Chasing After Fruit
This summer has been so incredible! I had the opportunity to have so many incredible experiences like traveling to the Holy Land, living at the beach for 8 weeks, meeting some of my new best friends, and also getting to spend some always needed time with my family before I head back to Samford for the fall. Being able to walk away from this summer with those gifts is more than enough to call this the best summer ever however the greatest gift of all was the way the Lord used this summer to reveal so much of his heart and love to me.
For those of you who read "living at the beach for 8 weeks" and were confused, intrigued, or wandering how you too could spend 8 weeks at the beach making an income, meeting new people, living next to a coffee shop, and growing in the Lord, let me tell you all about it! This summer the Lord called me to go to Summer Beach Project which is a summer program through a ministry called Campus Outreach. It is an 8 week discipleship training at the beach where you learn a deeper understanding of what it looks like to respond faithfully when Jesus calls his disciples to "follow me"-while also getting to go to the beach every day, meet incredible people from other colleges, make an income while working a job with some of your friends, live 2 seconds away from the cutest coffee shop (if you are ever in Panama City, you must go to the Pour), and make the best memories.
Now I am sure if you are like most people, you read that description and are saying something along the lines of "SIGN ME UP," but if you are like me, you probably will come up with every single reason why Summer Beach Project is not for you... but that is an entirely different lesson I learned about how faithful God is to continually make provisions for his children to walk in His will. Lets just say that when I say God called me there this summer, I went kicking and screaming all the way. Oh how sweet it is that the Lord provides good plans for His children even when we are too set in our own ways to see it.
For me this summer, the Lord led me to Summer Beach Project to reveal a piece of His heart that I was failing to understand and a struggle within myself that I was failing to see.
On the first day of Project, we learned that the book of the Bible we would be studying was Ephesians and the specific verses that we would be trying to memorize were Ephesians 2:1-10 which says,
"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience- 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body[a] and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.[b] 4 But[c] God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved- 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them."
-Ephesians 2:1-10
Something really powerful that was really encouraged this summer was to read through scripture slowly to really unpack what is written in it. Daily, in our quiet times or Time Alone With God (TAWG if you want to know the real Beach Project lingo) we would really study 2-3 verses. This process wrecked me yet was also some of the sweetest moments all at the same time.
I remember the day that I began studying these specific verses in the beginning of chapter two. I was reading and specific words seemed to stick out to me like never before: "dead in your trespasses and sins" (verse 1). I remember I had actually met up with my Room Leader that morning so we could discuss what we had read after we had our alone time and she asked me how my time in the Word had gone because obviously reading about death is a heavy topic.
We talked for a minute and then I looked at her said, "Honestly reading this passage encourages me and gives me such peace." WHAT! Like I said earlier, when we read each day we were only reading a few verses at a time so that day it was only the first few verses of chapter two which are all about how completely dead we are in our natural state. That being said, my response to this passage was not the norm.
But to understand my response, you have to understand where I was coming from when I approached this verse.
For so long growing up in church, I had been chasing the fruit.
What I mean is that I went to church, listened to the sermons, heard awesome speakers, shared devotionals, grew up under godly parents, attended Bible study, led Bible study... I felt like I was doing it all. This verse basically said the opposite.
Now do not get me wrong all of those things are good things and I 1000% agree that a growing Christians needs to be in Christian community and those are all good ways to do that but there was a disconnect in my thinking. This was the struggle within myself that I was failing to see and that the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to.
Towards the end of the larger passage in Ephesians 2 it says in verse 9 that salvation is not achieved by works and I knew that. I also knew that in James 2:17 it also says
So also faith by itself if it does not have works, is dead." -James 2:17
These wires seemed to be crossed in my brain. I knew in my head the truth that my actions did not make me saved and or any better or worse in God's eyes. A question that was posed to us by one of our staff this summer was the following...
"Many of you believe that God loves you, but do you believe that God likes you?"
The truth in all of this is even though I knew that doing the "right Christian things" would not make God love me anymore, I think for a while when I was younger I had started to believe that these things would make God like me more.
The beauty of these verses in Ephesians to someone like me-someone who wants to do their best, who wants to make others proud, who wants to fix every situation themselves-is that nothing that I can do can ever change the fact that at one point I was DEAD and now I am ALIVE.
You see the thing about dead things is that no matter what they do and how much they try to be alive, they are still dead because no dead thing can make themselves not dead. No one is going to reward them for simply looking like they are alive or being a little less dead than they used to be. That dead thing is still dead. Only Jesus can make something that is dead be alive.
In the Church for so long I had heard it repeated that Christians who are pursuing the Lord produce fruit in their life and there is such truth in that. Satan really used that truth and distorted it in my mind. It was in God's timing that the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to what I had been doing. Instead of chasing after the Lord, I was simply chasing after the fruit.
That I can attest does NOT sustain and will NEVER fulfill like chasing after Jesus does and frankly will lead you down some dark paths.
God delights in us and meaning that he DOES like us and that is regardless of what we do. That is simply because we are His children. Just reading those sentences I can almost feel the chains of perfection and approval fall to the ground because, friends, we are made perfect and not only approved of but delighted in by the God of the universe because of our salvation in which we did absolutely nothing to earn.
If you reading this today are a child of God-first off I want to say welcome to the family and I am so excited to praise God in heaven alongside you one day. The second thing I want to say is that you are no longer a slave to anything. Regardless of what that sin or idol is in your life, you are now free from it.
I once heard it said that so often as Christians, our shackles of sin and shame are broken off when we are saved, but yet we bend right back down and pick them back up because we are not used to life without them. I say this to myself as I write this but guys, LEAVE THE SHACKLES ON THE GROUND. How are we supposed to receive blessings from our Father and Creator if our hands are full gripping on the shackles of shame, fear, guilt, anxiety, pride, etc. that we are no longer bound by.
There is such beauty when our eyes are opened to our own failures because it makes so much more room for God's grace and love towards us to abound. As I read those verses that day, I recognized how dead I once was and that makes God's redeeming power and love for us that much bigger and sweeter.
What are you chasing after?
As crucial as it is to produce godly fruit in your life as a Christian, it is so much more important that the fruit is coming from a heart that is postured towards knowing Christ and making him known. When your primary focus is that, the fruit in your life will multiply and grow.