Blessing and Fruitfulness

Dannah Gresh: According to Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, there are some important signs to look for in your walk with God.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Where there is life there will be fruitfulness. That is the result of Christ’s life, His Word, His Spirit flowing in us, filling us, and then flowing through us to others. 

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Adorned, for November 30, 2023. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Everyone longs to have a life full of purpose and meaning, and as followers of Jesus, we want our lives to be useful in advancing the kingdom of God. Today, Nancy shows us what a life of fruitfulness looks like, and what God has to say about it. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy: Well, for nearly twenty-five years now, Revive Our Hearts has been calling women to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ. If you’ve been hanging around with us for a while, you know those three words, and you’ve come to appreciate and enjoy them as I do: freedom in Christ, fullness in Christ, and fruitfulness in Christ.

Over the month of December coming up here, we want to concentrate on that subject of “fruitfulness.” Over the next several weeks, you’re going to be hearing some testimonies here on Revive Our Hearts from women who are being fruitful in different seasons of life.

Some are young, some are older, some are learning what it means to be fruitful in the midst of painful or difficult circumstances. Some have horrific backgrounds, and they are trying to understand how to be fruitful in spite of some of the things they have experienced in their past.

I think you’re going to be encouraged and challenged to believe God to make you fruitful in whatever season of life He finds you in right now. So today and tomorrow, I want to introduce this concept of fruitfulness. We’re going to see what it looks like in Creation, in the natural world, and also what it means to be fruitful as a part of God’s new creation through Jesus Christ.

But before we get to all that, let’s see what the dictionary has to say about fruitfulness. I looked it up in several dictionaries, and let me share some of the results that I found that I think are helpful. First of all, Webster’s 1828 Dictionary—that’s the original Webster’s dictionary—says that fruitfulness means, “very productive; producing fruit in abundance.” It also means, “prolific; bearing children, not barren.” So, giving life, being a life-giver, this is fruitfulness. 

And then another dictionary said fruitfulness means, “fertile; producing good or helpful results; beneficial; profitable; producing many offspring.” Of somebody who has many children you would say, “Wow, they have been really fruitful!”

Another online dictionary said this, and I thought it was so helpful: “Fruitful activity multiplies or adds to what is already there, producing more of something.” So, we all do a lot of activity; we do a lot of things. The question is, “Are we doing fruitful activity?” How do you know if it’s fruitful? If it’s fruitful, it will multiply or add to what’s already there, producing more of something. 

Well, as we’re going to see in God’s Word, He wants us to produce more of something. That “something” is the life, the heart, and the spirit of Jesus through our lives as we become fruitful.

The concept of being fruitful or bearing fruit is introduced on the very first page of the Bible. We also see it on the last page of the Bible, and many, many times in between! But to get us started on this little couple-day overview of fruitfulness in the Scripture, let me invite you to turn in your Bible—or scroll to it if you don’t have an actual Bible handy—to the book of Genesis, chapter 1, the first page of the Old Testament. 

I want to show you the concept of fruitfulness from the very beginning (in fact, Genesis means “beginning.”) So in the beginning of things, God intended that every living thing should be fruitful.

So, look at Genesis 1, first of all verses 11 and 12: 

Then God said, “Let the earth produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds.” And it was so. The earth produced vegetation: seed-bearing plants according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

So when God made these trees, these shrubs, these plants, He made them in such a way that they were to bear fruit. In the fruit they bore there would be more seeds so that that fruit could produce more fruit. Fruit bearing that would go from one generation to the next.

So these trees, this vegetation, they were not just to exist for themselves. They were designed, they were created, to multiply, to be productive, to produce more just like themselves. The concept is introduced in verse 11 of the first chapter of the Bible.

Now, it wasn’t just plants and trees that were to be fruitful. If you go to verses 20–21 in chapter 1: 

Then God said, “Let the water swarm with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.” So God created the large sea-creatures and every living creature that moves and swarms in the water, according to their kinds. He also created every winged creature according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 

Now as we come to verse 22, notice the connection between God’s blessing and fruitfulness. So God made these birds, these living creatures, these large sea creatures—He made them with life. And then, verse 22, God blessed them, and He said to them: “Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the waters of the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.” 

So God created these birds, these sea creatures, He blessed them and part of His blessing was that they would be multiplied, they would produce others like themselves. And it wasn’t just plants and trees and animals that were to be fruitful.

As we continue in the creation account in Genesis 1, we see that human beings (that’s us), that we were created and commanded to be fruitful. Look at verse 28 in Genesis chapter 1. After God created male and female in His image, 

God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful [that’s the second time we’re seeing that connection—be blessed and be fruitful], multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it.” 

They were blessed to be a blessing. We have been blessed to be fruitful, to multiply, to reproduce.

 

We have been blessed to be fruitful, to multiply, to reproduce.

We were not created just to be consumers, but to be producers—reproducers—to be fruitful! And this is emphasized throughout the book of Genesis. We’ve already seen the connection between God’s blessing and fruitfulness in Genesis 1. 

If you turn to Genesis 9 you’re going to see this same concept after the world was destroyed in the flood. Let me give you some examples. Genesis 9, verse 1: 

God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” 

Do you feel like you’ve read that somewhere before? You have. This is God’s design, God’s plan.

And then in Genesis chapter 17:6 God said to Abram, 

“I will make you extremely fruitful and will make nations and kings come from you.” 

So, He wasn’t going to produce just a little bit of fruit. He was going to produce—supernaturally, by God’s enabling—a lot of fruit: “extremely fruitful.”

I read that and I think, Oh Lord, I want to be a woman who is extremely fruitful! We’ll talk more about what that looks like in just a moment. But in Genesis 35:11 God said to Jacob, 

“I am God Almighty. Be fruitful and multiply. A nation, indeed an assembly of nations, will come from you, and kings will descend from you.”

And then in Genesis 48:3-4, Jacob says to his son, Joseph: 

“God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me. He said to me, ‘I will make you fruitful and numerous; I will make many nations come from you, and I will give this land as a permanent possession to your future descendants.’”

Fruitfulness suggests that there will be a future, and there will be descendants, and they will be multiplied. So it’s not just us taking up space here and breathing air and doing life, but us giving life to others! We’ve been blessed by God to bless others.

As we come to Genesis 49, we see that as Jacob is dying he gives a blessing to his sons. He passes on this blessing. He has been fruitful, his father was fruitful. Now he wants his son and his son’s children to be fruitful.

So Jacob says to his son Joseph (one of his twelve sons, and his beloved son Joseph):

“Joseph is a fruitful vine, a fruitful vine beside a spring; its branches climb over the wall.” (v. 22) 

Doesn’t that sound just beautiful!? 

Like a garden here, a fruitful garden, this vine that is next to a spring, it’s drawing its life from the water of that spring. Its branches are extending; they’re climbing over a wall. We’re not just staying in this little box of who we are and who we want to be, but we’re spreading. We’re multiplying; we’re producing and giving life to others!

Now that blessing in Genesis 49 sounds so picturesque, so idyllic—just this beautiful, fruitful life. But as we look in Scripture we see that sometimes we’re called to be fruitful in hard places, and there are hints of this early on in the Scripture.

For example, in Genesis 41:52, Joseph named his second son Ephraim. He said (talking about the meaning of that name Ephraim), “God has made me fruitful [where?] in the land of my affliction.” Joseph had suffered a lot. He had been mistreated, he had been treated unjustly, he had had a difficult life!

But he named this son a word that means, “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” Do you know what that says to me? Fruitfulness in my life, in yours, is not dependent on our circumstances. People who live in hard places can still be fruitful, by God’s grace.

Here’s another example: Genesis 47:27. “The nation of Israel settled in the nation of Egypt . . .” (It’s a long story about how they got there.) “They acquired property in it and became fruitful and very numerous.” So they were not in their homeland, they were transplanted to Egypt. But in Egypt they were fruitful, and as a result of their multiplying and being fertile, they ended up in an oppressed place, persecuted by the Egyptians. You can be fruitful in a hard place. 

You see this same thought in Exodus chapter 1:7. It says,

The Israelites were fruitful, [they] increased rapidly, [they] multiplied, and became extremely numerous so that the land was filled with them.

When the land of Egypt became filled with Israelites, the Egyptians got scared! And that welcoming hospitality that the Israelites had experienced when they first went to Egypt turned to opposition and persecution. And yet that’s where God placed them for that time and He made them fruitful, He prospered them.

As I was just reading that verse, “The Israelites were fruitful, increased rapidly, multiplied, and became extremely numerous so that the land was filled with them,” I just had this picture cross my mind, of what if the people of God, what if women of God who listen to Revive Our Hearts—who have been blessed by it, who grow from it—what if God blessed our lives in such a way that we “multiplied, and increased rapidly, and became extremely numerous so that the land was filled with” women, men, people of God who know God, who love God, who walk with Him.

What happened to the Israelites is a picture of what could happen in times of revival as God multiplies the fruitfulness of our lives! That’s what we long for! We long for women everywhere talking about Jesus, promoting the gospel, sharing the gospel with others, being light and salt and influencing their homes, their workplaces, their churches, their communities until the land is filled with the beauty of Christ shining through fruitful believers! It’s a vision we have for Revive Our Hearts. It’s God’s vision for His Church, so that one day “the glory of the Lord [will cover the earth], as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14).

How does it happen? How does it start? By you and me being fruitful believers! Now, in the Old Testament, fruitfulness is promised to God’s people mostly in relation to the land, crops, and physical offspring. Mostly when you read about fruitfulness in the Old Testament, that’s what it’s talking about.

So for example, in Leviticus chapter 26:3–4 God says, “If you follow my statutes and faithfully observe my commands, I will give you rain at the right time, and the land will yield its produce . . .” You can’t have good harvests if you don’t have rain. So God says, “I am going to bless the land physically; I’m going to give you a physical harvest.” “. . . and the trees of the field will bear their fruit . . . I will turn to you, make you fruitful and multiply you” (vv. 3–4, 9). 

The fruit that this passage is talking about is related to the land, the rain, the sun, the crops, the physical offspring. That’s mostly the vision of fruitfulness in the Old Testament.

Another example of that is in Deuteronomy chapter 7, beginning in verse 13: “[God] will love you, bless you, and multiply you.” Blessing and fruitfulness, they go hand-in-hand. We’ve been blessed to be a blessing, blessed to multiply. 

He will bless your offspring, and the produce of your land—your grain, new wine, and fresh oil—the young of your herds, and the newborn of your flocks, in the land he swore to your ancestors that he would give you. (Deut. 7:13)

You see the vision there is for physical fruitfulness: a land, produce, harvest. “God will bless your offspring. He will give you children. He will give them children. He will give you grain and wine and oil and herds and flocks.” That’s the example, the evidence, of fruitfulness found mostly in the Old Testament.

Psalm 105, verse 24 says: “The Lord made his people very fruitful; he made them more numerous than their foes.” You remember this in Egypt when the Israelite women were having babies and the Egyptian king—Pharaoh—said, “Stop them from having babies!” But the women kept having babies. God made them fruitful (see Ex. 1:16). 

And that’s what the psalmist is talking about in Psalm 105: “[God] made his people very fruitful; he made them more numerous than their [enemies].” We see another example of this concept of physical fruitfulness in Psalm 128:1–2.

I’m reading here from the English Standard Version, I think it’s helpful. It says, “Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands. . .” So here you are, you’re walking with the Lord. God blesses you and then He makes you fruitful! 

“You [will] eat [of] the fruit of the labor of your hands, you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house.” God says, “I’m going to bless you with children.” 

Now, God did not bless every believing Jew with children. We have many illustrations in the Scripture of women who longed for children and were barren. They were not able to have children in some cases until God supernaturally intervened to give them children.

So He’s not saying that every woman who loves God will have children or will have many children. Some women who love God will never be called by God to marry. They may not have biological or physical children. Some women who are married are not able to give birth to biological children.

But God is saying, “Looking at the nation, one of the evidences of My blessing in the people of Israel is that you will be physically productive.” You will have offspring. And so,” your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house, and your children” there’s an assumption that many of these women, most of these women, will have children “will be like young olive trees around your table” (Psalm 128:3).

What are young olive trees going to do? They’re going to grow up and become older. And what are they going to produce? More olives. So He’s saying this fruitfulness thing is a generational thing passed from one generation to the next.

“You will be blessed so you can be fruitful so you can be a blessing to the next generation. . .and they will be blessed and they will become fruitful so they can become a blessing to the next generation.” This is how the family of God is supposed to multiply in the world. We see a picture of this in how God made His people productive in the Old Testament.

And then Psalm 128:4–5, continuing in that passage: “Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you from Zion!” What is he saying? “May the Lord make you fruitful, may He make you productive, may He give you children!”

And He says, “May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. [May] you see your children's children!” (v. 6). You see, physical children are a blessing from the Lord. But all of this is going to point to a bigger family, the family of God, and how the heart of God and the gospel are reproduced from one generation to the next.

So this physical fruitfulness was a picture in the Old Testament of a deeper, more enduring kind of fruitfulness. And this is where we learn about the life of the righteous, those who are in Christ. We learn that those who are righteous will live fruitful lives.

They may not have a lot of children, they may not have a lot of land, they may not have a lot of material wealth, but they will be spiritually fruitful and rich, and they will pass that heritage—that inheritance, that legacy—down to their spiritual children and grandchildren.

So look at the first psalm in the Old Testament, Psalm 1. It’s talking about a righteous person who meditates on the law of the Lord. His focus, his heart, his connection is to the Lord. And it says, “He [will be] like a tree planted beside flowing streams that bears its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers” (v. 3).

So there you see it moving from the physical fruitfulness to talk about the spiritual reproduction of a man or woman who fears the Lord and walks with Him. The point is, where there is life there will be fruitfulness. That is the result of Christ’s life, His Word, His Spirit flowing in us, filling us and then flowing through us to others. 

We’re not supposed to sit like bumps on a log and just enjoy our sweet relationship with God, our sweet time at church, and just let all the rest of the world go to hell while we’re enjoying the gospel and Christ. No!

God wants us to be bearing fruit as we walk with Him. As our hearts become tuned to Him and we meditate on His law, we will bear fruit in the appropriate season. Our leaf will not wither, whatever we do will prosper.

You see a similar concept in Jeremiah chapter 17, beginning in verse 7: “The person who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence indeed is the Lord, is blessed.” Now, you tell me. We’ve been looking at the connection between blessing and fruitfulness. So when it says this person who trusts in the Lord is blessed, what do you think is going to be the result of that blessing?

He will be like a tree planted by water: [I think you’ve heard this before] it sends its roots out toward a stream, it doesn’t fear when heat comes, and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought [and it will not] cease producing fruit. (Jer. 17:8)

This is the life of a person who trusts the Lord, who relies on the Lord for his righteousness and for his salvation. This is a picture of a person who is alive spiritually, and the evidence is that he is bearing spiritual fruit. He doesn’t just do it in good times, he does it in hard times. In a year of drought, when the heat comes, he will never cease producing fruit! 

So, just some takeaways from what we've looked at so far today about fruitfulness. We’ve learned that God blessed His creation—plants, animals, and people—to be a blessing. We were created to be fruitful, to bear fruit, to be productive, to multiply, and to reproduce. 

Spiritual fruitfulness is the result. It’s the overflow of our union with Christ and His Word. That’s what we saw in Psalm 1. The person who meditates on the law of the Lord, the righteous person, as we walk with God we will be fruitful. The person who trusts in the Lord—Jeremiah 17—that person will be fruitful.

So spiritual fruitfulness doesn’t just happen. You can’t just say, “Oh, I’m going to produce spiritual fruit” but you don’t have a life that is walking with God. Spiritual fruitfulness is the result, the overflow, of our union with Christ and His Word. As you walk with Christ in the light of His Word, He will make you spiritually fruitful!

And then, just one more reminder from what we’ve seen in God’s Word today: Our fruitfulness is not dependent on our circumstances; it’s not dependent on what’s going on around us; it’s not dependent on whether we have people to encourage us in our faith or to help us grow. 

We need those things, but spiritual fruitfulness is not dependent on anything or anyone other than the Giver of life Himself, the Lord Jesus, the God who made us to be fruitful. 

And we can be fruitful in the midst of adversity, in the midst of those hot summer days. In the midst of drought, where there hasn’t been rain, God can make us fruitful even in the land—as Joseph said about his son [Ephraim], “God has made me fruitful in the land [or the place] of my [adversity].” (Genesis 41:52).

You may feel like you’re in a place like Joseph today—that fruitful vine hanging over the wall near the stream, and it may feel like bearing fruit, fruitfulness, is just easy right now. More likely, you’re finding that it’s challenging, and you wonder, How can I be fruitful in this place?

Well, we will be fruitful as we cling to Christ, as we trust in Him, as we soak in His Word, as we let Him produce His fruit in us. And then the expression of that will be, our lives will have an impact. We’ll bear fruit in the lives of others and we will never cease to produce fruit for the glory of God!

That’s what you were made for, that’s what I was made for. And I want to challenge you to say, “Lord, make me fruitful. I want to be fruitful. I want to have a fruitful life and walk with You!” 

And Lord, would You make it so? In this season, whatever that looks like, for my friend listening today . . . In my season of life, in each age, in each complex place, in each challenging moment, would You produce Your fruit in us and would You produce Your fruit through us? For your glory I pray, in Jesus’ name, amen.

Dannah: Amen. Well, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been explaining the concept of fruitfulness, showing us how the Bible describes truly fruitful people. Don’t you want that for your life?

Tomorrow is the first day of December. Can you even believe it!? As Nancy mentioned, our theme for the month will be Fruitful in Every Season. Our desire at Revive Our Hearts is to help you uncover God’s grace for every season in your life.

We do that through this daily program, through our resources, through our international outreaches, through the Revive Our Hearts blog, and through our various podcasts. And right now I’m inviting you to be a part of calling others to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ, because we can’t do it without the prayers of God’s people, along with their financial support.

Would you consider making a donation to Revive Our Hearts? When you do, your gift will be doubled, thanks to the generosity of a group of friends who also believe in calling women to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness.

And on top of that, we’ll say thank you by sending you a copy of Unremarkable, Volume 2. This book from Revive Our Hearts contains the inspiring stories of ten different women who felt unremarkable, but who said “yes” to what God was calling them to do. And as a result, they accomplished amazing things for Him!

When the book first came out last spring, it was only available as a digital download, but now we have paper copies that we can mail to you. Be sure to ask about it when you contact us to make your donation. To do that, visit ReviveOurHearts.com or call us at 1-800-569-5959. 

Today Nancy talked a lot about fruitfulness and how much we should all want it. But you can learn a lot about something by studying its opposite, too. That’s exactly what she’ll do tomorrow. I’m Dannah Gresh, inviting you back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is calling you to freedom, fullness, and yes, fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the CSB unless otherwise noted.
 

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