Let's go ahead and get started then. Welcome to Soul Bible Church for the adult Sunday school hour. We are about ready to get started here. So we will open up in prayer, and then we will look at our monthly verse for March, memory verse, and then We'll go ahead and have the Sunday School Hour. So let's go ahead and open up with prayer. Lord Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for being with us. We pray that you would continue to watch over us, guide us, keep us in all that we do. Lord, we pray that you would help us as we go through the lesson today, that you would give me the ability to give the lesson in the way that you have given it to me, and that we could have a heart that would be more willing to abide in you, that we would have eyes set fully upon you in all that we do. Lord, we pray that you be with us now this morning. In your name we pray, amen. All right, so our monthly memory verse is John 15, 6, which says, if a man abides not in need, he is cast forth as a branch and is withered. And men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned." John 15, 6. So let's medicate on this for a few minutes, and then we will come back and try to say it together. All right, let's go ahead and try to recite this together. John 15, 6. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered. And men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. John 15, 6. OK, good. We got a couple more weeks or one more week, right? One more week, two more weeks left to study this verse. So let's be diligent in doing that. But for today's lesson, we're still in the overall topic of abiding as is our yearly topic here at Soul Bible Church. We've been talking about abiding, and in abiding, we've been talking about out of, using as our reference, John chapter 15. And that is where we will begin today, kind of our jump-off verse of where we're going. John 15 and verse 8, that says, my Father is glorified by this. that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. So that's our verse which leads us to the question which is the title of my message this morning is how do we produce glorifying fruit? We got that verse in 15.8 and we want to know how do we produce glorified fruit. Well, before we can kind of talk about how we produce glorified fruit, we got to kind of define what are we talking about when we say fruit. Okay, we are commanded to be fruitful to grow fruit But what does what does being fruitful producing fruit actually mean? Now many people if you say this and you know myself included What does it mean to as us as Christians as a church? to be fruitful Many would say oh that means Soul winning. Winning the lost to Christ. And that is an aspect of it. That's what we should be doing. We should be about our Father's business. And His business was to seek and save the lost. We also might say, well, it might be to be fruitful means, you know, be fruitful and multiply. Bring in more members. Grow in size as a congregation. That could be what we mean by being fruitful. And those are good things. But we gotta understand the context. So as we go through today, we are going to look at the context of bearing fruit and what bearing fruit really means. what it means to bear fruit in context with our overall topic of abiding. Okay, now one of the materials that I've been using to create my, you know, I create to give my messages that the Lord has created and given them to me is I found a devotional I went up, you know when I knew my time was coming what am I supposed to talk about abiding so I Googled in abiding in Christ and I came up with a bunch of materials and one of the materials I came up with was some Excerpts from a book by John Piper called all that Jesus commanded so The idea is that I'm presenting today. They're not mine. I'm not You know that's smart Their God has directed me to these materials God has laid on my heart the things of the materials after reading them and so I've been basically dissecting this small devotional that I have and that's what I've been using to create my Sunday school lessons and so In this, one of the things that he talks about, he goes to John chapter 8 verse 31. And John chapter 8 verse 31 says, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. So here we have abiding, abiding in the word. We previously talked about, we should be in the word of God. Okay, now. He points out that this verse has some implications that we might not always think about. Okay? If we are saved, we are disciples of Christ. If we abide in His Word, we are truly disciples. Which means on the opposite thought of that is if we don't abide, we are not truly his disciples. So the idea here is the opposite of a true disciple is a false disciple. And when I first read that statement, I was like, whoa, it kind of takes you aback. It's like false disciple, isn't that a little harsh? You know, you're a good disciple or you're a bad disciple. What does this have to do with fruit? So, as I thought on this and meditated on it, the Lord brought some ideas to me that I think kind of show what the point of this idea is, okay? It's not so much producing fruit, but what fruit we are producing. And so, in Matthew 28, verses 18 and 19, very familiar story. Jesus has been going around preaching with his disciples, and he's returning, and physically, as the human side of Christ, He's hungry. He's looking for something to eat. And so this verse, Matthew 21, 18 to 19 says, now in the morning, as he returned to the city, he was hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the road, he came to it and found nothing but leaves. And he said to it, let no fruit grow on you ever again. And immediately the fig tree withered away. So, okay, what's that got to do with abiding? Well, what's that got to do with being a disciple? Let's look at a few points of the fig tree, okay? The tree was a fig tree. The purpose of a fig tree is to grow figs. It was a fig tree. It looked like a fig tree. That's why Jesus went to it. He was hungry. He said, oh, there's a fig tree. Let me go get some figs. But the fig tree wasn't producing fruit. It looked like a fig tree. It was a fig tree, but it was just sitting there in the field off the side of the road. It was not bearing fruit. And obviously, in God form, Jesus would have known that that tree didn't have any fruit on it. But the idea is, he expected it. that tree to have fruit. It looked like a mature fruit-bearing tree. It was sitting there. It looked good on appearance, but it wasn't producing fruit. Okay. And then I think it was Wednesday night. Pastor Bright hit on this verse. It might have been during Sunday, but I think it was Wednesday night. He hit on this verse. And it kind of tells me the same thing. It brought that back out. In Isaiah 5, 2, it talks about a, you know, And in John 15 it talks about God being the farmer basically, right? They use different words, but the husband then means farmer. God is the farmer, okay? And so we see this image of a vine, a field, an orchard, or a vineyard, and we see this imagery in 5.2 and it says, came the farmer. He dug it up and cleared out the stones and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst and also made a wine press in it. So he expected it to bring forth good grapes. but it brought forth wild grapes. So again, what does this got to do with being a disciple? What does this have to do with us? Well, if we look at this example in Isaiah, we see some things. Now, for us, when are we planted? Or when are we grafted into the vine? At salvation. So we are planted in salvation. Now, if you look here, it talks about clearing out the stone, building a tower, building a wine press. There was everything done for that vineyard to thrive. The farmer did not only plant the vineyard, but he He took care of the land. He moved the rocks, made sure the soil was good. He built a wall around the vineyard so no wild animals could come in and bother it. He did all those things that it needed to thrive. And he also had some expectations for it. We know that because it says he built a wine press. Don't build a wine press if you don't expect to get some good fruit. Get some grapes. Um, so we see this now The point of the story is this if we don't truly abide in Christ if we You know, we can be saved, but we're not reading our Bible. We're not in the Word of God. We're not attending church services. We're not doing those things that God calls us to abide. Or we are doing it, but we're doing it because, well, that's what I do every Sunday. It's like an appointment, almost like a doctor's appointment. Church is Sunday, so I go there. We're not coming with the right attitude. Are we here? We might bear fruit. We might see some growth. We might see some people saved, but it will be less than desirable and not God-glorified. So if we're not all-in in abiding, following God's commandments, read my word, memorize scripture, doing these things, caring one for another, if we're just doing it out of routine, we could like that fig tree, have an outward appearance of being good. Those grapes have the outward appearance of being good as they grew. God had given them, the farmer had given them every advantage to produce fruit. But for whatever reason, they decided to choose to grow wild grapes, which is not good fruit, right? We can do things, but if we're trying to do it in our own power, and if we're not truly abiding in God, which gives us the power, it's not glorifying to Him, and it's not going to be blessed, and we're not going to produce the way we should. Now, as I was thinking on these, I was thinking, This thought came to my head. Now, this isn't scripture. This is a thought, a little bit of science that I kind of know. Not much, but a little bit. But there are a species of plants that fall under the title of nightshade. Nightshade plants. Now, one variety of nightshade produces fruit in the form of tomatoes. Right? Tomato plant is a type of nightshade. Now, we like tomatoes. Tomatoes are good. We eat tomatoes. Right? Good fruit. But there's another branch, another type of nightshade that also produces fruit. And this is the kind I'm more familiar with, because I remember at home, living out in the countryside, we would have these big bushes. And every year, they would grow these big purple berries. Look, awesome. Nice berries. And we would go to those bushes, and my mom would say, don't go over there. Those are deadly nightshade. The fruit looked beautiful. But if you ate it, you were going to die. It was poison. Those were poison berries. Now you got the same nightshade. One, tomatoes. Eat all you want. They're good. The other, beautiful berries. You see them with your eye. They look awesome. You start thinking about, wow, those would be good in pie. I bet those are really tasty. They look like blueberries. You don't want any of those. So you've got two plants. They're both bearing fruit. It's not about bearing the fruit. It's the fruit you're bearing. What is the point here? Well, Jesus commands us that He be the moment-by-moment cause for every good thing we do in our lives. So in other words, we can say, well, that's a good thing to do, I think I will do it. But we can't do it on our own. God commands that we put him first. And by putting him first, then we are abiding. And then we will produce the right kind of fruit. And again, we're reminded in John chapter 15 verse 5 where he says I am the vine you are the branches He who abides in me bears much fruit For without me you can do nothing Okay, can we bear fruit without abiding truly in Christ? Maybe Can we invite people to church? maybe But are we going to have lasting effect? Is our fruit going to be lasting fruit? Is it going to be fruit that is going to bless God and glorify God? Maybe, maybe not. We've all seen that. We've all been in that situation. We need to put God first. So again, in John Piper's commentary, he says this, abiding in Jesus is not the same as bearing fruit or keeping his commandments. So we're looking at this. What can I do this here? I wasn't able to print this out this morning, so I'm using my phone. So if I'm looking down and fussing, I'm fussing with my phone. Fruit bearing and commandment keeping are the result of abiding. Abiding is not the result of fruit bearing. Fruit bearing is the result of abiding. If we abide, we bear fruit. Fruit is the result of abiding. And we don't produce fruit. God provides the means for producing the fruit. He is divine. We, as the branches, provide the labor that produces the fruit. Okay? So that is the point. Abiding is the source of the fruit. Fruit isn't proof of abiding. Abiding is Your writing is proof in the fruit that you are producing through the power of Christ. We're the wade men, but God provides the power. Okay? Now... We also learn in John 15 that abiding is never without some deal of discomfort to us. In John 15 verse 2, the second part of that, it talks about every branch that bears fruit, he prunes. That is, they bear more fruit. Okay? So, if we don't bear fruit, it's talked about remove being removed, if we bear fruit, he comes back at us with the scissors and begins cutting us off, cutting us up. Okay? That's a little uncomfortable. But why does he do that? To help us. provide more fruit, help us to produce more fruit. Being trimmed is not an easy process, okay? It is God's way of challenging us to abide more. So when we abide in Christ, we can't rest on our laurels, as we said last week. You've got to continue to move forward. The way you move forward is God comes along and prunes us. Makes us uncomfortable. Right? I saw the other day, I saw a thing, a meme, and it showed a mother eagle with some baby eagles and it says that God is shaking your nest. He's preparing you to fly. You know, you might be comfortable sitting there all nice and warm in that nest, but that's not the point. You're not supposed to stay there. And Christ doesn't want us to stay where we are. He wants us to grow. He wants us to produce more fruit. And this being trimmed is not an easy process, but God's way of channeling us to do more. So we must remember something, though. We must remember some things. First and foremost, it's not about us. He gives the power and the ability. Our job is simply to do the do. Okay? We are the ones who do it. God gives the power, so we don't have to rely on our own abilities. Bearing fruit means going to the next level in your Christian walk, in serving Christ, in being a true disciple. You've got to go to the next level. You can't just stay where you are all big, dumb, and happy. God's going to trim you. He's going to poke you in the back and make you go. And that can be a little bit scary when God says, begins to groom you, prepare you for producing more fruit, right? We call that, you know, you take the dog to the groomers, right, to be trimmed. You groom your plants by trimming them as well. And God grooms us by trimming us. It's challenging. It's challenging because it's not comfortable. Growing in Christ, growing in the Lord is maybe scary, maybe challenging. It might mean doing something we are uncomfortable with or have never done before. Like teaching adult Sunday school. Right? The pastor asked me if I could do this. I could have said no. And you probably would have never asked me again, which means in my with in my abiding I would have withered and God would have said okay Stay where you are. I'll find somebody else who can do this It's scary I'm like I can't teach adults on these schools I don't have the capability, I don't have, you know, like I said before, I don't have the degrees, I don't have the in-depth study of Greek and Hebrew and all this, and I can't tell you what this word and this word means, and what's the difference between this love and that love. How can I teach adults, children, easy? read him a Bible story, tell him what it means, sing some songs. Great, I'm good with that. But God says, no, I want to prune you to produce even better fruit. And so, here we are. We must determine to obey the Lord's commandments and to love him and others to do as he commands. So, in order to do God's commands, we have to follow His commands, and His commands are what? The great commandment is, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and love others as yourself. That's the key. To do that, we have to obey His commandments. So they feed into each other. We can't obey His commandments if we don't determine to obey His commandments. If we don't say, you know what, this is scary. I don't know if I like this. I don't feel comfortable here. But God wants me here. Forget the discomfort. Leave it to him. Let him do the work. Draw on him. It's not about me. I mean, you could ask my wife. I ask every Sunday afternoon, Monday, I'm like, Lord, what am I supposed to talk about next Sunday? I have no clue. And then, you know, Wednesday night, he'll show me a verse. The verse will pop up, might be in the middle, you know, Pastor Bright saying something. It's not even the main thing he's focusing on. And I'll see a verse, and I'll be like, slap. Oh, hey, look, let me write that down, right? About Thursday or so, Wednesday, Thursday, ideas will start popping in my head. And Saturday morning, I'll get up and I pray. I say, Lord, help me. I need to put these ideas in my head on paper to make some kind of sense. And I usually take about a couple hours or so, Saturday morning, and when I'm done, the Lord is giving me a message. It's not me. I'm not a wordsmith. I'm definitely not a wordsmith. Anybody knows me. I'm not a wordsmith. I don't even type that well. I still type with two fingers. I move from one to two fingers. I don't know how to use a keyboard. Never did know how to use a keyboard. I'm a hunter and pecker, and I know where to hunt now, and I can peck those numbers better. I use two fingers. I'm terrible. I'm slow at typing. It takes me forever. But God has given me two fingers. Maybe I should be a little bit more challenged and learn how to use all of them. I'm old and dumb, so I use two fingers. How do we bear fruit then? How can we, as soul-wide church, think about bearing fruit? What challenges do we have before us that God may be pruning us for? Maybe we have thought about it before, but maybe we're just kind of like, well, I'm not really sure. The best way for that little eagle to learn how to fly is when mama pushes him out of the nest, right? I made a joke in our deacon's meeting a couple weeks ago that pastor teaches discipleship by throwing you in the deep end of the pool, right? That teaches you how to swim. I'm going to teach you how to swim. OK, swim or die. That's your choice, right? And so we have this, but praise God, we have that, right? We have that. So what kind of things do we have? Well, one thing that we do that we've done forever, they've done it as long as I've been part of the church, I'm sure it was done a long, long time ago, is the evangelism, the outreach ministry. We do it now, Pastor Bright has Worked it out, so we go every second Sunday to go out standing out tracks, and that's uncomfortable Walking up to a complete stranger and handing them a track and not really knowing what their Reaction maybe could be a little scary. Okay now thankfully for most of us um Rejection looks like being ignored or just flat out refusing, walking on the other side of the street. When I was in England, we had a bunch of guys that, you know, every military church I had, it seems like God uses military guys, that's one of the fields he uses to call out preachers. And so we always, every church I've always been, there was a group of men that were categorized or called preacher boys. They weren't ordained, they weren't even in seminary, maybe some of them were taking some online courses for seminary, but they were military guys first, whether they're Air Force, Marine, Army, Navy, didn't really matter, they were preacher boys. And when I was in England, we had a bunch of these preacher boys and they would practice And the way they would practice is they would go down to the little English town that was close to our church and close to the base. And there would be four or five of them. And they would go in, and they would take turns preaching on the street corner, doing street corner preaching. And as the one was preaching, the other four or three or whatever would pass out traps. And one Sunday, they were there. And the one was preaching and the rest were passing out tracks. And one of the guys handed a track to a big burly Englishman. And the response of the Englishman was to come around with a roundhouse and punch him smack in the stomach. Doubled him over. He fell to the sidewalk. He's rolling around in pain. The guy kept walking. The other four look at him and say, are you okay? And they pick him up and he's holding his stomach. And instead of saying, well, that's enough. Let's go home for today. Or, you know, let's pack it in. I don't think I'm coming next week, guys. He held, holding his stomach, and this is a testimony that came from these groups, holding his stomach, he looked at them and he said, praise God, I can suffer for the cause of Christ. And he began handing tracks back out again with one arm on his belly, right? He survived, right? We don't have that. I mean, I've never seen anybody swing at, no one's ever swung at me, okay? I know when we were, when I was stationed at Kunsan, Pastor Stewart, there the haven would always tell us because there was a buddhist temple up behind the thing you'd always say never try to pass a track to a buddhist Monk because they will put a hurt on you They're all 10-degree black belts and they'll leave you a bloody spot on the sidewalk And so we never did right and he would tell stories about how he went out with a guy that was an evangelist there a Korean guy and he also knew Taekwondo and so they were handed out factual he handed one out to a monk and the monk went to kick him with a three-point kick, which is basically your head, your belly, and your legs, and take you out. And this guy knew the defense, so he just went, pah, pah, pah, and bounced it all off. And the monk stood there and looked at him in amazement, and then just turned around and ran away, because he knew he couldn't fight that. But you know, it's still. It's still scary, right? You go out and you pass out tracks. Are they going to accept it? You know, are they going to punch me? I don't know. Or what's even more scary? For me, what if they try to ask me questions and they ask me questions in Korean? I don't know Korean. What if I don't know the answers? What if they ask me in English and I still don't know the answers? That's scary. Maybe I'll just go home. Because it's too scary to go out and do evangelism outreach ministry. God makes us uncomfortable. So we will do it. And become more comfortable. And be more willing to reach out to people. Right? So, will you abide? That's the question. Are we a good disciple or a bad disciple? Are we going to obey? Are we going to go out on Second Sunday and pass out tracts, whether it's scary or not? God says, go ye unto all the world. That's the commandment. Are we going to obey? Or are we going to say, I can't do that? Well, you're not lying if you say that. I can't do it. None of us can. I can't do it. Christ does it through me. Christ is the power. Christ is the source of encouragement and courage. It's not me. I could say, I'm going to pass out trash. I could go six days a week. and not produce any fruit because I'm not using my own power. I'm not drawing on God's power, right? We have to abide. We have to submit to God. Here's another thing that's been in my head. We have several shut-ins in our church. We have others who, you know, they can't come to church. We have missionaries. We get missionary letters. Telling us about what they're doing and asking for general prayer requests and different things they got going on. Have you ever thought about writing a letter to the shut-ins? Just to say, hey, we love you, we're thinking about you. Is there anything we can pray for you? Do you have a need that we could be praying for you? Do we write missionaries personally and say, hey, we're praying for you. Do you have needs? Do you have anything you wanted? My last church, we had a group. It wasn't a group. It was like volunteers. Every missionary had a big folder. And you would go, I don't remember what it was, Thursday night or something at like 5 o'clock, and we would go to the church, and they would hand out these folders, and there was stationery in there, and there was envelopes in there. And we would write letters to the missionaries. Say, hey, we're praying for you. Our church is thinking about you. Is there anything you have? And I know you give prayer requests in your missionary letters, but is there anything specifically, some specific need that you would have us to pray for? And we would send those out. The church would mail those letters out, and we would get responses back. The missionaries knew that we, as a supporting church, cared about them. The pastor can write them and say, hey, we're praying for you. But are we praying for them, or is he praying for them? Maybe that's uncomfortable. Oh, I've got to write a letter to somebody I don't really know, to a missionary. Would that be helpful? Probably. Would it be helpful to a shut-in who doesn't get to see many visitors? And I know in Korea, you know, in America, we would just go to their house and knock on the door and talk to them or go visit them in the nursing home, and it doesn't work that way in Korea. The culture is you just don't walk up and come up to someone's house unannounced and say, hey, how are you doing? Or, you know, a lot of the nursing homes, you know, unless you're close relative, you can't get in to see them anyways. But we can send a letter and say, we're praying for you. We hope you're doing well. Be encouraged in the Lord. Right? Can we do these things? Are we willing to do those things? Here's another one. Most of the time we hand these out when visitors come to the church. This is the visitor card, right? Why do we hand these out? What's the purpose of handing out a visitor card? Well, you might say, well, they have a record of the visit, right? So, what's the record of the visit? Do we do it because, well, you know what? I've been in this church for 10 years and we've always handed these out when visitors come. It's a tradition. We hand them out. It's like a, glad that you're here. Here's a card, right? What if we had people sign, we fill these cards out, and there's a spot on here I think, should be, maybe, these are a little old, but put an email address on here. What if we collected these and someone from the church said, on Tuesday or so, sent an email and said, hey, dear whoever's name's here, we are glad you were with us in church on Sunday. We hope to see you again. But if you're just visiting or whatever, we want to say thank you for being part of our congregation on Sunday. And is there anything we can pray for you about? Is there any questions we can ask or answer for you? Do you have questions about our church? Are you seeking a church? Are there things that we can talk to you about? It takes like five minutes to write a little email like that. That's abiding. That's what produces fruit. Someone gets that email and says, oh, these people really care about me. They just didn't want me to write my name so they could put it on their Sunday school visitor count next week in the bulletin, right? They care about me. Maybe I will go back and visit that church that cares about me. Maybe I'll become involved. I'll join the church and I'll become involved and I will write people who come to visit because I remember what it was like to get that little email from that church that cared about me. But the next few minutes, or the next five minutes or so maybe, I gotta wrap it up, sorry. But I wanna talk about my table. My table, what are you talking about? Okay? In the New Testament, in Acts, I believe it's in Acts, the disciples, or now they're not the disciples, they're the apostles, are preaching the word of God. They're teaching the word of God They're caring for the people. They're trying to reach the lost. And a problem arises, because half the people are Jewish, and the other half are Greeks and Gentiles. And the Jewish guys are good at taking care of their own. They always have. That's their mindset. But the other people, the Gentiles, their widows were not being taken care of. And so the apostle said, look, it's not good for us to stop preaching, to stop reaching and giving the gospel out to take care of small matters within the church. We need to have other people to tend those tables. And so that's where the first deacons arose, right? Well, now that I've been elected a deacon, first thing I ask pastor is, what's my table? We as deacons are here to take some of the things away so he can worry about preaching, teaching, counseling, the things that pastors need to put their focus on. So what's my table? And he said, well, what you've already been doing, that's why I named you a deacon. You know, I nominated you as a deacon, and so my table is youth training. Training up the youth. And we have memes. Now, Proverbs 22, 6 says, train up a child in a way that they should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. And so the primary trainers, the primary people spoken to in this verse are obviously parents. And I had parents. And my parents taught me a lot of things. But my parents didn't teach me how to be a military guy, didn't teach me how to be a soldier. My drill sergeant did. My parents built a foundation, he built on it. My parents didn't teach me how to be a teacher. My professors at Bob Jones University taught me how to be a teacher. So, there's more than the parents. The parents are the core, but as a church, we have a duty, an obligation, a commandment to help train up a child in the way that they should go. And so, we have a big need, okay? Division in the need. In a month from now, we are going to need a nursery. We need nursery workers. And maybe some of you would say, well, that seems really hard. I'm not sure I could do that. It's not the power to do that. It doesn't come from you. Your part is to say, I'll do it, okay? We've been working with Sunday School and Junior Church for a number of years. We only have two people in children Sunday school and junior church and normally they don't show up for Sunday school. So we have two children in junior church. The problem is one is five and the other one is in fifth grade. It's kind of hard to teach them together because you're always trying to aim down the middle so the five-year-old is not rolling around on the floor because he's bored and the Sixth grader is not asleep because he's bored because you're talking to the five-year-old. So it might be an idea to divide a younger and a smaller group. But to do that, we need more workers. And where do we get the workers? We've been discussing maybe having a team ministry. We need workers for that. We've got two genes right now. It's all we got How do we build that well? we start with two and we Build more right we work on it, but we can't do it without workers God needs workers. Okay. We all talked about even going beyond maybe some single adult ministry But we need workers. We have needs. Do we want to produce fruit? Of course we do. How do we produce fruit? We abide. Growing will come if we abide. Saving souls will happen if we abide. So what are we looking at? What is the plan? Okay? Matthew 9, 37 and 38. We all know this verse, but let's look at this. Let's break this verse down. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is truly plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers. into his harvest. That's what I've been doing. That's what I'm going to continue to do. Praying to God that he will send out laborers. That people will hear the call and obey the call. And B, when we hear, we need Youth workers to work with our children in our church and our growing numbers of children in our church That when you hear this you could be like Isaiah in chapter 6 verse 8 and When he says, also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then I said, here I am, send me. That's my prayer, that there will be people that will hear the call. And as I'm praying, and I'll still be working, junior church, doing what I can. But I'll be praying that God will send workers, that God will lay upon the hearts of some of the people here at SBC to do the labor, to go to the fields. And that when they hear that, that instead of saying, oh, I can't do that. I don't think I can teach children. I don't know how to do that. Instead, they will Lean back into the vine. Draw that power that comes from the vine into themselves and say, here I am Lord, send me. I don't know if I can do it, but I'm willing to try if you give me the power. So that's what we're looking at. All right. So the questions that we have to end up on here is, who will go? Who will say, I will lead. I will lead this group. I will take care of this. I will do this with God's help. Who will step out and say, here I am. Send me. That's really when it starts. As far as youth ministry, you know my testimony. I was away from the Lord for many years. When I came back to the Lord, within a week, I was asked to work in the Awana program at the church. That's where I started. I was scared to death. What do you mean I'm supposed to work with youth and teach them memory verses and do this stuff? I can't do that. I don't know half that stuff. God said, don't worry about it. Just be willing to go. And that's where it all started. God provides the power to do what he commands. Our job is just to do it. And we do things not because it's always something that we want to do. And we might not want to do it. We might not feel comfortable doing it. It's not because we feel qualified. I don't feel qualified standing here this morning. But that's okay, because the qualification doesn't come from me. It comes from God. I go to God in prayer. He gives me the tools that I need. He prepares the field, right? Will you abide by going outside your comfort zone? That's the big question. So here's what we're going to do. Next Sunday after church, pastor has given me the opportunity to, we're going to meet in 101 right after church service. Those who would be willing to work somehow in one of our youth programs, whether it's, hey, I can help out with the nursery, because The thing is, if the new moms come to church and take care of their babies, at some point they're going to say, I can do this at home, why come to church? And we'll never see them again. And that's going to cause problems. So whether it's a nursery worker, whether it's working with the small children, working with the, you know, maybe we can divide it at third grades. We've got like three-year-olds. up to three year olds in the nursery and then three to second grade and then maybe a third grade to to Sixth grade something along that line so we can kind of focus on the appropriate age group if you're interested in doing that we're going to have a meeting so please come and I'll be in prayer this week first of all pray pray that If God would have you to do that, that you'd be willing to obey. So our conclusion of what we've talked about today. Fruit is the result of abiding, not the other way around. God provides the power to abide. We do not do the abiding. Or will we do the abiding? Or will we just sit there like that fig tree in Matthew 21? It's a choice, right? So, as I was wrapping up, God brought, I don't know, it's not really a poem, but it's something that I heard a long time ago. It's the story of the bodies. Has anyone ever heard the stories of the bodies? Okay? There is something to do. Anybody could have done it. Everybody agreed that it should be done. Somebody could have done it, but in the end nobody did it. Don't just be a body, abide. There's work to be done. It needs to be done. We should be about the Lord's business. Let's go ahead and pray. Lord Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for being with us. We pray that you would be with us as we ponder this lesson today. We pray that you would call workers that we could as individuals and as a church family abide in youth, that we could bring forth much fruit. Lord, we pray that you would be with us through the rest of this service today, be with our time of fellowship afterward, And Lord, we do pray that next week when we have our meeting, that we would have a good number of people willing to stand and say, here I am Lord, send me. In your name we pray. Amen.