Fruit Check

     I was thinking yesterday morning (shocker, I know!) about ways to encourage my children in their faith.  One thing that is a very hard balance for all Christians is works.  We know, or at least I hope we know, that we are saved by grace - not by anything we have done or could ever do, but only because of what Jesus has done.  We are saved because we acknowledge that He is King and Lord and we are His subjects.  The fine line comes when we realize that we need to act like it.  Acting like His subjects doesn't mean that we are living under the Law, but sometimes, we get to going through the motions and that's what it feels like.  We feel like we are trying to be "good enough."  On the other hand, we know that our "fruit" shows our faith.  We know that we are supposed to be producing fruit and that we can only produce fruit through Jesus Christ working in our lives.  So I thought, maybe we need to do a "fruit check" periodically, maybe even daily.  By this, I mean really taking a hard look at our lives and deciding if our fruit looks like it should.  And if it doesn't, maybe we need to be fixing our eyes more intently on Jesus.  If is does, then we can give Him the glory because we also need to remember that it only looks like His fruit if it is His fruit.