Approved || Week 4

Fruitful

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing… This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. John 15:5,8

You will know them by their fruits… Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. Matt 7:16-17

Jesus didn’t ask us to wear a costume  so we look right, but to crucify our flesh.

How pleased do you think Gods with the
quality of your fruit?

How pleased do you think God is with the
quantity of your fruit?

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:5

Jesus is the vine
           I am the branch.

𝜇𝜖𝜈𝜔

meno: remain, abide, dwell, live in

"Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." John 15:4

Don’t focus on production
; focus on connection.

BE THE BRANCH

Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.       Galatians 5:25

Discussion Questions:

What stood out in Sunday’s message to you?

Why do you think Jesus used something as simple as fruit to describe spiritual life?

Why do you think Jesus repeats the word “remain” so many times in John chapter 15?

If someone at your work, school, or neighborhood described you, what kind of “fruit” do you think they would say they see?

Which practices help you stay connected to Christ the most? As a group, how can we help one another stay connected to the Vine this week?

Thank you for listening to the Relate Community Church podcast! Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. If today’s message spoke to you, share it with a friend or leave us a review to help spread the word. To learn more about Relate Community Church, visit us at www.relatecommunity.com. You are always welcome here, and remember—you are loved

Transcript

Easter Vision And Invitation Strategy

The Fruit Tree Story

What Pleases God And Why Fruit Matters

Scripture: John 15 And Matthew 7

Good Fruit Versus Works Of The Flesh

Excuses And Disguised Bad Fruit

The Branch And The Vine Illustration

Remaining In Him Over Performing For Him

Keeping In Step With The Spirit Demo

Self-Assessment, Prayer, And Commitment

SPEAKER_00 0:31

All right, everybody. You made it. You can relax. It might be raining outside, but we're gonna have a good time inside. With the word of God and celebrating. Let's just see one time. Can the nine o'clock service still worship the Lord? Come on. Good, good, good. I'm just testing you, and it you passed. You passed the test. We serve a good God who's worthy to be praised. And today I'm excited to jump into week number four of a series that I have loved. And it is it is one of my favorite conversations. How can we please God? How can we be approved by God? How can we live a life that God looks at up at us and says, I like that. That's where I want us to be, that's where I want you to be. And uh before we dive into it, which I I um I don't want to take too much time, I just want to say that I am so glad that you're here today. If you're a guest or if you are uh here at home and settle in, because I feel like God is taking us somewhere in this message, in this series. We have uh this week and two more weeks left, and then we'll be at Palm Sunday and into Easter. That's exciting for me. Yeah. Easter is always a season that is exciting because not only do we get to talk about uh a message that is the transformative power of the message of the gospel, uh, but we also get to watch people's lives change right in front of us. There's no time like Easter for someone who has never been in church, someone who has uh maybe they've been away from God. Um we we talk about this every year, that not only is Easter like this super potent time to see someone's life change, but it's also like a very potent time for you to invite someone because they're much more likely to say yes. Because even people who have never been to church, they're like, okay, Easter. I know that's a I'm supposed to go to church on Easter. So we get this one chance to uh to have people in the room, and every year people make decisions. And so I would ask you to help me with that. You're gonna see be seeing over the next uh few weeks after this. We have about a month left, and we'll be on kind of unpacking our strategy on how we're gonna see people uh take that step to become more fully engaged and following Jesus and uh making decisions that lead them to those things. So, with that said, I want to dive into week number four, and uh I want to talk for just a second before I kind of uh before I tell you what this week is about. I I want to just tell you a quick story. So about 10 years ago, Angela and I moved into our house, and when we moved in, our yard was a little bit bigger than uh our previous yard, a lot bigger than our previous yard. And so we had this uh dream, we're gonna have fruit trees. We're gonna have plants, and I've always had plants, I've always been uh green thumb, green thumb. I grow all kinds of stuff outside, but I thought, you know what? It'd be amazing if we just had fruit trees, and we could I could just I just had this thought if I could just walk into my own backyard and pick fruit right off the tree, that would be amazing. So we went and we bought six fruit trees. We brought uh two peach trees, two plum trees, and then um I'm missing one, two apple trees. And I realized after just a couple months that um we should have put a lot more strategy into planting those six trees because if you've ever tried to plant a fruit tree, you know that it's you can it's not just something you go pick up at Walmart and put in the ground and it grows, it doesn't work that way, and it it takes some effort to plant and to root and to establish a fruit tree, and so um it was probably six months in that I started seeing the evidence of this plant is going very badly. And in fact, at the 10-year mark today, I know that we did not do very good because there's only one tree remaining, and it hasn't had fruit for about six years. In fact, the only the year after we planted, we the we had a few fruit, a few peaches, they got about this big and then fell off the tree. So I thought we did a terrible job of producing fruit, and I thought I learned one thing, and that is it's a lot uh easier and a lot cheaper to just go buy fruit. It's just go to the store and buy fruit and put it in the refrigerator or set it up. It's beautiful, it's just you didn't have to do anything but buy it, and it's not very expensive. In fact, I think it's more expensive to try and plant six trees, I know because we did it, than it is to just buy fruit for 10 years. So in the process of that, I also learned this that uh that was not very pretty for us, but it's also not very pretty when a lot of Christians intend to have fruit, but they don't get planted very well, and they don't produce fruit. And can I ask you, like, what's what good is it to be a fruit tree but never produce fruit? Might as well not have a fruit tree. And so at a couple years, Mark, I just gave up on them, but one has survived, it just lives and does not produce fruit. And um, I know it, I know it is a fruit tree, though. Somewhere it's DNA, it is fruit. And so we'll come back to that in just a moment, but I want to just tell you that if you've missed any of the uh the weeks of this series, we are in week number four, but week number one, we kind of learned and established that not only do we want to be a church that pleases God, that is approved by God, that we can have his stamp and his uh his presence and his anointing and all the blessing and favor that comes along with his approval. But in order for that to happen, we have to be uh we can't, as a church, just be going somewhere that requires that we have to become people that are approved of God. We have to be people that please God with our lives. Week number one, we talked about the fear of the Lord and what that how do I live in the fear with the fear of the Lord? And really the difference between that and some other things that you might think might be the fear of the Lord. Number two, Pastor Angela talked to us about uh being full of faith. What does it look like to be people of faith? That's not that's not a simple thing. It's impossible to please God without faith. You you may know that. Uh last week we talked about what unity in the church looks like. I think uh that message last week, probably more than um any other message this year. I had more people tell me after, Pastor Sean, that was that really challenged me. That really hit me right where I am. That's kind of the point of this message is not to hurt your feelings. The point is that we need to do what we're supposed to do, what we're meant to do. We we need to live the lives that we're made for to please God. So we see this in the life of Jesus, where um the sky opens when Jesus is baptized. Jesus comes out of the water. The Bible says that God speaks, that they hear a voice that says, This is my son whom I love. That's amazing, right? God loves us. But he also says right after that, with him I am well pleased. That shows me that there's some people that God loves. They know God loves them. There's been times in my life where I know God loves me, but I also know that he's not probably pleased with the things that I'm doing or the life that I'm living. So I want to I want to live a life where we are loved by God and God is pleased with us. How about you? So I think there are many churches, many Christians that are living a life, and I want us to just get real today and honest with ourselves that there are many people who they are they consider themselves Christians. You may consider yourself a Christian, but you never consider how fruitful you are. What kind of fruit am I producing? Is because here's the deal we know that God looks at our fruit, God is measuring our fruit, He's He's checking. And I think that there are there are many, many, and we all know this. The Bible says you'll know them by their fruit. You'll know them by like God checks our fruit, but also we can look at fruit. That's not permission for us to judge each other and be judgmental, but all of us can see fruit or not. And I think there are a lot of Christian people who are walking around believing that I'm a Christian, I'm fine, I'm going to heaven, and yet the fruit that they are living with is not good fruit. In fact, we all know Christian people who are they're the meanest people we've ever met. They're not walking in love, they're the most impatient people that we, the most critical, judgmental people that we have ever met. It's maybe all done in the name of God. In fact, there have been atrocities on the earth in history in the name of God. Not good fruit. Not only does that send generations of people away from God, but it also I think it causes God to look at us and say, What are they doing in my name? That's not my fruit. That's not I didn't produce that fruit in them. And so I won't ask you now because we're we're just now getting into the message, but I'll ask you later, how's your fruit? How what what what does your fruit look like? And so we'll ask that question at the end of this message. John chapter 15 is where we see Jesus giving this idea that our fruit matters. Watch this. He says, I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will what? You'll go to church all the time? You'll wear Christian t-shirts and uh hi-five people and tell them Jesus loves you. Maybe good things, but he says, No, you'll bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. Apart from me, you can do nothing. This is to my father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. In other words, this will show this will be the proof that you're my disciples because of the fruit that you bear. Otherwise, you can call yourself a Christian and wear a cross necklace and do all of the go to church 52 times a uh 52 Sundays out of the year, and yet you still have bad fruit. All right, Matthew chapter 7, we jump to a different gospel, but the same story, same message, he says, Jesus says, You will know them by their fruits. Even so, and watch this every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. Well, Pastor Sean, I might have bad fruit, but I'm a good tree. That's not what it says. So, what Jesus is saying is that you're like a tree and you're gonna produce fruit, and he's not talking about an actual tree and an actual fruit. He's talking about the fruit of the spirit. He's talking about he's looking for our fruit. We all experience this. You all know what it's like to look at people and to have people look at your fruit, and this is something that we shy away from so much in church because we've all been judged and we don't want we can't be judgmental, Pastor Sean. Wait a second. We actually can't, we actually you will know them by their fruit. I think we've gotten so sensitive about people telling us what to do, and about people pointing out bad things and being judgmental that we don't we can't have accountability. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Would you tell somebody sitting next to you we need accountability? I you notice I didn't tell you to tell them to keep you accountable. That's you figure out who that person is because there's some people who want to keep you accountable, they would love to be your personal judge and jury. I don't know why that is that we we want that position so badly, but we don't want anyone to look at our fruit. We've all had people see, we've looked at people and we can see and feel and taste the fruit. And we've had people just that we're like, man, there's just something about this person. There's just something about this church or about this small group or about this, there's just something about them that I can't explain it. It's amazing. It's like they're so uh I want to be around them, but the opposite's also true. But what do people see in you? Is the fruit that people experience around you and your life is that fruit that leads them to know God? Or is it fruit that's leads them to say, oh no, no, no, no, don't need that kind of fruit in my life. Because some of some of us are like they're like my peach tree where the little shriveled peaches only get about this big and then they fall off. Nobody wants that. Nobody needs that. That's not a that's not what God wants from us. Actually, in Galatians chapter 5, we see the fruit of the Spirit listed. How many of you guys know the fruit of the spirit? They are love, joy, say it with me, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Now we could just talk about how we know them, but we don't have them. Oh, gotcha. We need to be striving for those kinds of fruit to be growing in us. The thing is that as just in the same way in Galatians 5, just as there are fruit of the spirit, there are also fruit or the works of the flesh, and our flesh and our spirit, the Bible says that they are constantly at odds with each other. So in us, there is a there's a uh part of us that wants fruit the fruit of the spirit to grow, and then there's also this desire and this reaching and this appetite for the works of the flesh or the fruit of the flesh. Let's look at what those might look like in your life, and you have to be willing to do a little bit of introspective fruit judging. Here we go. Maybe you have uh the loving fruit. Maybe, maybe you're a little very loving, but are you more loving or are you oftentimes more selfish? What is your focus on? Are you do you find yourself more joyful or more frustrated in life? You walk around, are you that kind of person that's just find yourself grinding your teeth and just you're complaining, and it's because you want better for life, or it's because you're reaching for better. I just have higher standards. Uh-oh. I can always tell. You just we gotta have excellence. In fact, it's gotta be right. Can't believe people just have they they're and we easily point at other people's fruit, but we're not so willing to look at our own. Are you more peaceful or are you more anxious? Do you have you carry around anxiety just in the pit of your stomach where you're just like, if I could just settle this thing, if I could just I don't know what's gonna happen. What if this happened? What if that happens, or are you just peaceful? You know what? God's got this. Which saw which fruit do you more more resonates with you? Because it's hard to see our own fruit. It is hard to see. It's it's tough sometimes to recognize in ourselves, well, yeah, I might have some bad fruit. Are you more patient or are you more impatient? Are you more kind? Or are you more uncaring? Like, I couldn't be bothered. Usually you have a good bad a good attitude or a bad attitude? Are you more good or are you generally? What about faithful? Are you faithful? Is your word your bond? Your word is good. If you say it, then everybody knows that hey, he said it, it's gonna be done. Or are you more kind of the a disloyal person? You like you just l enjoy gossip? Nobody wants to admit that, but there's part of us that just I just like it whenever you know, pe some of you love to walk into a conversation or into a room or into a a circle of people and just you know, drop a bomb and watch everybody argue over it. We all have parts of us, right? Are you more gentle? Are you that person that's more harsh? What about self-controlled? You tend to be more self-controlled, more disciplined, or more indulgent? You know, I just, you know, I like what I like. I'm trying to make it as easily attainable to be able to see where are you, where am I? Because if I'm honest with myself, if I'm honest, I know that I I do both. I've kind of fit into both categories at different times. I know that I'm generally I will let people go in front of me. I want to hold the door. Let me be uh as patient as it takes. In fact, I defend often. I want to defend the underdog, but whenever I get into my truck and I'm driving, I'm like, why are you driving so slow? There's I know that I sometimes I'm one way and sometimes I'm the other. Why is that? I can tell you this that usually whenever I fall into the fruit of the when I start exhibiting and producing fruit of the flesh, I usually have a reason. I usually have a uh an excuse, or I'll say, well, I I have to be somewhere. I'm in a hurry and I'm less patient than normal than I would like to be because I'm on a schedule. I have to take care of people, I have to meet, I have an appointment, I can't be late, I have to be on time. And so I have it, I have reasons, or you call those reasons excuses, justifications as to why my bad fruit is okay just at this moment. Usually when we have bad fruit, it's ex it's we have excuses. But here's the thing if if I'm a Jesus follower, if you're Jesus follower, there's no good excuse for bad fruit. I'll say that again. There's no good excuse for bad fruit. And yet we're good at making excuses. I think, I think we're very good at making excuses. In Luke chapter 7, in fact, we we we just read John chapter 15, where I'm the vine and you are the branches. But if you go back a couple of chapters in uh chapter 10, Jesus is talking about um wolves, he's talking about uh like the idea of wolves in sheep's clothing, people who are uh they're not only doing the wrong thing, but they're leading in the wrong way. And I don't think that Christians wake up every day or any, I don't think anyone in this room wakes up thinking, you know what, I'm gonna have bad fruit. We kind of thought we began this conversation last week that I don't think there's any, I don't think most Christians are scheming thinking, okay, how can we get some bad fruit going? How can we just steer the whole church in the wrong direction and we can just get everybody doing the wrong? I don't think that's happening. What I think is happening is that we are just very good at making excuses for our bad fruit. And so when it comes to my bad fruit, I if if I'm doing something and excusing it, then it's I'm leading there because I'm not willing to address the bad fruit in my life, and so we end up we end up trying to make our bad fruit look good. Not just justify it, but make it look good like it's okay. You know, a little bit's not not too bad of a thing, so we act spiritual, or we try to make the thing that we're doing, even if it's the impatient thing, we have to do this. We we're grumpy with people, we're ugly, and we're mean with people, and we make it spiritual. Y'all hear what I'm saying? You've no we've all have known those people, we may be those people. Where we'll shove our mean, judgmental, bad attitude in your face and tell tell you it's your fault because you're not living as spiritual as I am. And then we make this bad fruit, it's almost like we disguise our bad fruit so that no one thinks about us as having bad fruit. And we say things that are very uh you, I'm sure you've heard this word Christian ease. We say Christian things so that That we seem more spiritual, more godly, and yet we're just being ugly. So we'll say something very ugly to someone, and then we'll walk away and say, you know what? God is good all the time, all the time, because we know what to say, when to say it. I pray the Lord puts a hedge of protection around you. We got all the we know all the things, and they're kind of weird. And we think the more inside language we have, listen, inside language and t-shirts to say Jesus loves you is not good fruit. It's just disguise. It's like decoration. I love the relate t-shirts that we have, but I promise you that doesn't make that that doesn't make God approve of you anymore because you're wearing a relate t-shirt. Brian has a relate hat on right now. Thank you, Brian. That's awesome. We all love the merch. But God doesn't look down and say, Brian, that is the coolest hat I've ever seen. You're doing awesome. I will say that. What happens is we get caught in like a performance-based Christianity where if I know the right things to say and I wear the right things and I show up at the right places, it doesn't matter what my fruit looks like. And so we disguise bad fruit as good fruit. And I'll show you, I'll give you an example of what that looks like. We take control issues and we call them holiness. We take things like selfishness and we disguise it as self-care. Well, I you know, I don't need, I'm gonna take maybe a six-month or a year-long break from serving because I need some time, you know. I need to get healthy and I need to get like there there is something about taking a rest. God said take a rest every seven days, but he also said we should live our lives in serving people. And so when we disqualify ourselves from good fruit and just justify and disguise our bad fruit, how else do we do that? We disguise fear as discernment. Well, I'm just uh I'm just concerned. And then we carry around fear and anxiety. We could we we disguise criticism as discernment, we disguise our comfort as contentment. You know, I'm just really content right now. Sometimes God calls us like Abraham. I want you to leave where you are, I want you to step into something that you don't understand, and it might make you a little bit uncomfortable, but you're gonna grow. We disguise our gossip as prayer requests. You all know this. We get to discussing in our small groups, and we're just you could talk for an hour about someone else's problem. And you're not praying. Sometimes on social media, a lot of times I see self-promotion disguised as promoting Jesus. We don't have a lot of uh influencers in the room, so I feel like I can say this comfortably with everyone in the room that just because you're blasting on social media all of your stuff, just because you you want if the bottom line is that I'm I need followers and influencers and cliques, that's called self-promotion. We disguise bitterness as righteous anger. Well, I'm just upset. I can't believe they would do that. No, you're just bitter. You're not defending the faith. We get into a habit of we're just grinding our teeth because everybody irritates us and everybody makes us mad. Disguise a lack of self-control as righteous anger. Let's try some some of the fruit of the spirit. Is this making sense to anybody that we we have a lot of times we just ignore the fruit altogether? Ah, well, God'll be God will be our judge. No, no, hold on. The fruit matters. So Jesus didn't ask us to wear a costume so we could look right, he asked us to crucify our flesh, he asked us to live a life that is broken. He asked us to die to ourselves and allow the fruit of the spirit to grow in our lives. How do we do that? I know this is a tough message because it requires us to look at our own discomfort. And it's easy to look at other people. And I I'm not gonna spend too much time here because I hammered you last week with this idea that it's easy to look at this and say, Well, I know who you're talking about, Pastor Sean. And we're gonna pray for them. No, let's pray for us. Let's get ourselves into a place where we can say, God, please, we wanna please you. We want the fruit, I want the fruit in my life every day, not just on Sunday. I want the fruit in my life on Monday and Tuesday for God to say, I like this, I approve of this. So here's a question, and I'll ask you. You can test yourself, you don't have to answer out loud. Number one, how pleased do you think God is with the quality of your fruit? The quality of your fruit. Do you have tiny little uh shriveled peaches? Or do you have something where God is saying, I like this is good size? Looks good, good color. I like the fruit. I can see that you've been working on it. What does the quality of your fruit look like? What do people around you see? Do the people at your job look at you and say, hey, there's just something about this person. Do the people when you young people, when you go to school, do the people around you know that you're a believer? Not because of the shirt you wore, but because there's just something about this one. There's just something about this person. The people that you work with, do you have to tell them? Or do they just know this one, this person, Anna? She's different than everybody else. Because I can tell you, for a lot of people, Christians, just another label we put on ourselves, and there's zero difference between our fruit and the world. That's not the fruit that God wants us. Next question: how pleased do you think God is with the quality of your fruit? The quantity of your fruit? Did you produce one back in 1977 and you just keep looking back at that one? You know, I had a great harvest back in 1980. Never had another one like it, but it was so good. It was so good. I remember those days. We were really on fire for God. The church was doing so good. The quantity of your fruit matters. You gotta keep having fruit. If we're not being fruitful, then we're being barren and unfruitful. And there's a difference between well, I haven't had any bad fruit, but you haven't had any good fruit either. Now you're fruitless. So probably this point in the message is where you're thinking, okay, I'll do better, I need to do better, I need to work, I'll work harder. Uh uh, I can I can do this. I'll I will put more effort in. Hold on. Before we get to that, I want to I want to give you, I think, a very powerful answer to why we're not producing fruit or the right fruit and how we do it right. But I want to read this verse again in John chapter 15. I am the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. What's the answer to bearing much fruit? Remaining. Apart from me, you can do nothing. So there may be, like I said, all of us we feel that need to like, yeah, we need more fruit. Let's try harder, let's do better. That's not the answer. Because think about this it's very difficult to just try harder to produce fruit. The answer is this that everybody say this, that Jesus is the vine, and I am the branch. One more time. Jesus is the vine, and I am the branch. What is a branch's job? A branch's job is to be connected to the vine. A branch's job is not to just, oh, I need to produce more fruit. Some of you are straining and you're frustrated. When the vine is connected, this morning I went out and I we have a lowquat tree in our yard. It produces a lot of fruit when it produces fruit. And I broke off this branch, and I want to ask you a question. How much fruit can this branch bear? Zero, zero fruit. But this fruit, if it could, I mean, this this branch, if it could think, like you might be sitting in the room today thinking, I've got to bear more fruit. I really need to work harder to bear more fruit. If I could just get one out, then I know I could probably get two. But we all know that this branch cannot, will not, in fact, it's dead. It's dying already. It looks good. It's got good good branches. In fact, this morning uh in the side room over here, when I got to the building, I I looked at it, I thought, oh, there's some bad, there's some bad leaves on. I'm gonna I picked off three or four leaves because they were they were shriveled. I thought, I want it to look as good as possible. Some of you might have walked in the room today, you might have got ready for church today, and you thought, I gotta pick off a couple of bad branches, a couple of bad leaves, because I need to look right when I go to church today. But you didn't know how you don't have any fruit, you can't produce fruit. It's impossible for you for you to produce fruit because you're disconnected. I wish I could have the the the tree here, because the only way that this branch produces fruit is that it gets reconnected, and it can be reconnected, it can be grafted back in. But the best thing is that it never gets disconnected. And then it produces fruit. In just a couple of months, I would come along and there'd be fruit all over this. There's a difference between oh I think what happens is we think, well, I I have a relationship with God. Or the truth is this branch has a relationship with the tree. It's related. And there's a difference between being having a relationship with something and being connected to something. I have a relationship with Steve, but I don't want to be connected to Steve. I don't want to remain in you, Steve. I do want to have a relationship with you. There is a difference, and we can say I have a relationship with God, but you're not connected to God. You're not remaining in God. What does it look like to remain so that you can bear fruit? It looks like, imagine this, if do we have anyone who's pregnant in the room? Probably. There are a few pregnant people in the church, but when there's a baby and a mother, if you were to ask a baby, if a baby could answer you, do you have a relationship with your mom? What would the baby say? Uh duh. If a baby could talk, duh. I have a relationship, but it's much more than a relationship. I am inside my mother. I depend on my mother. When mom grows, I grow. When mom eats, I eat. When mom drinks, I drink. There's a difference between having a relationship and remaining inside and being dependent on God. The word remain in John chapter 15 is the uh the Greek word minnow. It means to remain, abide, dwell, to live in. There's a big difference between doing that and what a lot of Christians consider themselves to do. Well, I go to church, I have a relationship with God, and it's between me and him. No, that's different than being in God, remaining connected to him. In fact, in the in in John chapter 15, he says 15 times. He says, no, not he says 11 times, he repeats the word remain. And I'll read you verse 4: Remain in me as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself, it must what remain. I'm saying this for a reason. In the vine, neither can bear fruit unless you remain in me. You have to stay connected. Not live for him, live in him. Because when we live for someone, that's where we're striving and we're gritting our teeth. I gotta produce more fruit. I gotta do this for him. I have to live for him. I have to go to church for God. I have to go to a small group for God. I have to join a team for God. Wait a second. If I'll just remain in him, staying connected, staying remaining right in God, not for God. You have to stop focusing on production and start focusing on connection. It's not production and what you can do for God and what you can do. It's whether or not you are connected. In him, you will bear fruit. If you are in him, would you say in him? I want you to get this before you go. If I if I can remain in him, then fruit just grows. Fruit's not something that I can try to do, fruit's not an effort of the branch. Fruit comes as a byproduct of who you are and where you are. It's less what you're doing and more where you're doing it. Because remaining is a matter of location. So I don't need to learn to be more patient. I don't need to learn to be more loving. I just need to remain in him and I will be more loving, and I will be more patient, and I will be more faithful, and I will be more kind. Because it's a byproduct of the DNA that God put that his spirit is in me, and I'm remaining in him. I hope this is making sense to you today. So your assignment in pleasing God is to be the branch. Everybody say, be the branch, be the branch, and don't be the branch that's broken off and just floating around disconnected. How do we stay connected as a branch? Maybe it's worship, reading your Bible, obeying God's word, doing life together as the body of Christ. Those are things that He calls us to do. So when we say things like, hey, tonight is join the team, that's often we think I've had people approach me and say that they think, is that how I uh get on the roster to be in the nursery? No. If you choose to do that, you can, but you don't have to do that. The point is that we're doing life together, that we're lit that we're remaining together. This is our last verse in Galatians 5. When we see the fruit of the Spirit, I love this. He lists the fruit of the Spirit. He says, Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. JJ, come help me for a second. Let us keep step with the Spirit. How do we keep step with the Spirit? JJ, stand right here. I want you to watch me, and then I want you to do exactly what I do. You got it? I didn't do this. Alright, I didn't do this. In step. Alright? There you go. Now you're getting it. So if I move this way, if I stop, if I'm in step with the spirit, then I'm watching and I'm in tune. And every time he moves, I move. Because I'm connected. And if I feel him kneel down, if he leads me, then I move. And I might think it's silly, well, I don't need to go to that class. I don't need to connect to those people. I don't need to do that. There's something about being in step with the spirit. Y'all give him a hand. He got it. You notice there was a little bit of a learning curve there. We don't get it right the first time, maybe. It's okay. But we're watching and we're looking and we're we're we're keeping our eyes focused so that we can stay in step. So if he says, take this step. No, no, don't look. Stop, take the next step. How can you be in a place where you are in lockstep with the Holy Spirit and his spirit is producing fruit in you, not because you're trying harder, but because you're watching and focused and connected. So last question, then we'll pray. What is your fruit? What does the quality of your fruit look like? And what is the quantity of your fruit look like? Because I think for most of us, the answer is that we need to be more connected. We need to remain in him. I I can tell you that I miss this a lot. There are times when I have to recalibrate, get reconnected, and remain back and get myself back because I've drifted. With my family, I'm probably more comfortable to have bad fruit. You know what? I just get grumpy sometimes. I have a bad attitude. And Angela will have to say, You gonna be okay? Do we need to have do we need to pray? Honestly, what she does more often than anything is she says, you know what? Can I serve what how can I help you? And that in itself makes me realize I need to take a breath and get back to a place where I'm remaining in him and trusting the Spirit of God. We don't need to do better, we need to draw closer. So today we're gonna pray. And I just I I hope that today's message in seeking God's approval. I hope that you are as inspired and challenged as I am that we need to remain in heaven, stay connected. Would you stand up on your feet? And I want to pray for you, and then we're gonna worship for a moment and come back and dismiss. So, right now, let's just commit ourselves in in our hearts. Let's dedicate ourselves to being more connected and remaining in his presence. God, we love you. We want our lives to have your mark of approval. We want you to be pleased with the life that we live, with the choices we make, with the places that we go and God, to be reflective with your experience every day, not just a lot of the Never fit a bit never fit of all that you work Just never give a time that you didn't see to God I worship you for we can remain in him we have to be connected we have to have our lives placed in him we have to choose to follow him and today if you never made that decision maybe you have made that decision and you feel like okay I'm concentrated or I'm going to a place where I know that my life is not producing the kind of fruit. The Bible says that we are crafted into the divine, that he takes us as sinners, he loves us, he cares for us, and he adopts us into his family, but we still have to be the one that submits and repents and says, Okay, God, I need you. I submit my life to you. And we want I want us to do that today and say the prayer together where we submit our lives to him. So would you just bow your head right where you are and close your eyes and you can repeat this prayer after me and let's put our lives in his hands. Dear Heavenly Father, today I put my life in your hands. I don't want to live for myself, I don't want to have bad fruit. So God, give me your life. Breathe into me your spirit. Forgive me of my sin. And from this day forward, I choose to follow you in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, let's put our hands together for those who said that prayer, made that decision. I love we are making decisions every day to get closer to Him. I love you guys, and I will see you next week. God bless you. Have an awesome day.