Is He Worthy or Just Useful

I’m Praying for you today that the Lord Jesus will hear your heart's cry, even without words or the time to really think or articulate your desires...
He loves you enough to continue listening when you are too swamped to talk...
His love and desires FOR you are constant and Jesus said that "your purpose" is to bear "fruit" much fruit and fruit that remains...

My prayer for you all is that the Spirit will give you eyes to see exactly what He wants for you and from you and in this "light" your heart (your mind, will, affections, reason, and understanding) will be single in desire for Him and His will and His purpose and intent for you as you walk out your life on the mountain, and in Charlotte where He has placed you.

If our "heart's desire is to glorify the Father with "fruit" then we will hear the "clicking" of the pruning shears and the Father will take away "anything we don't need" and in this process the "light" of His Word and Words can get through the "unnecessary leaves and twigs" that are blocking the light so needed for "fruit bearing."

In prayer the Spirit will reveal to us what He wants to remove and it is ours to cooperate, regardless! I so want increased "sensitivity" and a "listening heart" and a desire to trust and obey Him when I hear and see what He is saying and what He wants to remove from my life and my thinking and my desires and the things I "think" I need!!

The Writer to the Hebrews lists three levels of correction: rebuke, chastening, scourging and says that we must not "despise" this because the process will fall out into the "peaceable fruit of righteousness"...in Heb 12:10b (and remember that the writer said “..and he scourges every son He receives”) "...but God disciplines us for our good that we may share in His holiness."

• If "discipline" is about God removing sin in and from us,
• Then "pruning" is about God removing "self" from us in our daily walk with him.

• If Christ is the Vine and we are the branches and if His life flows into us and produces His life In us: Fruit for the Father,
• Then "fruit that glorifies the Father is all about the forming of Christ-like Character IN us: Christ-like Character is nothing but the "fruit of the Spirit" formed and expressed outwardly from within.

Jesus said that when this process is happening, the Father is honored and glorified and "others will see that we are His disciples." It’s “painfully clear” what the opposite of this “vine-life” is!! The fruit: Selfishness! Others see that as well!

I weep over the "fruit" of my "self-life" and the sin/sins it produces; I rejoice over the fruit of the "Christ-life" In me and the righteousness and Holiness it produces. The grapevine, like the flesh, always tends to grow "downward" where the "dirt" and "sin" is; the Father is all about keeping us "up" and out of the dirt! The grapevine is all about wood and leaves; the Father is all about fruit! Wood, leaves, downward is all self! God's work is to "hide pride from me and to deliver me from my own ways/proclivities, flesh!" “Prone to wander (downward), prone to leave the God I love” (more correct: The God who loves me!)

What if I am truly saved, yet I don't even know of God's intent and purpose for my life? Never discipled! What would then be my proclivity? A life of self-willed thinking and acting.

How then can or could I ever understand the things that happen to me and for me: the world, circumstances, suffering, sin, evil, etc., etc., would I ever know that my selfish life of "Christian service" is only wood and leaves? Would my flesh ever “repent” and admit that it had deceived me and that I am not really producing the fruit God desires? Not gonna happen!

...My enemy, my "self-life" and its deception will certainly define for me exactly who God is and what He's doing...what is happening and why it's happening to me... and the lies will form a set of core beliefs, core values, responses and choices ("conformed to this world") that will be as far from the "fruit" that Jesus speaks of as evil is from the Father!! I'll simply go about my "Christian walk" as I want to...I'll serve the god of my own making...I'll never truly "serve God" but I will certainly "serve God's purposes" just as Joab did...never loved God and serve Him but certainly used God and God's word to serve himself and his agenda. My “carnal self” is a good friend of the “unbeliever Joab!” I see my flesh in Joab!

David: "Thou, oh Lord, art Worthy!" The fruit of the Spirit!

Joab: "Thou, oh Lord, art Useful!" The fruit of the Self!

Jerry
Col 1:18b “...that in all things, Christ might have the supremacy!”