Fruitful Living With Courtnaye RichardSample

Day Five – Living a Life of Faith, Meekness, and Self-Control

When we started this devotional, it all began with understanding that Jesus wants us to stay connected to Him. Remember, we can do nothing apart from Him. So, living a fruitful life includes remaining faithful to Christ unto the end. In John 15:4, Jesus tells us, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.” Remaining faithful to Christ is all about staying ever so close to Him as we walk through life’s ups and downs.

As we focus on living fruitfully, we can also be certain that our great enemy Satan wants nothing more than for us to be unfruitful and unfaithful to Christ. He wants us to abandon or shipwreck our faith altogether. But we must stay on guard as he uses every demonic scheme and tactic in hopes to devour, distract, and destroy our witness for Christ in these last days. That’s why we have to be determined about staying connected to the Lord in every way until He returns. We can do this by remaining close to Him through prayer, God’s Word, and fellowship with other believers.

Before we move forward, I want to also mention that God calls His righteous ones to live by faith. When we live faithfully and by trusting God, that is a powerful combination! Walking by faith is all about trusting Christ no matter the circumstance or situation. It’s living as though you know somehow, some way, and some day that the Lord is going to work all things out for your good. So I want to encourage you to stand firm in your faith in every way.

Now, let’s dive into meekness. Many have described this word to mean “power under control.” Being meek is living a life that is humble, gentle, and not proud. It’s living a life of surrender with open hands. It’s living a life that says, “Your will be done Lord, not mine.”

Self-control falls in line right behind meekness as we've read in Galatians 5:22-23. When you think about self-control, it’s really all about controlling yourself. It’s realizing that when you’re feeling hurt or angry about something or someone, you have a choice to lash out or practice the fruit of self-control. And again, we are not alone in the process. The Holy Spirit is willing and ready to help us in our time of need.

Living in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control can be exemplified in our lives. The world that we live in today is in dire need of encountering true disciples. Remember Jesus’ words written in John 15:5, “When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples.” In closing, I’ll share these words from Christ Himself in verse 16, “…I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit.” Let's do this!

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