Fruit of the Vine

                Every lost person is desperately in need of real hope, for he has none.  Though he may laugh and smile and appear happy outwardly, there is a place somewhere in the core of his mind that knows that he is not right with God, and it is shrouded in a cloak of fear that he will not lift.  He is afraid to come to the light because he knows that his deeds are evil. The devil has made almost universal the lie that sinners must go to hell, so that the lost want to be anywhere in the world except where Christians congregate.

                When the Holy Spirit has prepared the ground, so to speak, the lost soul is often at the point of despair, and his desperation drives him to seek Him who is seeking him.  When a hopeless soul approaches a Christian, his spirit has become so troubled that he knows nowhere else to turn.  Nebuchadnezzar comes to mind, who was so tortured by his dreams that he feared to go to sleep.  The Holy Spirit is able to convict the most hardened sinner, bringing him to his knees in order to evoke the sort of painful introspection that ends in conviction.  The work is already done by the Holy Spirit, and all the Christian has to do is introduce that lost soul to a loving and merciful God.  Our job is to offer the only real hope that anyone has, the hope of eternity with God.  ours is the ministry of the word of reconciliation.

When a lost person comes to a Christian, he is literally lost.  He has reached the end of his reason, and has seen his own futility in everything to which he has put his hand.  He has been convicted in his own heart and mind, and his urgency is clanging and jangling in everything he sees or does.

We take such pride in our ministries when someone is saved under our counsel, but it is the Holy Spirit who has not only convicted the sinner, but supplied the Scriptures that secure his salvation.  If we but offer the hope of salvation, it will lead to eternal hope.  But if the Gospel is presented without faithful prayer, it will bear no fruit.  many times, Christians leave God out of the process, presuming to use their own wisdom and knowledge of the Scriptures to accomplish what only God can do.  Until the Spirit of God takes up His abode in a man, that man has no hope at all.  The hope of the Christian is eternal and certain, and cannot be taken away; nor can it fail.