The Greatest Amount of Glory

"This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples."

Oh mercy, can I ever get tripped up on this little verse. Just reading it makes me want to begin writing down all the dreams, ideas, and plans I might have that could really give to the Kingdom as a whole.

I can come up with a hundred different ways to serve Jesus and serve people, but will those hundred different ways bring about the best and greatest glory? I doubt it.

It's funny, though, we tend to think that it's all up to us bring glory to God.

Think on that for a minute.

Can we bring glory to God? YES! We can do it in so many ways! But, in this verse it says it is to His glory that we "bear much fruit."

We've already discovered that we cannot bear fruit on our own, much less a lot of it. There is no way for us to bear fruit unless we have the living Spirit in us doing the work of bearing the fruit. We cannot produce a product that is not within our power to produce!

We must rely on the Spirit!

And what does that do but bring glory to God! Jesus Himself brought glory to God by only doing what the Father asked of Him; by only doing that which God could do through Him. That kind of power in us can do nothing less than produce glory to the Father.

Relying solely on the Spirit does three things:

1. It keeps us from thinking we're hot snot and a bag of chips!
2. It gives Him the freedom to produce as much fruit as possible for the greatest glory.
3. We get to watch God do His best in a broken human because we were humbled and willing to simply and gloriously be a Branch.

I probably say this every day, but if you want to see God do His best and greatest in you then you must humble yourself to the filling of His Spirit and walk in the sweet relationship with Christ, the Vine, the Leader, the Guide of your life. He is your Life.

We must be quick to listen to the Holy Spirit call us deeper in Christ. We must be willing to be cut closer the Vine to gain the greatest amount of His Spirit in order for Him to put forth the greatest amount of His power to produce the greatest amount of fruit for the greatest amount of glory! Whew!

How can we glorify God? Not by adding to His glory or bringing Him any new glory that He has not. But simply by allowing His glory to shine out through us, by yielding ourselves to Him, that His glory may manifest itself in us and through us to the world. Andrew Murray, The True Vine