What Does Your Fruit Show of You?
God doesn't simply want to help us to think right. He wants to benefit the whole of our lives for our good. Our thinking rightly (which comes from repentence, or a change of mind about God and His truth) is supposed to affect our living rightly.
This is probably part of why Bob Goff is making such a splash with his book Love Does, which speaks of the important of simple actions based on our beliefs ... for our own benefit, and the benefit of those around us.
The Bible shows us that the actions and heart responses out of our lives are our fruit, and watching our fruit shows us our root: the true color the truths we are building our lives on.
Fruit that is truly godly looks a whole lot like this: "The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!" (Galatians 5:22-23). Think about that ... there is no law in any nation on earth against these things! This is what walking closely to God produces in us.
Is this the fruit you are seeing in your life?
Or are you stale, stagnant, bored with religion, tired out by life, exhausted from rule-keeping, craving selfish fulfillment? Maybe you need more of the Holy Spirit, and less self-effort towards God's law?
I'm still pondering a twitter post by my friend David over a year ago: "If your study of theology doesn't lead you to love Jesus Christ more, you're missing the main purpose of theology."
It's important to ask ourselves, when we believe certain things about God and faith: what is this producing in me? How am I living rightly or wrongly in response to my view of God and His Word?
So I guess the final questions would be: are you loving Jesus more today than you did yesterday? Do you sense a greater manifestation of God's Presence in your everyday life? Are you joyfully walking in obedience to the clear guidance of Scripture? As these fruits increase in our lives, we know we are building on the right roots.
