Week 2 – Our hearts are the soil in which our faith resides. Take good care of your soil. Good news – Jesus not only feeds our faith like fertiliser, but cleanses pathogens from the soil
Week 3 – The plant itself. Through our faith we are grafted into the vine of God’s life-giving love. Jesus calls us to abide in him, to keep connected to the life-giving sap of God’s love for us through the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Week 4 – today fruitfulness. Not much of a gardener, but Fruitfulness is all about nurture.
Peach story
I say this at the risk of incurring gardening advice after the service, but why have our peaches stopped growing?
Water?
Nutrients?
Sunlight?
Energy going elsewhere?
Too much greenery?
Too many fruit?
Time?
So what do we need for our faith to be fruitful? Some things are obvious:
Worship – opening our hearts and minds to the presence of God in our lives
Scripture – Connecting us into God’s story of hope for creation. A mirror to ourselves
Prayer – patient ferment
Some things not so obvious, but just as important
Participation – This is where our analogy of faith as a plant breaks down somewhat. We are not only called to be God’s garden, we are called to be God’s gardeners. Important point. If we spend all of our time focusing on our own thriving, then we become self-centred. Root bound. Tangled up in ourselves.
Participation means engaging not only with God, but with one another. Bev – you had a good point about this the other day
God, each other, our community that we’ve been planted amongst.
Thinning – are we trying to bear too much fruit all at once? Is our energy divided against itself?
2017 has been a year of verdant growth in our church, but it’s a new kind of plant that’s growing in our midst. The nutrients, supports and care needed will be different too. We need to discover what’s needed here. Watch, listen, learn, grow.
It’s all too easy to slip back into what we’ve always known, do things the way they’ve always been done. But are those things still fruitful?
Berry story
What has become woody and less productive in our lives? What is in need of pruning?
Sunflower story
If our faith is to be truly fruitful, then we need to be connected into the life-giving sap, and we need to turn our faces towards the Son.
Experiences God’s life flowing in us and around us.
Let go of our own rigid sense of direction, and open ourselves to God’s life-giving Spirit.
This one is perhaps the hardest of all.
We need to pay attention to what God is growing in us, growing in our midst.
“Whoever would foster love covers over an offense, but whoever repeats the matter separates close friends.” — Proverbs 17:9. Powered by BibleGateway.com.
