The Fruit of an Abundant Life with God

The life of Christ, making disciples, and doing good work.

For the last week or so I’ve been far less active on Notes. By “far less active” I mean, “not active.”

In a time of prayer, God told me to take a break from the “Notes” side of Substack for 40 days. Let me tell you, this is tough.

So, if you’re new here and you’re interested in hearing about how addicted I am to Social Media, go ahead subscribe!

Thanks for reading along today!

Photo by Anastasia Zhenina on Unsplash.

What if an abundant life is simply experiencing the maximum amount of God’s life at all times?

And abundant life fruitfulness the maximum amount of God’s life flowing through us to work in the world?

Those are the questions I’ve been mulling over in my head lately. I mean, think about it, if all life flows from God, then wouldn’t having an abundant life mean we need the most amount of God possible?

What’s crazy about this concept is that when we come to faith in Christ, we get God. The Holy Spirit comes to live inside us and we forever have all of God, all the time.

Unfortunately, we bring so much baggage, sin, and lies we believe to the table we don’t experience God in the full until Heaven. Sanctification is a process of unlearning and undoing the sin and lies in our life for the sake of believing God and living like Him more fully.

I’ve never really had a vision for an abundant life with God. If you would have asked me what an abundant life looked like 5-10 years ago I would have struggled to give you an answer before I mumbled out something like: I don’t know… a life without problems and enough money to live comfortably, go on vacations, and eat Chuy’s for every meal?

Even Biggie Smalls knew that couldn’t be true about the abundant life.

More or less, I just didn’t have a vision for what type of life an abundant life could be beyond simply having the ability to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, without having to worry about the typical stressors in life.

If you’ve lived more than a few minutes, you know that’s not realistic and simply could not be what Jesus was referring to in his vision-casting statement for our lives.

This was my reality, though, so when I would make a focused effort at cultivating the abundant life I would end up frustrated because I was carrying all sorts of false ideas about what that life should look like. I didn’t have a vision for it but I still carried incorrect and often unexpressed expectations.

The first step for me to start living a fruitful life according to God’s standards was to unlearn what I assumed that life should look like. That process is still happening for me today. I find myself unlearning my way of life daily for the sake of learning the Jesus Way.

But I had to start somewhere, which meant I needed a total upheaval of one previously held assumptions about God’s abundant life.

• No, an abundant life doesn’t mean an easy life.

• No, an abundant life doesn’t mean a life of comfort.

• No, an abundant life doesn’t mean 4 vacations a year.

• No, an abundant life doesn’t mean unlimited Chuy’s.

• No, an abundant life doesn’t mean I’ll never be scared to share the gospel again.

• No, an abundant life doesn’t mean I’ll be successful at everything I do.

• No, an abundant life doesn’t mean I’m never going to experience anxiety again.

• No, abundant life doesn’t mean I’ll never sin and therefore be corrected or disciplined by Jesus again.

• And finally, and most importantly, an abundant life doesn’t mean following Jesus will be easy.

I didn’t realize how many false assumptions I had about life with God. The first work God had to do in me was uproot everything, and I literally mean everything, I didn’t realize I was holding onto.

I don’t want to minimize this process with my jokes about Chuy’s. This was hard. It is, and has been, the most difficult work of my life. Unlearning and relearning almost everything about life, godliness, and flourishing is hard. But it’s the only way to truly follow Jesus. God says this,

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

—Isaiah 55:8-9 ESV

Which means, if we’re going to get on His page about anything, we’re going to be the ones needing to change, not Him.

So what about fruitfulness?

So what does a fruitful life look like according to the abundant life Jesus came to give us? In this post I’m going to lay out three different categories that will serve as a roadmap for us. I’m certain there is more that could be said, but my goal is to keep these categories broad enough to include more, but narrow enough to be practical.

1. Fruit of the spirit as an overflow of Christ’s life in us

2. Fruit of making disciples that are like Christ

3. Fruit of doing good work

Before we take a brief look at each of these individually, let’s consider this overarching principle: If we want to live a fruitful life we need to maximize our experience of Christ in us and His power flowing through us. In short, we need more of Christ, and less of us, if we want a fruitful life.

The Fruit of Christ Living Through Us

The easiest marker for “fruitfulness” in the New Testament is found in Galatians 5.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

‭‭—Galatians‬ ‭5‬:‭22‬-‭23‬ ‭ESV‬‬

The tendency when we read a list like this is to figure out ways to “muscle up” and cause these kind of characteristics to be ours. We find ourselves working really hard to be patient with our kids, to love our coworkers, and be gentle with our spouse but the effort it takes to do one of those just once in our own power is debilitating. How will we ever build a lifestyle of displaying the fruit of the spirit? Our problem is not our intentions. We have good intentions. Our problem is that we’re trying to do something supernatural and unlimited with our natural and limited strength. A fruitful life is a supernatural thing, so we need to go to the supernatural for it to be our reality.

Notice the verse says, “the fruit of the Spirit is…”

We must notice the implication here - where the Spirit is, there will be fruit. It’s not like there are levels to Christianity and we don’t see fruitfulness in our lives until we reach a specific level. No, as soon as we receive the Spirit by faith in Christ, the fruit is present. This is why we often see a quick and radical difference in people who become Christian’s. The Spirit moves in and immediately begins displaying fruit in and through a person.

So where’s the disconnect then? If the Spirit automatically produces fruit and the Spirit lives in us, why do we find ourselves trying to muscle up each time we have to be patient on the highway?

The problem is likely one of two things.

1. We aren’t actually abiding in Christ

2. We have unconfessed sin that’s hindering us

Abiding in Christ

Christ says it simply. If we abide in Him, we will produce fruit. The idea here is there is we have the responsibility to remain in Christ's presence and when we do so, there will be fruitfulness. Why? Think of it like a magnet. A magnet only works when it is near something magnetic. We abide in Christ — we remain near to Him —, the Spirit of Christ at work in us works in harmony with the Spirit of Christ at work in the world around us. This reality hinges on us continually turning our eyes to Jesus to ensure we remain with Him.

This can get all out of wack when we stop turning our eyes to Jesus. Have you ever seen what happens when a defender takes their eye off Steph Curry in a basketball game? He’s the fastest guy on the court — if you blink for too long, he’s gone.

While Jesus isn’t actively trying to get away from us, He is on the move. He’s at work, He’s doing things, He’s moving in power. When we turn our eyes away from Jesus, we’ll miss Him. We will stop abiding and therefore stop supernaturally producing fruit. So what do we do? We begin trying to produce fruit on our own.

It’s hard work to abide, but it’s the work we’re designed to do. We’re already working hard to try to produce fruit on our own, and that’s not working, so why don’t we change our goal and work hard to abide in Christ's presence? After all, when we’re working hard to abide in Christ, the energy and strength it takes is going to flow from the Holy Spirit freely. God will continuously give us more and more energy to work hard to abide in His presence. We will not be given that same energy to work hard to produce fruit on our own. If anything, the Spirit will be grieved and we’ll feel less energy. God will not give us more power to live more anti-Christ. It is anti-Christ to try to live life without Christ’s help. God will give us the power and energy through the Holy Spirit to live the way He designed us to live, and He designed us to abide in Christ.

Unconfessed & Unrepentant Sin

The second hindrance we often have to producing fruit is living with unconfessed and unrepentant sin.

Imagine a fruit tree that is rotten inside the trunk. How will that go for the fruit? You may see a piece of two hanging from the branches that look good but overall, you’ll get some pretty rotten fruit. It’s the same way with us when we’re holding onto sin. Anything produced out of us while we’re living in sin will either actually be rotten and people will notice or we’ll be able to hide the rottenness to people but God will not be pleased by it. Either way, a person with unrepentant sin will not be able to produce the type of fruit Jesus was talking about.

For clarification, we all have sin — I’m talking about the person who is aware of their sin because God has convicted them, yet they’ve chosen to do nothing about it.

Remember this overarching principle: If we want to live a fruitful life we need to maximize our experience of Christ in us and His power flowing through us. In short, we need more of Christ, and less of us, if we want a fruitful life.

By confessing our sin, acknowledging our weaknesses, and holding tight to Jesus we are declaring moment by moment, “I need less of me, and more of Christ.” Which maximizes our ability to be a channel by which Christ’s life flows through us and, therefore, allows us to produce fruit consistent with Christ’s life. We are dead, Christ is alive.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control will begin to dominate our lives supernaturally because it’s Christ living through us — not us trying to reach those standards in our own strength.

The Fruit of Making Disciples

When God created Adam and Eve He gave them a few simple commands.

1. Take care of the land

2. Be fruitful and multiply

3. Don’t eat from that tree

Unfortunately, they didn’t take the third of those three commands seriously.

But they succeeded in the second one. They filled the earth. Now consider this: God wanted Adam and Eve to fill the earth with people like them — people in harmonious relationship with God, obeying Him, listening to Him, walking with Him. Their job was to fill the earth with people who worshipped God.

However, because of the decision to eat from the tree in disobedience to God, the people they made were like them, but in all the wrong ways. They filled the earth with people who did not worship God.

When Jesus comes along, He redeems the command.

He brings His disciples to a mountain and Galilee and says, “Go, make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:18-20)

What’s He doing? He’s telling His disciples to be fruitful and multiply. It’s the same command Adam and Eve received but this one was to be carried out in the power of the Holy Spirit, not necessarily only through marriage and having children.

Their command was to make people like them by:

1. Sharing the gospel & baptizing them

2. Inviting them into the kingdom

3. Teaching them everything they knew about following Jesus.

God again, trying to fill the earth with people who worship Him. People living in harmonious relationship with Him, listening to Him, obeying Him. This time though, He is dwelling in us, not just around us. Teaching us to be like Him from the core of our being.

We live a fruitful life when, by the power of the Holy Spirit inside of us, we make disciples who learn to love and follow Jesus.

The Fruit of Doing Good Work

To understand this we again need to go back to the Garden. Alongside the command for Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply was the command to take care of the earth and everything in it. Their job was to cultivate God’s creation and help the land be fruitful and multiply. Their work expectations were to steward their skills, resources, and energy for the flourishing of God’s creation.

Fast forward to today, we have more jobs and more sectors available than Adam and Eve. However, the core vision for work remains the same. Steward our skills, resources, and energy for the flourishing of God’s creation.

This is the command regardless of how “meaningful” our vocation is, or isn’t. Whether we’re in vocational ministry or working at Walmart. Whether we’re navigating the political scene in a very public role or we’re working behind the scenes at a local non-profit. All work is an opportunity to steward skills, resources, and energy for the flourishing of God’s creation.

Jesus worked a normal job as a carpenter. His work, just like everyone else in that day, was essential for the flourishing of His local community.

So how do we bear fruit through our work? By doing two things:

1. Healthily maximizing our skills, resources, and energy to be able to work more effectively for the flourishing of God’s creation.

2. Showing up every day.

Imagine a school where every teacher is terrible yet refuses to grow in their skills. What type of student and person will that school produce?

Again, imagine an organization where the employees don’t show up more than 50% of the time — whether physically or emotionally. Again, what type of work would that organization produce?

Now imagine that in every sector of work — business and trade, non-profit and for-profit, middle-of-the-day work and middle-of-the-night work.

God uses all redeemable work for the flourishing of His creation. Our job is to be stewards of the skills, resources, and energy He’s given us to work alongside Him for flourishing. Sometimes stewardship means simply showing up every day and sometimes it means devoting ourselves to seasons of growth that produce more skills, better resources, and greater energy to do the work God has given us.

As we wrap up this post I’ll leave you with one thing. Fruitfulness isn’t an option for the Christian. It’s a command. A quick search shows there are 241 uses of the word “fruitful” in the Bible and 58 in the New Testament alone.

What would you add to this list?

See you next week.

—Brandon