So can we know? Can we know when we are walking The Path, and realizing Freedom along Its way? Is there evidence that would comfort and confirm us in our journey?
Yes.
You will know them by their fruit.”
A faithful Life is a fruitful Life. A fruitful Life is a Life of Freedom. The fruit evidences what is, in terms of belief. You’ve been planted in a Garden, “in Christ.” Your True Self is destined to bear effortless Fruit from this Vine. This Fruit is not labor, it is however, abundant and overflowing from rest and recognition.
Fruit trees are fruit trees as soon as they are sprouted – “born.” As the tree receives Life, it grows, and fruit is the byproduct. If it yields bad or spoiled fruit – something is wrong. Similarly, a follower of Jesus walking The Path toward Life and Freedom will receive the Life of the Vine, grow in Him, and yield His Fruit. If the fruit instead is rotten or counterfeit to the nature of the follower as a born again new creation – something is wrong. Freedom is lacking. Bad fruit evidences unbelief in the form of rejecting the True Self in the Vine of Love. We can know this because the fruit is lacking, or foul.
The Lord desires that we bear His fruit, and much of it. “By this, His Father is glorified.”
Life in the Spirit, by the Law of Christ, is a fruitful Life. A fruitful Life is evidenced by “Love (the essence of God’s Life, and thus ours too), joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” If you can observe and Live these in your walk, you are realizing Freedom. Conversely, if you cannot observe and live these in your walk (go check out Paul’s “anti-Fruit” list – Galatians 5:19-21), then you can know you are walking by the old nature, the Self-centered nature that produces death. You’ve resurrected a lie to live from.
What you do proves who think you are. Words are not enough. What you say you believe is not significant in the light of how you actually live (or, Live).
There is good fruit, and there is bad fruit. Spiritual fruit, and carnal fruit. Eternal fruit, and temporal fruit. Fruit of the Spirit, and fruit of the flesh. When one is walking by Christ in their True Self, along The Path in Freedom, the fruit will be good, spiritual, Eternal, and of the Spirit. When one is walking by their false Self or the world or sin or the satan – even though they may very well be “saved,” a “Christian,” inside The Gate – the fruit will be bad, carnal, temporal and of the flesh.
It comes down to a matter of reaping and sowing. In all realms, you reap what you sow. If you sow to the flesh, you reap of the flesh. If you sow to the Spirit, you reap of the Spirit. If you feed Self and the flesh, you will yield fruit thusly. But if you feed the Spirit, you will yield His Fruit. When we deny Self, we deny feeding the flesh, and sowing to the Self. As a result, He is increased, as the Spirit is fed instead. To feed the flesh is to feed anything that is not the Spirit. We must feed the seed of God that is implanted in us at new birth. If we feed to any other, the fruit will tell the story.
The fruit will tell the story, either way. Freedom Fruit evidences Freedom identity. Belief and faith are trusting in your True Nature, which is already good, holy, righteous, Love. This is abiding in the Vine. This trusting in what already is, manifests a Life of Good, Holy, Righteous, Love… and Fruit.
While walking The Path is not easy, the Lord and His burden is – “His yoke is light.” If life feels hard and heavy all the time, this fruit also evidences a lack of Freedom, and something is wrong in the abiding. The Lord’s Voice is calm, loving, reassuring, convicting and specific. If you are listening to voices that are not of these, then again, consider the fruit, and trace it back to its root.
You’re Free. You can’t be more Free than you already are right now. The Fruit of your life evidences whether you see this and agree with it, and thus manifest it – or not.
Follow the fruit, and you’ll find the prison, the lie and the (non) life. Follow the Fruit, and you’ll find… The Way, The Truth and The Life…
What does the Fruit tell you? Leave a comment:
