Watch Those Pine Cones!

"By this is My Father glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples" (John 15:8)

I remember so well visiting a specialty store one Christmas season, beloved, and marveling at the magnificent trees, ornaments, and decorations available for sale. While there, I suddenly noticed one gorgeous tree that was not only beautifully decorated, but whose branches were filled with pine cones that made the tree look as if it had just been plucked from the forest and brought into the store for decorating and display.

As I approached the tree, however, I noticed the tiny wires with which each of those pine cones that had caught my attention was attached to the limbs of an obviously artificial tree. No matter how attractive it was to the eye, then, its beauty lay in that which had been artificially created by the hand of man.

When it comes to Christmas trees, beloved, the issue of that which is "artificial" is not so important and even understandable. But when the same condition exists in the life of a Christian, it becomes a different matter altogether. Jesus told His disciples on the last night they were together before the cross that His Father would be glorified if their lives were to "bear" fruit, real fruit, spiritual fruit that would be eternal and life-transforming in their own lives and in the lives of others.

Think of it! People who do not know Jesus Christ personally coming to a saving knowledge of Him through faith in His name, believers transformed through the power of God's Word as they grow in the grace and knowledge of who He is, broken relationships saved and put back together by the power of God's mercy and forgiveness, minds and hearts encouraged to keep on serving the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, physical needs met in the lives of those who are suffering in this world of sin, and the church of Jesus Christ at long last becoming the power-force in this world that God envisioned all along that it become. These are but a few examples of the genuine "fruit" with which the branches of our lives are to be adorned, beloved! This is the kind of living that is meant to glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

How easily, though, we settle for the artificial! How often we wire onto the branches of our lives those artificial "pine cones" of religious ceremonialism - the attended worship service, the bit of currency put into the offering plate, the carried Bible and the spoken liturgy of worship. Yet in those times when we are not "at church," what real fruit grows on the boughs of our daily living? Where are the transformed lives, those precious people to whom the Spirit of God longs to send us to be touched and changed by the power of His love and grace? Where are the souls gladly and joyfully receiving Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord through the instrumentality of our personal living? That will be the real "fruit," beloved! Those will be the branches laden down with the true harvest!

Watch those pine cones, child of God! Don't settle for that which may be artificially attached by our own devices. Refuse to be satisfied with anything less than the divine power of God released in and through your life by the indwelling Holy Spirit. And as that happens, we will each discover for ourselves the difference between that which man is able to imitate and that which only the power of God can produce. Watch those pine cones!

Ron