Store up for yourselves...and others too!

Lately I've seen several friends and/or acquaintances showing off their jars of jelly, spaghetti sauce, and other goodies that they are planning to use this winter.  Makes my mouth water as I look upon their delectables and makes me wish I was that productive.  Alas:  I am not designed this way!

According to John 15:16, "You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in My name the Father will give you."  While my friends are bearing their fruits and vegetables, I am as well.  Each time I write a blog, each time I sing a song of praise, and each time that I do something in the name of Jesus, I too am storing up treasures.  Who knows when someone will come upon one of the things I've written and be touched and draw closer to God as a result of it?  

Who knows when that card, that visit, that helpful deed will be remembered by the soul that YOU affected?  Those canvases you paint and those photographs you take?  All beauties to glorify our great God.  Those steps you fixed, those teeth you cleaned?  All is to be done to the glory of God.  

Don't feel bad if you can't can.  Don't feel envious of others' abilities to sew, to paint, to sing, to be constructive.  You have been chosen!  Doesn't that make you curious to know what God has in store for you?  Go the next step with me.  You have been chosen to go.  Go where?  Wherever He leads you!  And then, lastly, you are to bear fruit.  Bear means to carry, to produce.  If you can't take them a jar of homemade salsa, by golly, take them a jar of Pace Picante Sauce.  If you never learned how to make those berries into jam, go ask someone to teach you!  I daresay you will learn more than you dreamed.

In conclusion, we all have been chosen to go and to bear fruit.  Mine may look different than yours and yours may be tastier than mine but the point is:  go.  Bear.  Your fruit will last.  God promised this!  Well:  what are you doing just sitting there?  GO!!

Let's pray!

Dear Lord, thank You so much for the little lessons learned by those around me--especially those in cyber space that I don't get to encounter daily.  Bless them as they make their jars of sustenance--whether that be as actual food that will feed their friends and families--or works of art that will last for countless generations or words about You that will be read, recited, sung, and reiterated to our children, friends, and Facebook friends.

Help us all, I ask, to bear fruit that when it's brought to You will be blessed, multiplied, and savored.  Thank You for the gifts, Lord.  May we all use what You have given us to further the gospel of Jesus Christ.  It's in His name that I pray.  Amen.