John 15:8, “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.”

THE EPHRAIM GATE (Nehemiah 8:13-18)

This is the last gate of the twelve gates of Jerusalem in Nehemiah’s time, just as there will be twelve gates in the New Jerusalem.

This is a wonderful gate to end our series as the word Ephraim means ‘double fruit’. God wanted Ephraim to not only be fruitful, but to be doubly fruitful. While the enemy of our souls comes to “rob, kill and destroy”, God has a totally opposite agenda. He delights in fruitfulness and increase.

God wants us to be fruitful and increase in every area of our lives. He delights to see the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives. In fact, John chapter 15 reminds us that He prunes us so that we will bring forth “more fruit.” (Verse 2). But even that is not enough. He woos us to constantly abide in Him so we will bear “much fruit.” (Verses 5 and 8). Let’s read John 15:2 NLT, “He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.”

It is an undeniable fact that pruning is necessary to fruitfulness. A vine that is left to grow wild ends up with limited fruit that is wizened and small. The vine that is meticulously and constantly pruned brings forth abundant fruit. We do not like this part of fruitfulness, do we? We imagine being lovely and fruitful without any cutting or pruning. But it does not happen that way. 

Oft we shrink from the purging and pruning,

Forgetting the Vinekeeper knows

The deeper the cutting and paring,

The richer the cluster that grows.

We see this principle, as always, in the very beginning, in the book of Genesis. In chapter 17 we read how God prepares Abraham for fruitfulness. Before Almighty God (El Shaddai, the God of nurture and fruitfulness) fulfills His promise to give Abraham the promised child, “multiply him exceedingly” and “make him exceeding fruitful” he commands him and all the men of Israel to be circumcised. Circumcision speaks of the cutting off of the flesh. There had to be a cutting off before the fruitfulness. Abraham had to die to all his pride and ambition and surrender to the sovereign will of God.

It is the same with you and me. Before Christ-like fruit can emanate from our lives, we must cut off the flesh. We must die to our self-pitying, self-complacent, self-pleasing, self-satisfying, self-gratifying, self-seeking, self-pampering, self-conceited, self-opinionated, self-serving, self-preoccupied and self-centered lifestyle. God wants us to deal a death blow to the flesh. By the power of the Holy Spirit we are to “put it to death”, “crucify” it, “cut it off” or “gouge it out”. (Matthew 5:29-30; Romans 8:13; Galatians 20:20; 5:24)

Just as in the Old Testament, God revealed Himself as Almighty with the principle of cutting off the flesh before receiving fruitfulness, so He discloses Himself in the same way in the New Testament. We read in 2 Corinthians 6:17-18, “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”

It is interesting that the fruitfulness God speaks about more than any other in the Bible is the fruitfulness of the womb. The word ‘fruitful’ is used 35 times in the Word of God, and two thirds of those references are about the fruit of the womb. God looks for godly offspring. He looks for it with expectation. (Malachi 2:15) It is also true that before we can embrace the fruit of the womb that God wants to give us, there needs to be a circumcising of our selfishness, wanting our own way, and our surrender to the humanistic ideologies of society which are masterminded by the devil, the one who comes to “rob, kill and destroy.”

Love from NANCY CAMPBELL

PRAYER:

“Oh God, I yield myself to you r pruning. It hurts, Lord, but I know it is for my good and for your glory. I want to bring forth fruit in my life for you. Help me to cut off everything that inhibits your fruitfulness in my life.”

AFFIRMATION: