THE FATHER GLORIFIED
Herein is My Father Glorified, that Ye Bear Much Fruit--John
15:8
How can we glorify God? Not by adding
to His glory or bringing Him any new glory that He has not. But
simply by allowing His glory to shine out through us, by yielding
ourselves to Him, that His glory may manifest itself in us and
through us to the world. In a vineyard or a vine bearing much
fruit, the owner is glorified, as it tells of his skill and care.
In the disciple who bears much fruit, the Father is glorified.
Before men and angels, proof is given of the glory of God's grace
and power; God's glory shines out through him.
This is what Peter means when he
writes: "He that ministers, let him minister as of the ability
that God giveth, that God in all things may be glorified through
Jesus Christ." As a man works and serves in a power which
comes from God alone, God gets all the glory. When we confess
that the ability came from God alone, he that does the work, and
they who see it, equally glorify God. It was God who did it. Men
judge by the fruit of a garden of what the gardener is. Men judge
of God by the fruit that the branches of the Vine of His planting
bears. Little fruit brings little glory to God. It brings no honor
to either the Vine or the Husbandman. "That ye bear much
fruit, herein is my Father glorified."
We have sometimes mourned our lack
of fruit, as a loss to ourselves and our fellow men, with complaints
of our feebleness as the cause. Let us rather think of the sin
and shame of little fruit as robbing God of the glory He ought
to get from us. Let us learn the secret of bringing glory to God,
serving of the ability which God giveth. The full acceptance of
Christ's Word, "You can do nothing"; the simple faith
in God, who worketh all in all; the abiding in Christ through
whom the divine Husbandman does His work and gets much fruit--this
is the life that will bring glory to God.
Much fruit--God asks it;
see that you give it. God can be content with nothing less; be
you content with nothing less. Let these words of Christ--fruit,
more fruit, much fruit--abide in you, until you think as He does,
and you be prepared to take from Him, the heavenly Vine, what
He has for you. Much fruit: herein is my Father glorified. Let
the very height of the demand be your encouragement. It is so
entirely beyond your power, that it throws you more entirely upon
Christ, your true Vine. He can, He will, make it true in you.
Much fruit--God asks because
he needs. He does not ask fruit from the branches of His Vine
for show, to prove what He can do. No; He needs it for the salvation
of men: it is in that He is to be glorified. Throw yourself in
much prayer on your Vine and your Husbandman. Cry to God and your
Father to give you fruit to bring to men. Take the burden of the
hungry and the perishing on you, as Jesus did when He was moved
with compassion, and your power in prayer, and your abiding, and
your bearing much fruit to the glory of the Father will have a
reality and a certainty you never knew before.
The Father glorified. Blessed
prospect--God glorifying Himself in me, showing forth the glory
of His goodness and power in what He works in me, and through
me. What a motive to bear much fruit, just as much as He works
in me! Father, glorify Thyself in me.
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