By their fruits you will know them.
Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?
Just so, every good tree bears good fruit,
and a rotten tree bears bad fruit.
This is a great discernment strategy. It helps us see through so many different kinds of deception. When we have a question about what an individual is saying we can look at what he or she is doing. We can watch for the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Are there love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control present? A person without such fruits can still say true things. But we ought to be watchful in such cases for unwarranted leaps from those things to others. This applies to religious and civil leaders and even other ordinary people. All of them occasionally ask us to trust them. But that trust must be earned by their fruit.
It is also a great discernment strategy to test the things we're doing in our own lives. If we accept a new idea does it help us to bear fruit? If we respond to what we believe to be God's call on us do we see fruit as a result? This doesn't necessarily mean successful endeavors. Rather it means that we see inner growth and transformation by the grace of God.
Abram trusts God and bears good fruit. He is uncertain at first but God reveals his holiness to Abram in the smoking pot and the flaming torch that pass between the pieces of the sacrifice. What fruit does Abram's trust bear? We see his success. We know that his name is changed and he is made a great nation. But this is really a consequence of the fruit more than the fruit itself. The fruit itself is the depth of his covenant relationship with God. His closeness to God is his most profound fruit.
It was on that occasion that the LORD made a covenant with Abram,
saying: "To your descendants I give this land,
from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River the Euphrates."
Just so with us. Is what we're doing and believing drawing us closer to God or is it taking us further away? The love, joy, and peace we experience in our lives are a good litmus test for this proximity. We can experience them even when we are called to make difficult journeys along unknown roads if we are truly called to those journeys by God.
He remembers forever his covenant
which he made binding for a thousand generations—
Which he entered into with Abraham
and by his oath to Isaac.
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