Repentance and bearing good fruit go hand in hand

Repentance and bearing good fruit go hand in hand

S - Matt 3:6-10 (NASB)

6 and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins.

7But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

8"Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance;

9and do not suppose that you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our father'; for I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.

10"The axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.



O - Back to the basics, even John the baptist understood that repentance and forgiveness of sins was a gift of God but that came with the responsibility of being true repentance that bears good fruit. Much like James says "Faith without good works is dead", repentance without transformed lives, and fruit is fake. John is pointing out as even the Pharisees and Sadducees were coming to him to confess their sins and be baptized, that they were more in danger of being cut down if they didn't practice true repentance and change their ways.

A - I believe the application for me is not to look for those people today that are like the pharisees and claim repentance and therefore are in danger of being chopped down. Instead I am to understand the Pharisee that may still live in me, those area's of my life that I may have confessed my sins for , asked for forgiveness, but have bared no fruit in regards to a change in my life away from that sin, into the fruit of the spirit (joy, love, kindness...). For me a critical area is fruit of the tongue - or that I have yet to transform words of my mouth to be words that bring life vice tear down. I still have moments of weakness that at times I feel welling up in me the need to breath fire onto people. A secondary indication is that even though I have grown more behaved and controlled in my tongue, my body language often communicates what my tongue desires to communicate. My take away is this, I must take my weakness to the cross and lay it at the foot of the cross and allow Christ to take it from me that I may be transformed.

P - Dear heavenly Father, thank you for today's lesson, may it be sealed to my heart. I pray Lord that you would take whatever rebellious part of me that feels the need to pour out the opposite of your love and grace onto people through the words and body language I communicate. I confess Lord I have done wrong by you and by others in the way I have spoken, I ask Lord for forgiveness of these past wrongs, healing and transformation for the part of me that this anger comes from, and guidance from your spirit on how to live a life pleasing to you in my words and actions. I pray all this in Jesus name, Amen.