To counteract the despair of the world, I think I am going to make up a new bumper sticker: "Fruit Happens." Sometimes as a counselor your best personal advice comes from yourself. It is that old idea of whenever you are pointing a finger at someone else, there are three fingers pointing back. Now, of course, if anything I say has any wisdom at all in it, it actually came from God, not me. But one of the things I have been teaching for years, even before coming to Tri-City, was my Stop Light Bible study method. Briefly, it is a method of marking your Bible with the three colors of a stop light: Red for God's promises, Yellow for God's warnings, and Green for God's commandments.

Recently I was reading in John 15 about The True Vine, Christ's illustration of our bearing fruit by abiding in Him. What caught my attention as I was reading it this time was that there was just a little spot of green amongst the red and yellow. In other words, the bearing of fruit is a promise and not bearing fruit is a warning, but the commandment is "Abide in Me, and I in you." The commandment is not to bear fruit. For many years I have thought that the commandment was to bear fruit, so that was where my concentration was.

You see branches can concentrate in three different directions. One, they can concentrate on themselves, on their needs, in order to make themselves the best branches they can. "Look at what a lovely branch I am." Two, they can concentrate on the fruit in order to make the best fruit possible. "Look at how wonderful my fruit is." (That is called "Fruit From Concentration." :-) Sorry! I have been hanging around Jim Sproul too long). Or third, they can concentrate on the connection to the Vine. "Look at how wonderful the Vine is."

Now, making branches the best they can be and making fruit the best it can be is not wrong, but when we try to do it ourselves, it just doesn't happen. God is not going to let it happen because then the branches get all the glory. It is only when the connection to the Vine is good, that the Vine makes good branches and good fruit.

I can't make fruit—fruit happens.

Todd Tjepkema, B.A.
Executive Assistant