"God Makes The Increase"

"And sow the fields, and plant the vineyards, which may yield fruits of increase." (Psalms 107:37)

 Yes, I might have gotten carried away; but there is something you should know about how I feel that the relationship between the husband and wife is kept secure: primarily, it is that the Lord is in the midst of the relationship, but if there is love lost between the husband and the wife, it is the husbands fault. Sorry if you don't agree with that, but if your wife loved you when you got married, then you messed up the love affair; the husband is called to love his wife as Christ loves the church; the wife is the one that responds to the love that she is given, just as the church responds to the love that Christ has poured out for her. Anywho, as you might have gathered by the closing Scripture yesterday, the River supplies life, even in the dead and lifeless sea. So if we have something to complain about and we feel that God has somehow passed us by and not given us fruit in our lives, then we need to go look in a mirror and complain to the one you see looking back at you. There is a source of life that we have been given and if we are not experiencing that source of life in our lives, then we are not tapped into it correctly; just like the marshes and swamps are still salty and not purified, there is something that is blocking the source from bringing life into your body of water. We plant seeds and we tend the seedlings, pulling out weeds and supporting the branches; but God gives the increase, He makes the increase to grow, He produces the fruit! The same thing is true in our marriages, where God produces the fruit of the relationship, but we must work the soil and tend to the mechanical parts of the relationship. Even in our ministries, at whatever level of ministry that you serve, you have a job to do, and that job requires that you maintain what is given to you, especially the fruit that God produces in your own life. How do we maintain the fruit in our lives? We stay connected to the source; just as the Scripture says, "There will be a new crop every month, for they are watered by the river flowing from the Temple." Jesus is that River...

"Then Haggai asked, "If someone becomes ceremonially unclean by touching a dead person and then touches any of these foods, will the food be unclean?" And the priests answered, "Yes." Then Haggai responded, "That is how it is with this people and this nation, says the LORD. Everything they do and everything they offer is defiled by their sin. Look at what was happening to you before you began to lay the foundation of the LORD'S Temple. When you hoped for a twenty-bushel crop, you harvested only ten. When you expected to draw fifty gallons from the winepress, you found only twenty. I sent blight and mildew and hail to destroy everything you worked so hard to produce. Even so, you refused to return to me, says the LORD. "Think about this eighteenth day of December, the day when the foundation of the LORD'S Temple was laid. Think carefully. I am giving you a promise now while the seed is still in the barn. You have not yet harvested your grain, and your grapevines, fig trees, pomegranates, and olive trees have not yet produced their crops. But from this day onward I will bless you."" (Haggai 2:13-19) NLT