NorthStar Community Daily Devotional

February 22

Scripture focus: "I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you're joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can't produce a thing. Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire. But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon. This is how my Father shows who he is—when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples. John 15:5-8 MSG

Maturation is a process AND we make progress as we mature.

Along the way, it is easy to get side-tracked or cocky.

One way that I do not suggest that we evaluate our maturation process is by trying to measure the fruit. Listen, it is written and thus we believe – we were created to mature and produce fruit in keeping with righteousness. BUT THAT IS NOT EVER TO BE OUR GOAL!

Our goal is to trust God.

As we trust God to restore us to sanity, we obey.

As we obey, we discover that our flesh is unwilling.

As we discover that our flesh is unwilling we have a moment of clarity – apart from God working in and through us – we cannot live as God desires for us to live. On our own, we have a high foolishness factor.

One of the problems with foolishness, is that we rarely recognize it when we’re the ones behaving foolishly. Again – apart from God, we can do nothing.

In the next few devotionals we’re going to look at the life of Saul, a man who had a very high foolishness factor…maybe we can learn from him.

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