So, Sherry’s been referencing the agony of my recent blogging silence, so I thought I’d finally throw something out there for you all to read. Probably sick of that convicting scripture popping up each time you load the site. (Maybe somebody needed to read it one last time and the Spirit of the Lord was actually the one keeping my fingers off the keys and it wasn’t my laziness after all.)
Things are going pretty well. I fall into frazzling situations now and then and find myself driven back to extended times with the Lord to undo all the world piles on me. But that’s okay because I’m learning of his benefits (Psalm 103); I’m learning that we were designed to operate in reliance upon His presence (Acts 3:19); I’m learning what it means to be pruned to make room for abundant fruit growth (John 15).
I feel I’m still in a pruning / preparation stage because while I am bearing fruit, it isn’t all that I know the Lord wants to bear through me. I was talking to the Lord about this on my drive home from my visit to Pigeon over the weekend. I was trying to figure out how I could bear the fruit I desired to bear for His Kingdom and He reminded me that I just needed to continue to push into and spend time in his presence and that the fruit would come out of me.
That’s what abiding is all about. Spending time with the Lord. But it’s hard to do; our flesh hates it.
I’m still learning “Secrets of the Vine” from reading Wilkinson’s book a while back and recently hearing teaching at church on John 15. Seems we make bearing fruit of the Kingdom a lot more complicated than the Father intends. It doesn’t make carnal sense that spending time with God would actually change situations in our lives or impact our workplace or make paths straight in our future.
But I’m starting to learn that it does.
