May Your Wedding Produce Many Fruits!

It's good to be happy in marriage, but it's even better to keep that happiness in the home for a long time. It's not good to see couples deteriorate over time.

Throughout these teachings, I've presented God's principles for seeing your marriage succeed as God desires by letting Jesus Christ take the lead in your home and the Holy Spirit be the very engine of your marriage. Nevertheless, you must learn to abide and produce fruit in your life and in your marriage.

In John 15, Jesus invites us to bear much fruit. If you don't produce fruit, if you're not capable of producing fruit, or more precisely, other happy marriages, it will be difficult for you to enjoy happiness in your marriage for long.

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit, he cuts off; and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear even more fruit." John 15:1-2

The Lord Jesus Christ is the true vine, the vine is the foot of the vine, in a simple way, it is compared to a tree trunk. And we are the branches.

If you don't bear fruit, you'll be useless to God and He'll cut you off from the vine, but if you do bear fruit, God will prune you so that you bear plenty more fruit. You must produce fruit. You must produce more happy marriages. It's God's responsibility for every couple to produce one or more other couples. But if you can't manage your own home well, it will be difficult to produce marriages that experience true happiness. Spiritual multiplication is a fundamental principle of the Kingdom of God.

It's not just about sponsoring couples or witnessing weddings and believing we're producing fruit. It's about reproducing happy marriages for the glory of God. It's about helping couples who don't know happiness to have happiness, and helping young people to marry on a sound basis of the Word of God and live happily ever after in their own homes.

Here are some important principles to observe to produce lots of fruit:

I. You Must Keep Yourself Pure Through God's Word

To produce fruit in abundance, you have to keep yourself pure, and what purifies is the WORD OF CHRIST.

"Already you are pure, because of the word I proclaimed to you." John 15:3

It is the Word of Christ that purifies. It's not prayer that purifies us, it's the Word of Christ that does it. It's only after we've purified ourselves that we can pray, because God doesn't hear sinners.

The Word of God comes before prayer. We need to be aware of the importance of God's Word. Whoever knows the Word of God and lives that Word is more than a thousand people who pray without knowing God. It is the Word that purifies and sanctifies us. To produce fruit, we must first be filled with the Word of God.

It's very dangerous to love prayer without loving and knowing God's Word. This is how even impure people go to prayer, without realizing that the Word of God requires them to first abandon sin before being heard by God. They spend nights in prayer, and wonder why the demons don't leave them, it's simply because they don't have the Word.

I'm not saying that prayer isn't important. Far from it! I love prayer and I pray a little too. But I am aware that the Word of God comes before prayer. The Lord Jesus Christ first taught his disciples to know him, the Word made flesh, before instructing them on prayer. In the beginning was the Word, and it's very important to know him.

To produce much fruit, you must first love the Word of God. You can never make disciples without first teaching them all that Jesus Christ has commanded you, and if you don't know what Jesus Christ has commanded, it will be difficult for you to be a disciple of Christ yourself first, and claim to make disciples.

"Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." Matthew 28:19-20

The Lord has put more emphasis on the Word than on anything else. The Holy Spirit has been given to us primarily to understand the Word and to be witnesses to it.

You must have your foundation in the Word of God, for if it dwells fully in you, then your prayer will have great effectiveness. It is the fervent prayer of the righteous that has great efficacy; and the righteous is he who has faith in Jesus Christ, who puts into practice the Word of God.

The Word is the major ingredient in producing fruit to be pleasing to God. Being in God's Word determines everything else in your life. It's where it all begins.

II. You Must Remain In Christ

"Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it remains attached to the vine, so neither can you, unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing." John 15:4-5

Without Christ you can do nothing. And Christ is the Word, for he is the Word made flesh. To produce fruit, you must abide in Christ. Abiding in Christ means being and persevering in Him. If you want your couple to produce fruit, you must abide in Christ.

Beyond the teachings you received from me in this edition, there's one thing you must never forget: abiding in Christ. It is by abiding in Christ that you will be models for others, and for their couples. By abiding in Christ, you will bear much fruit.

The one who abides in Christ is the one who does nothing without his opinion; he is the one who has renounced himself to follow Jesus Christ; he is the one who is ready to lose his life for Christ; he is the one who has understood what the gospel is all about.

"Then Jesus said to his disciples: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. And what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he loses his soul? or, what does a man give in exchange for his soul?" Matthew 16:24-26
Abiding in Christ means overcoming everything that stands in your way. All people who do not abide in Christ are useless to God and have no place in his kingdom.

"If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown out like a branch, and withers; then the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned." John 15:6

Shalom

Pasteur Clémentine