Well, if you're new, let me catch you up. There's a lot of people with allergies at 8.30.

And it's weird because usually the second service has all the coughing and y'all are bringing it today.

So, and also, if you're here visiting a graduate, welcome. I want to make sure that you're caught up to a conversation we've been having over the past couple of weeks called

eternal fruit. The Bible talks about the theme of bearing fruit for God from cover to cover.

In the book of Genesis, there's fruit symbolizing the life that God puts on the inside of us,

but there's also an invitation to produce fruit in and through your life.

You see this in the book of Revelation and where we're headed at the end of the story.

See this all over the ministry of Jesus using word pictures to describe what it means for us to be

united to him.

And one of the things that we've been saying repeatedly is we want to see the words eternal

fruit and eternal life as synonymous.

Because Jesus did not die and rise just to make you eternally conscious. Jesus died and rose to make your life fruitful

and meaningful. It's not just about existence. It's about being made fully alive in Christ.

And so we don't just want to claim that we're going to heaven when we die. We want to

bear much fruit through our lives in the here and now by being connected to Jesus through the

power of the Holy Spirit. And last week we had a conversation about the two forces that will

define what kind of fruit comes from your life. You know, no matter what, your life produces fruit.

Some of it's good, some of it's bad.

And that fruit is produced by a root that's either the Holy Spirit of God or your sinful flesh.

You and I are always operating and bearing fruit out of one of those sources. Our flesh being who we

used to be, who God redeemed us from being the part of us that wants to settle

for worldly pleasure and ambition, the envious, just longings of our sinful appetites that everybody has,

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