TD Jakes - The Union Between Stability and Fruitfulness
God has predestined each person to exist and be planted in this world—you are not an accident, no matter your origins. Drawing from John 15:1-10, Jesus teaches that the Father removes unfruitful branches and prunes fruitful ones to produce more fruit, emphasizing that growth comes through enduring divine cuttings while abiding in Him.
You Are Not an Accident
He pre-designed for you to be here; you are not an accident. Maybe your mother rejected you, maybe your father would not hold you, maybe they did not stand by you, maybe somebody left you in a dumpster, maybe you were in a trash can, maybe you were put up for adoption. I do not care how your mother felt about you—you are not an accident to God.
God predestined, predetermined, and preordained for you to be on the earth. You are not an accident. My Father is the husbandman, which means you have been planted. All right? And now we begin to talk about this—it is interesting. Let us go a little bit further because I think this is going to be good.
Then Jesus says to his disciples, “Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away.”
Branches That Bear No Fruit
Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away. Every branch in me. First of all, Jesus has said that in order for you and me to hang out, you cannot just be around me—you have to be in me, you have to be engrafted, you have to be connected.
Every branch in me that beareth not fruit—he, being the Father, cuts it away. All right? He cuts it away. So you do not have to worry about it; the Father will cut it away. All those people in your life that are not really real, all those people in the church that are not really connected—you have no business cutting people away. You do not know what you are doing.
You can cut away somebody that God wants. You can cut away somebody who is under attack—they have got blight, they have got worms, they have got disease—but that does not mean they are not real. So many times when you feel like you have been deputized to cut people out, you have made a mistake. That is the Father’s job to handle that. He knows who to cut out; he knows who to let in.
Pruning the Fruitful Branches
And Jesus said every branch in me that beareth not fruit he cutteth it away. What does he do? He cuts it away. And every branch in me that beareth fruit he purges it that it may bring forth more fruit. So the second category: even if you are fruitful, you go through cuttings.
Now that is important for you to understand, because a lot of times you remember when the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Who sinned, this boy’s father or his mother, that he should be born blind?” And Jesus said neither, but for the glory of God. We are always looking for somebody to blame, and whenever there is a cutting in our life—somebody dies, somebody leaves, somebody divorces, somebody hurts us—we always need somebody to blame because we are always trying to intellectualize divine providence.
Providence cannot be intellectualized. It just is what it is. And Jesus said, every branch in me that beareth fruit he purges it that it may bring forth more fruit.
Jealousy and the Reality of Cutting
Now I want to stop here for a moment and deal with something that is pervasive amongst people that hang out together—groups, clubs, families, churches, committees, sororities, offices. And that is a thing called jealousy. Jealousy is born when one person feels like they go through things that other people do not go through and they feel like life is unfair to them.
But this text is quite clear: everybody gets cut. Some people get cut completely off, some people get cut back, but nobody in this story goes without being cut. Everybody goes through cuttings in life, all right? So every branch in me that beareth fruit he purges it that it may bring forth more fruit.
Now both of them got cut, but one of them got cut to kill and the other one got cut to increase, all right? So if you are going to grow, you are going to grow through the cutting to increase. You are going to grow because you have been purged; you are going to grow because there have been times in your life that you have been cut back.
Growth Comes Through Pain
I hate to tell you this: dancing does not make you grow, shouting does not make you grow, rejoicing in the Lord does not make you grow. I know everybody has been teaching this, but praising God does not make you grow. What causes you to grow is when you endure chastisement, when you endure being cut back, when you endure being purged—that is what causes you to grow.
It is not the good times that make you grow; it is the bad times that make you grow—the hard times, the painful times, the lonely times, the frustrating times, the tearful times. Those are the times that really cause you to grow.
And God says, if you are growing and you are doing pretty good, the reward is I am going to cut you back. Yeah, that is how I reward you. I am not going to let you stay at the level you are at. I cut you that you might bring forth more fruit.
Now listen to the love that is in there. At first I do not feel any love in there. My mother used to tell me, “I am whipping you because I love you.” I had a hard time with that because I thought if you really love me you will put that switch down, okay?
But God is basically saying the same thing: I am cutting you because I love you. What do you mean by that? I am cutting you because I love you too much for you to be satisfied with producing on this level when I created you to produce on that level. And so I have to cut you back on the level that you are producing on so that you can discover that you can do more than where you are.
That is good, is it not? I think if I sat down right now I have said a whole lot. I think if I stop right there I have already said something to you that caused you to grow. Because we have a tendency to become satisfied with average.
The Necessity of Cutting for More Fruit
But Jesus said every branch in me that beareth fruit I purge it that it might bring forth more fruit. So if you are fruitful and you want to bring forth more fruit, you have to be willing to go through cuttings in order to get to the place that you become more fruitful.
Let us talk about fruit. My children—I have five children—they are the fruit of our marriage. They are the fruit of our marriage. They are not just the fruit of me; they are the fruit of the marriage, the fruit of the union between my wife and I. The offspring is fruit.
Anytime you know there has been fruit, there has been relationship. Unless you are the Virgin Mary, if you are pregnant, there has been relationship. Even in nature, if there is going to be peach trees and peaches on them, the bees are going to cross-pollinate between one blossom to the other because fruitfulness is the result of relationship.
You cannot be fruitful and not be relational, okay?
Fruitfulness Requires Relationship
So if you are going to be fruitful as a child of God, you have to have a relationship with God—not with church, not with your pastor, not with the bishop, but a relationship with God, where you are in communion with him. And the offspring of that communion is fruit.
I can look at my children and hear them talking, and I can hear my wife talking and I can hear me talking. Sometimes they sound just like their mother; sometimes they sound just like me. You know why? We did not do it by ourselves. So there is a little bit of her in them and there is a little bit of me in them.
And so it is with relationship. As God’s Spirit gets together with your spirit, the fruit that is born in your life is going to have a little bit of both in it in order for it to be effective.
We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency may be of God and not of us. Are you hearing what I am saying? So you need not think that it is going to be all God and none of you, or all you and none of God.
The fruitfulness that occurs in your life requires a collaborative effort between the two. You cannot sit back and do absolutely nothing and pray and say if it is the Lord’s will, I am going to have it. No, this is fruit—you have to be involved.
Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up. You have to be involved; you have to be connected. God is not going to do it arbitrarily without you; he is going to do it with you. These children are going to be born through the union between you and God. They are fruit.
Wanting More Fruit
Now, if you do not understand that, you might as well close your Bible. Everything else is gone. And a lot of Christians do not understand that. They spend all their life praying, O God, keep praying to God, asking God to do things, and they do not know that they are not waiting on God—God is waiting on them.
Because God is requiring something of you in order for you to be fruitful. Every branch in me that beareth fruit I purge it—he purges it, meaning the Father—that it might bring forth more fruit.
Somebody say, more fruit. If you want more fruit—and there is nothing wrong with wanting more—stop allowing people to make you feel bad because you want more. If you suspect that your potentials exceed your position right now, if you think that you have more potential to go to the next level than where you are right now, shout, more fruit.
When you shout more fruit, you are saying to yourself, I want my capacity to grow to the level of my vision. I do not want to believe on one level and live on another level. I want more fruit—not because I am greedy, not because I am arrogant, not because I am self-consumed, not because I am a narcissistic maniac. I want more fruit because I would hate to live and die and never reach the potential I was created to reach.
Abiding in the Vine
So Jesus says, just because you are connected to me does not mean I will not cut you. I will cut you back; you will suffer loss. When you purge something, you cut back even some of the fruit.
Some of you have lost some things you know God gave you, and you cannot for the life of you figure out how God could take away something like that when you knew it was of God and he gave it to you. You are right. He did give it to you, but he taketh it away that it might bring forth more fruit. There is more coming.
I know you are grieving, I know you are hurting, I know your heart is broken, I know your emotions are confused—you may even be angry at God. I get that; I understand that. But God would not be cutting you back if he did not have more for you.
To those of you who are just joining us, we are in the gospel of St. John, chapter 15, verses 1-10. In these ten verses we are discussing the union between stability and fruitfulness. Right now we are just talking about fruitfulness—what it takes to be fruitful, the submission that we have to have to the cutting process.
Everybody has submission to the success part. To the conquering part we all say yes. To the cutting part we say oh no, I do not want that part. God says you cannot be a conqueror if you cannot endure the cutting.
There are crushing moments in life. Right now America is going through a crushing, Italy is going through a crushing, China is going through a crushing, Los Angeles is going through a crushing, New York is going through a crushing—individuals in that city are going through a crushing.
Nobody enjoys going through a crushing, but at the end of the crushing we ought to come out better than we were before, not equal to where we were before. We want to go from fruit to more fruit, ultimately to much fruit. Are you with me so far?
The Command to Abide
Oh, it is getting to the good stuff now. Then he says, “Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in me.”
I want you to underline every time you see the word abide. Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in me. Abide, abide, abide. We keep hearing it all over again.
Abide—to be stable, to be steadfast, to be unmovable, to get to one place and stay there.
I cannot tell you how many people I see who are not successful today because they try everything and end up with nothing. All you have to do is go on people’s Instagram page and read their bio: I am a photographer, a biologist, a chemist, an artist, a preacher, and a motivator. How are you going to be all of that at 21?
You cannot be everything; you have to narrow it down to something. Jumping from thing to thing looking for immediate success will always lead to failure. You have to stick to one thing long enough to be fruitful.
Stability Is Essential for Fruitfulness
Just because you started something and it does not immediately respond to you the way you imagined does not mean it will not bless you if you do not invest in it. Invest time, energy, money, training—preparing yourself to be as excellent as you think you are.
There is often a gulf between how good you think you are and how good you really are. A lot of times people deceive themselves into thinking that they are better at something than they really are. That is why you need some people in your life who can tell you the truth.
Notice that Jesus does not talk about stability and abiding in him until he has brought up cutting. He knows you are going to stay as long as you are blossoming, as long as all your bills are paid and everything is falling into place. But I need you to be stable when you are confused and disappointed and hurt and you do not see the benefit.
You have to endure those times in your life when your gifts are not celebrated. Part of your ability requires that you need to be able to appreciate somebody else being on the stage.
The challenge sometimes is to be so committed and so focused on what God called you to do that you are stable. Through the divorce, I want you to be stable. Through the layoff, I need you to be stable. When your heart is broken, I want you to be stable.
You stay, you abide, you hold on, you endure, you fight back—because you cannot be fruitful if you are not stable. You cannot be fruitful if you are flighty.
From Fruit to Much Fruit
Then Jesus says, I am the vine and ye are the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.
Now whether you noticed or not, we went from fruit, more fruit, to much fruit. In just a few verses we kept graduating exponentially from fruit to more fruit to much fruit. And we can only get there if we are stable.
You will never see what you could be if you quit. You will never lose weight if you quit. You will never own a house if you quit. You will never get your degree if you quit. You have to stay with it when you feel like I am a failure, I am not good enough.
Without Me You Can Do Nothing
I am the vine, ye are the branches; he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit, for without me ye can do nothing.
You did not get there by yourself. You cannot run it by yourself, you cannot raise those kids by yourself, you cannot hold that marriage together by yourself. Without me, you cannot do it.
You still did not do it by yourself. You might not have acknowledged him, but he helped you get where you are going. He says without me you can do nothing.
So the important thing for you to maintain is not to become more attached to the gifts than you are to the giver—not to become more attached to the blessing than you are to the blesser.
That admission of humility is worship. Lord, without you I can do nothing. This is Prayer 101: admitting your own limitations, humbling yourself before God.
This is Jesus’s summary to his disciples. He is getting ready to leave them physically and he says without me you can do nothing. In the same breath he said I am going away—but I will be with you in the spirit.
All you have to do is abide in me and my Word abide in you, and I have got the rest of it covered.