A Prayer for Good Fruit: Sunday Gathering 3.19.23

Father, we come to you with thankful hearts.

We rejoice that we do not have to fear the fire if Jesus has paid for us – if we are His.  We want to live, believing the Truth that His good work in us will bring, and has brought, good fruit – and Your work will be brought all the way through to completion.  Not our fruit but His.  Lord may it be sweet to your taste and pleasing to you – and may Your delight in Your Son shine around us so we can feel that warmth, calling us to grow – calling us to patient, steady, hearty growth.

If we bear any good fruit, it is from your Son’s heart – and we praise Him.  Our gentle, precious, perfect Savior, was the fruit– that hung from a very different kind of tree – for us.  He was plucked and crushed and his blood flowed for us. 

We were all destined for judgment fire, but the power of your Son changed us from the inside out, gave us new hearts, lopped off our diseased and dead parts, bound up our broken branches.

Thank you God for being our Solid Ground – firm through the fiercest drought and storm. Father, give us discernment and love. Lord, some of us are worried that we are bad trees.  We confess we are tempted to despair over what still comes out of our hearts.  Some of us need to be revived from a season of laying dormant.  Some of us judge others with haughtiness – forgetting that we too weren’t even worth our weight in firewood on our own.  Some of us are still technically alive but all withered because we haven’t meditated on your word and have joined in with scoffers and delighted in the counsel of the world. Some of us get confused when trying to keep the main things the main things.

Make us like a tree planted by streams of water. Whose leaves do not wither and who are not blown over by the lightest of winds.

Some of us are in seasons of growth and some of us are welcoming the painful pruning that comes with following You in submission and obedience.  Some of us are celebrating the promise of fruit as we stand surprised at tiny buds popping out from where a dead branch used to hang.

We are astonished by the ways you bring evidence of life after pain and waiting and winter.  Pain and waiting. Droughts and storms.  God, it causes our hearts to weigh heavily for our brothers and sisters in places in our world where persecution and literal drought, storm, violence, and fire are burning them out.  We think of places like Afghanistan and North Korea, each so very different but both extremely volatile to Your people.  God, it seems like the powers in control in each country are effectively wiping out those who could bring Good News to the millions trapped in systems and cultures that use fear and violence to control and maintain power.  We grieve for them. You’re our only hope.

Would you work miracles in the lives of leaders who could use their power to influence and spark change and protection for the feet who bring the Good News?

May our brothers and sisters who are crushed : spread seed.

And may that seed fall on good soil and not be wasted. 

And may those seeds grow into fruit-bearing trees that bring you delight and glory and honor.

Lord make that true of us – for Your delight, glory, and honor.

Amen.