This was a response to a question I asked the students to answer: “If God is real, and you could ask him any question, and you knew he had to answer you, what would you ask him?”
Honestly, it’s a great question and I wonder the same.
A few thoughts about this question:
- Students are watching how we live. They hear how the God we believe in is a God of love, but if our actions, our words, our posts, and what we share, do not align with a God of love, then why would they want to follow Him?
- Fruit. Yeah, fruit…The question caused me to pause to consider my own life and what kind of fruit I have in my own life. Jesus says, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” (One another includes our enemies even though as followers we should not view anyone as our enemy). Jesus also said that you will recognize good trees by the good fruit they produce. Similarly, Jesus says, you will recognize the bad trees from the bad fruit they produce. What kind of fruit does a good tree produce? Paul writes about this when he says, “LOVE, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” Did you notice the first fruit? Paul also talked about the importance of love in I Corinthians 13 and concludes with this, “And now these three remain faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” As someone who claims to follow a God who is love, I must consider if my life reflects the person I am following, if not, then maybe I’m following something else.
If you are someone who is struggling with believing in God because of how you see some of his followers acting, you are not alone. But also know, none of us are perfect and we all have our bad days. But take time to look at the fruit of people’s lives before considering if who they are following is God or if is it themselves, a politician, or something else.
Lastly, if we call ourselves followers of Jesus, what kind of fruit are we producing?
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.” – Jesus
Phil Steiner 