Lives that Produce Summer Fruit*

What grows in a life that stays connected to Christ? Drawing from Colossians 1, Pastor Chris Teien shows how the gospel bears fruit by changing lives, growing believers in wisdom, and preparing them to serve others. Consider how God can use a faithful Christian life to plant gospel seeds, disciple new believers, and produce lasting spiritual fruit.

In This Message

1. Fruit Comes Through Living in the Lord
(Colossians 1:6–8; John 15:5; Galatians 5:22–23)
The gospel bears fruit as it changes lives through the grace of God. This message emphasizes the need to stay connected to Jesus, depend on the Holy Spirit, use spiritual gifts, and spread the seed of God’s Word so others can come to Christ.

2. Every Kind of Fruit Includes Growth in My Life and Those Around Me
(Colossians 1:9–10; Ephesians 5:7–10)
Paul prayed that believers would grow in spiritual wisdom, understanding, and a life that honors the Lord. Spiritual fruit includes personal obedience, deeper knowledge of God, and the growth that comes as believers invest in others.

3. Be Patient and Prepared While Waiting for the Fruit to Appear
(Colossians 1:11)
Fruit often takes time to grow, so believers need endurance, patience, and joy while they wait. The sermon encourages Christians to keep planting gospel seeds, expect God to work, and be ready to help people respond to Christ and grow in faith.

18m0526de The Bold Secret to Unleashing your Faith

Helping you apply God's Word and follow Jesus in everyday life. Learn more at ChrisTeien.com and Rockwell.church  Find episode transcripts at Well.faith 

Transcript

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Chris T 0:16

Alright, so I'm gonna talk about summer fruit from Colossians chapter one. So we're doing a series in Colossians chapter one, and I noticed that some of my illustrations don't really have to do with fruit, but they have to do with seeds, and it's still kind of growing, planting. So did you notice already that the snow disappeared, and then there was like two days that there wasn't any weeds or anything growing, and then now I look today, there's mosquitoes flying around. And where I was gonna plant that grass real quick before the other stuff came in, the grass is already coming in and weeds are already coming up, and so things are just created to grow. And if you don't plant something, then other things are going to grow there in your life. If you don't fill your life with good things, then other things are gonna fill it, and you might not be happy with the results. On RightNow Media, the media service that we offer you for free, right now media, there's all these different videos and kids' videos and everything. And they put the old moody science videos on there, which were amazing when they first came out because they were some of the first videos that came out in high definition color, you know, back in like the 70s or something like that. And they've got one video on there, I don't remember what it's called, Seasons of Life or something like that, that talks about seeds and it shows how dandelion seeds flow through the air, and it tells the story of the jack pine and how the pine cone will only open when it's been exposed to fire. And it also tells the story of a tumbleweed. We don't fortunately have a whole lot of tumbleweeds here, but how many of you ever been out west and seen tumbleweeds? Dripping over tumbleweeds? Seeing the okay, so basically, this bushy green thing grows out in the wilderness, and eventually it gets all dry and the stem breaks off and the wind pushes it along and it tumbles along. And as it's tumbling along, sometimes it gets clogged up in fences. Sometimes when you're driving down the road, there'll be a ton of them on the road, and you'll drive through it, and they'll be all dragging under the car. And so you get these brushy things rolling along, but they're not just rolling along for fun, they are, as they're rolling along, dropping tons of seeds. So the seeds that are in the tumbleweed are are being dropped here and there, and more tumbleweeds develop. And I guess when America first started, we didn't have tumbleweeds. Some Russian immigrants came over with some bad seed that had the tumbleweeds in them, and then that introduced tumbleweeds to our nation, so they're very prominent out west. And I was thinking about tumbleweeds, and they're showing in the video the tumbleweeds moving along, and but it got hit by a car, and in the videos they made it seem like, oh, the poor tumbleweed, you know, it's now not good for anything. But actually, as soon as that it was a Volkswagen bus, you can tell how old the video was. As soon as the car hits it, more seeds scatter across the road, the wind hits it, and more seeds are planted. And so I was thinking about tumbleweeds, and I would really like you to be a tumbleweed. So I don't want you to be a noxious weed that everybody hates and wishes wasn't here. Not that. No, but what if you, everywhere you went, everywhere you rolled, you spread the seed, you spread seeds, you spread seeds of the gospel, you spread Christ's love. So I ordered another case of these Bibles. What if you had one of these in your car, put some in some Ziploc bags to make sure that they they stay nice and crisp and dry in the summer? But what if you just had one of these around and you were praying for an opportunity to share it with someone, to give it to someone, to encourage somebody with these Bibles? I would be so delighted if every one of you, maybe you already have some, if every one of you would walk out the door and out of that box there, take a Bible or two with the idea that you're tumbleweed and you're gonna be rolling along and God's gonna give you an opportunity to plant some seed because this bears fruit in people's lives. This can change circumstances, situations, character. It's eternal, life-giving. It is got all sorts of notes on how to live the Christian life, how to be saved, all these things. And if we could get these out the door into people's hands, you putting it in someone else's hands is going to be way more successful than me. You know more people than I do, and it would be great if you would take these and pray for an opportunity to plant these seeds in people's life. Be like tumbleweed. And my other thought with it is that in there are all these notes, and I'm trying to put together a list on how you can disciple somebody, how you can go through the different helps and things like that and help someone like a discipleship book, so that you could use that for a discipleship book. If all of a sudden a lot of people started getting saved and we needed to come alongside them and help them to grow in their faith, that you would have a tool and know what to do. So I I shared a story a long time ago, but when I was living down in Iowa, we had this house and we had these big trees out front and everything, and they were kind of falling apart. So I took my chainsaw and I cut them down, and then I had somebody come out with one of those stump grinder things and grind the stump down and everything. And so I had these three trees and they were all gone, and then I had these big piles of dirt. So we were gonna go on vacation for a week, and so I got some of that wildflower seed, and I thought, you know, that'd be kind of cool to put those up by the front steps where those two trees were. So I planted that wildflower seed and I looked at the bag and it said, you know, it covered like 400 square feet or something like that. Like, yeah, whatever. I had four square feet. So I threw down a ton of seed here and a ton of seed there and watered it and it started coming up right away. It was great. I'm like, this is gonna be so awesome. My wife's gonna be so impressed. There's gonna be so many beautiful flowers. I'll probably win an award for gardening, you know, because I just, this is really working. I must have a green thumb. I totally don't have a green thumb. Actually, never buy us a plant in our house because it will die. We have no plants in the house because they all die. But I planted these flowers when they started to come up, and we got back from vacation, they were all they were tall and green, and flowers were coming and everything. And then a storm came and they had no root. There wasn't enough space for a root, a root, and then they got hit by the wind and they just fell over. All my beautiful plants just fell over. No hope to save them. They had no root, they were planted too closely. And I feel like sometimes if we are sharing Christ and people are getting saved, and we're not coming alongside and helping them to grow in the Christian faith that when a storm comes, it's easy for them to fall over because they have no root. So, this is this is what I got for a plan and a resource is I have those Bibles. And I know there's all sorts of other resources. There's navigator material and online stuff and classes and videos and programs and things like that, which are all awesome. And if you have time and resources to do that, that's perfect. But we should at least at least have one method. There are some people that criticized D.L. Moody, the great evangelist, for his method of evangelism. They didn't like the way that he shared his faith, they didn't like the way they did evangelism. And he said to these ladies, I think they were ladies, he said, Well, what is your method of evangelism? And they said, Well, we don't have one. And he's like, I like the method I have better than the method you don't have. Anyway, if we could be like tumbleweeds and be planting seed as we're out, spreading Bibles, and actually be ready to disciple people as they get saved, as they come to Christ, it would be a great thing. So that is my challenge for the day. I I'm done, so let's celebrate. No, not really. That'd be really weird. Some of you would be like, I love this church, I'm coming back. No, we are going to talk for a time before communion, and they did not put the clock here. I have no idea what time it is, so it just must be a spiritual opportunity for me to say whatever I want, however long I want. No, Ecclesiastes 3 says, There's a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to uproot. It is a time to plant. I want my grass to grow. I want my grass to be green. I want to make sure I don't spread any disease or cancer or anything. I want to make sure it's natural and safe for my dogs and my grandkids. So I got some fertilizer, and I'm like, oh, this looks like it will work really good. I'll put this in the front yard where the kids and the dogs aren't usually, and it says it weeds and it feeds and it does all this stuff. And but I have a section where there's no grass because of the salt and people driving on my grass and everything. And I looked at it in the fine print, in the very, very small print. It says, do not plant grass seed for five months. I'm pretty sure we'll be looking at snow again in about six months, so I took it back. It's not going to work. But we look at our schedule, our time, and the resources we have, and this is a time for us to plant. A time to think about what we want to harvest the time, to think about the things that we want to put in our life and the things that we want to do. John Maxwell used to be a Christian pastor. Now he's a Christian leadership author, expert. And he has a lot of great resources online. I think even on RightNow Media, he has some. And there's actually a Right Now Media at Work section, too, that is really good for you and your job and leadership skills and things like that. But he said we all need a growth plan. Every one of us needs to have a growth plan. Do you have a growth plan for the summer? Do you have a Bible reading plan? Maybe a scripture memorization plan, maybe some books you want to read, maybe some challenges for yourself, like you want to share your faith with people, things like that. Have a growth plan and pursue that so that you will grow and use that time wisely. So we're going to look at Colossians chapter 1 in just a second here. I have three points. Number one, fruit comes through living in the Lord. So if you looked in Matthew 13, you'd see Jesus talking about the soil, the seeds, and the weeds, and how the seed falls on stony ground, how the seed gets choked by the weeds, and all those things. So the soil is important. And you can read about that in Matthew chapter 13. In John chapter 15, Jesus talks about how he is the vine and we're the branches and those who remain in him. And Jesus in them will produce much fruit, for apart from me, you can do nothing. So we need to be connected to the Lord, serving in the Lord, living in the Lord. You know, we get these power tools now that are battery operated, rechargeable, and it is a great thing that we don't have to have a cord, but they only last for so long. They need to be reconnected again to be re-energized, even more than just needing to be re-energized. We need to be connected to Jesus and His Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit in our lives. In the New Believers New Testament, there's all these notes on different pages. And on page 230, it talks about spiritual gifts. And on the back of your bulletin page here, I put what was on page 230 for spiritual gifts. I thought it was interesting that we didn't make this Bible or you know have any say, but they used a poem from A. B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, of which we're part of the group, where he wrote the poem himself, which is on this sheet here. He wrote, Once it was the blessing, now it is the Lord. Once it was the feeling, now it is his word. Once his gifts I wanted, now the giver owned. Once I sought for healing, now himself alone. And it focuses on wanting all of Jesus more than just his gifts and the things from him. And in this note, it says, It's possible to let a spiritual gift go unused. In doing this, you disobey God and cheat the church of a blessing. So we need to use our spiritual gifts, discover what our spiritual gifts are. As the church, the mobile church that we have right now, we're not able to use as many spiritual gifts as we can in the future. But I think there's a day coming soon where our church might have a lot more ministry opportunities and have a lot more opportunities for us to make a difference in the community and for us to use more of our spiritual gifts. I mean, you can still use your spiritual gifts, but it would be great if we had more teaching opportunities, if we had more ministry opportunities and deacons and deaconesses and more people serving in different volunteer roles and all these different things. So we need to be connected to Jesus. We need to be empowered through the Holy Spirit. We need to be using our spiritual gift. Fruit comes through living in the Lord. So Colossians 1:6. The same good news that came to you is going out all over the world. It is bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives, just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understood the truth about God's wonderful grace. So Paul was excited that the good news, the gospel was making a difference in the world, making a difference. Now, it hadn't gone to the ends of the earth, but it was spreading through the known world. It was going places, and Paul would come and find that it was already there, that people had heard God's message, had heard Christ's message, heard Peter's message, and then gone and then shared that with others, shared the gospel where they lived, and churches were being planted, and God was at work, and the Holy Spirit was helping people around the known world come to Christ through the gospel, and it was bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives. And that's really what fruit is, is it's not just the spiritual fruit of the spiritual gifts, but it is changed life. It is people walking in obedience to the Lord, it is people being saved, it is people that have come into a relationship with Jesus Christ and adopted as children of God. Just as it changed your lives from the day you first heard and understand that understood the truth about God's wonderful grace. You really need to think about who you were before you came to Christ and what Christ has done in your life since. Because when you do that, one, you'll be thankful and grateful to God, and two, you will be excited to bring that same message to others, be excited to show love to others. If you just realize and remember what you used to be or what you could have been if you didn't come to Christ. So the gospel bearing fruit everywhere by changing lives. Verse 2, you learned about the good news or the gospel from Epaphras, our beloved co-worker. He is Christ's faithful servant, and he is helping us on your behalf. So Epaphras was the one who planted the church in Colossae. Epaphras was the one that God used to start this church. Now, Paul is writing this book of Colossians, this letter to Colossians, to the Church of Colossae, the book of Colossians, to fix some things about false teaching that some of the people are falling into. But Epaphras has done a good work. Epaphras has done a wonderful thing by being faithful to Christ. Paul commends him for being a faithful servant. And that's a great encouragement when people come alongside of you and tell you you are a faithful servant, you are doing a good work. I appreciate you. I care about you, and I am so thankful for all that you're doing to serve the Lord. How can I pray for you? How can I encourage you? How can I help you? Those are wonderful things to encourage other people. Galatians 5 22, the fruit of the Spirit. So the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So it's interesting when it talks about fruit in the New Testament, the Greek word carpos refers to the natural product of something that is alive. In the literal sense, it is used of fruit borne by trees or vines or of crops of grain from the ground. It's also used of the offspring of human beings. Metaphorically, it can refer to the natural product of a spiritual being, whether it be praise as the fruit of righteous lips in Hebrews 13.15, converts as a result of ministry in Romans 1.13, or the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5.22 to 23, which stands in contrast to the work of the sinful nature, which is actually the verses before Galatians 5.22, that talk about the things that you don't want to do. God doesn't want you to do. Note that Paul does not refer to the fruits with an S on the end of the Spirit, but the fruit, which suggests that all of the nine characteristics listed must be present in our lives as a homogeneous whole. Fruit is an organic metaphor that is the fruit must be growing in our lives, though it does take constant nourish nourishment from Christ in his word for this to occur. The Spirit is available to help his fruit ripen in our lives. And so we use that to share our faith. We use that to disciple others. We use that to serve others. It should mark our life. Christ in our life should totally change us and transform us. So, number one, fruit comes through living in the Lord. John 15, 16. You didn't choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for using my name. So many times the Bible makes it so clear that if you put God first, you will come out ahead. If you put God first, your needs will be answered. If you put God first, your prayers will be answered. Matthew 6, 33, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. And then everything you need will be given to you. Put God first. We are appointed not just to go to church. We're not appointed just, you know, to get saved and be excited about that with eternal fire insurance, but we are chosen to go and produce lasting fruit. Fruit of these things that I just mentioned here, that we have a great opportunity to do as we have relationships with people, as we care about people, as we show people Christ's love and are out there spreading seed, the seed of the gospel. So one other thing before this video I wanted to point out is that Warren Wearsby, on this in the commentary for this verse, Colossians 1, he writes, In my pastoral ministry, I've met people who have become intoxicated with studying the deeper truths of the Bible. Usually they have been given a book or introduced to some teachers' tapes. Before long, they get so smart they become dumb. The deeper truths they discover only detour them from practical Christian living. Instead of getting burning hearts of devotions to Christ, they get big heads and start creating problems in their homes and churches. All Bible truths are practical, not theoretical. If we are growing in knowledge, we should also be growing in grace. And he talks about the importance to both walk in the Lord and do his work. But first we need to be walking with the Lord before we do work for the Lord. That we need to put God first and be walking in him before we're having an effective ministry. And that is a good reminder for even me. So I'm going to show you a quick video here about fruit.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Sanctification. Most of us know our salvation is through grace alone, not by our own work. However, it is often overlooked that sanctification is also through grace alone. Many of us can make our own power to work in making ourselves more like internet. I'll take it from here. Let him grow your fruit.

Chris T 19:50

So Colossians 1.8, he has told us about the love for others that the Holy Spirit has given you. And I mentioned the last time, not last week, but the last time we talked about the beginning of Colossians that we receive the Holy Spirit and the Spirit gives us love to show for others. So it's not like we're just loving people that are so kind and nice. It's the Holy Spirit working in us that helps us to show love for others. God gives us love, and that love flows out of us, and we are able then to show Christ's love to others, to love others. So then we pray for others. We have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of His will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. So we pray, and so we pray these things. We pray that God would help people to grow spiritually, that people would get gain in wisdom and understanding, and that God could use us to help them to grow and to learn how to walk in the things of the Lord. So many times when we invest our lives into other people to help them grow, we grow ourselves. It motivates us, it challenges us, especially when they ask us questions we don't know the answers to. It pushes us to study, to find out, to learn, to grow. Invest your life into somebody and they will grow and you will grow. Colossians 1:10. Point two, every kind of fruit includes growth in my life and those around me. Every kind of fruit includes growth in my life and those around me. Verse 10. Then in the way you live, then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit. All the while you will grow as you learn to know God better and better. So the way you live is so important. I mean, every day you have choices to make. You can choose to do things or not things, do things. You can choose all sorts of things that nobody would ever know about. Secret choices that you make that God knows about that either help you with your walk in the Lord or hinder your walk in the Lord. Some of the things that you choose to do can lead to great joy and blessing, and some of the things that you choose to do can lead to sadness and depression and all sorts of difficult things. So pray that you will be doing the right things, that you will be walking in the Lord, that you will be bearing every kind of good fruit as you walk in the Lord. As you grow in the Lord, as you work out your growth plan, as you realize that things are made to grow, whether they're good or they're bad, just like your soil, your grass, your lawn, your garden. You need to pull weeds, you need to be, I think you need to plan things out, you need to. Think about what it is you want to grow and how you're going to make that happen. Ephesians 5 7, you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light, for the fruit of the light consists of all goodness, righteousness, and truth, and find out what pleases the Lord. And we're actually going to talk about that next time when we get together, light in the Lord. But number three, my last point, and then we'll have communion, is number three, you need to be patient and prepared while waiting for the fruit to appear. Some of the things that you plant take a long time to develop fruit. Those apple trees, if you plant an apple tree now, it will take a while for you to get fruit. In my neighborhood, which is now like 16 years old. Now we have mature apple trees kicking out apples and all sorts of things. And but it wasn't that way in the beginning. You need to be patient while you wait for fruit to grow. There's a story of the bamboo tree, how when you plant the seed and water it, nothing happens for years, and then I'm not sure how many years it is, like five years or something like that, nothing happens, and all of a sudden it starts to grow a lot in one season. So you need to be patient. But you also need to be prepared. So that when it is harvest season, if you did have an apple tree, if you did do all that work and then the apples are finally there, you need to pick those apples when they're ripe before they hit the ground, before they get bug infested. You don't want to take them too early, but you don't want to wait too long or they won't be any good. So you need to be patient, you need to be prepared. Colossians 1.11. We also pray that you will be strengthened with all this glorious power, so you will have all the endurance and patience you need, and may you be filled with joy. So you could be planting seeds, you could be dropping off Bibles, you could be praying for people, you could be doing all this stuff and thinking, why isn't anybody responding? Why doesn't it seem like I'm making a difference? Where's the fruit? We'll know that sometimes God is at work and doing great things, but you're not seeing it because either they moved on or they're not sharing it with you, or it's taken a long time. But God sees what you do, He knows the motivation of your heart, He sees you serving Him, He will reward you for that. So be faithful, be patient, but also be prepared. Be prepared. It'd be an expectation for seed to yield fruit, for people that take the Bibles and start to read them and start to ask you questions and want to get saved and want to grow in their Christian life. Be surprised if they don't. So totally expect it. Be prepared. Know what you're gonna do if they receive Christ. When you ask them if they've ever come into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, or they're still somewhere along the way, and then they say, Well, I'm still somewhere along the way, and you're like, How far along the way are you? And then you help them to answer their questions, and then they want to pray to receive Christ, and they do, then be prepared to follow up and to help them to grow in their faith. So be patient, yet be prepared. And if people responded and people started to get saved, we'd have many opportunities. So we've been patient. Now let's be prepared for God to do something big, for God to do something huge, and for us to be ready to deal with that. I've read story after story of churches that all of a sudden experienced explosive growth and they were out trying to grab staff people and trying to put up buildings and doing all these things. And one example of that was Thomas Road Baptist Church, which would become, which would lead to Liberty University. There was a time when they just started growing, and now they're the biggest Christian university, I think, in the world. So, anyway, it's time for communion. And when I come to communion time, I like to reflect on my life and where I'm at in my growth plan, if I'm close to the Lord, if there's weeds in my life, and really think about what it is that I need to confess as sin, what it is that I need to change, and then to recommit my life to Jesus Christ.