruitfulness in Jesus name.
We shall bring forth our fruits in every season, no season of our lives and ministry shall fail its fruits in Jesus name, may the Lord restore the years eaten up by insects in Jesus name.
Have a great day. Shalom.
Photo Credit: Filipe Lopez/Pexel
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