Fruit of The Vine

Your flesh clings to its sin appetite out of desperate survival. But a heart once turned over to Jesus Christ is a heart forever entrusted to our Lord. On a very special Fruit of the Vine podcast, visit with your hosts Andrea and Ann Marie from the Charisma Podcast Network. They chat with Andrea's son-in-law José Colón as he discusses his season of trial during which the Lord showed him that he knew that he knew Jesus had been guiding his every step and every moment without ceasing, regardless of any season of pain or difficulty, since he gave his life to Jesus as a boy.

God is our Protector and Provider when we turn to Him and seek and accept His grace and ever-flowing abundant blessing. United States Marine José Colón is a protector, too, honorably and bravely standing in the gap like the rest of our military services ensuring our homeland remains free. But shortly after getting married and moving overseas to serve in Romania, José blew out his left knee. What would have been a routine ligament treatment cycle became a crisis of severe clotting and an extended hospital stay in a foreign country. But God's hand never left José for a single nanosecond. Without that uncomfortable visit to a Romanian hospital—quite different from the standards Americans are familiar with—José might have taken the scheduled airline flight back home for continued treatment, a decision that would have dangerously exacerbated his left leg's condition and certainly resulted in José death. God was honoring Jos�'s faithful prayers each day, eventually leading him to new levels of faith and freedom through Jesus. Our Lord exchanged Jos�'s "I need to handle it myself" mentality for the Holy Spirit's renewing grace and a new heart's ability to extend his hands and accept all of God's blessings.

God gives His grace in overwhelming surplus. He offers His grace in amounts that we can never understand and never be shocked by. But we don't grasp it. Give yourself a few minutes with the Fruit of the Vine podcast and your hosts Andrea and Ann Marie from the Charisma Podcast Network.

Grace overcomes everything including sin. Especially sin! Grace is the explosive fuel that energizes our faith and hope and love. But—most people, including believers, don't get it. They don't take the time to understand how powerful God's grace is. That God's grace is the wonder working power available inside every Christ follower.

God's Word is not a magic trick or a mysterious spell to cast over a moment or a person, it is the living water of God's grace and the reason we must speak words of life and truth. This is why each day the believer should be praying God's Word over their lives. More specifically, begin praying His hedge of protection of His angels around you each morning. Pray over your life including your family members, your coworkers, your neighbors, and God's purpose for your life that you're walking through. We must be ready to give an account of every word we have spoken in every moment of our lives on our Judgment Day. Grace enables us to be able to do what we cannot otherwise do in our own weak, fallen flesh's power.

Walk in God's abundant grace. 

"For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God," Romans 3:23. God invites His children to partake of the full breadth and depth of His glory composed of His character, His acts, His attributes, who He is, and what He does. Come revel in the Bride's feast set by our Father in heaven for all eternity. Invest few minutes in a visit with the Fruit of the Vine podcast and your co-hosts Andrea and Ann Marie from the Charisma Podcast Network.

God created us for relationship with Him. We are His joy—if and when we give Him our attention. We cause God His joy through connection, living in relationship with Him beyond a few two-minute prayers a week and maybe fifty-five minutes sitting in a church pew on the occasional Sunday morning.

Our faith makes up the relationship He longs for with us when we live it actively like a verb. God wants connection with His children exactly the same way any parent misses their children when they haven't seen them nor heard their voices in a little while. He adores the moments to feel like that precious piece of a parent's heart when the children aren't far away. That's what God wants every moment of every day, to see us and hear us and adore each one of us in His presence.

Our Father in heaven longs to lavish us in His glory—and we have no better way to glorify His holy name than by accepting and living faith and choosing morning by morning to build our lives on His Word, obey His truth, and walk in our God-given position of victory, truth, and faith.

"For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God," (Romans 3:23.)  to accepting small snacks when God gave us Christ on the cross so we can revel in the buffet feast of His blessings for all eternity. Take a few minutes and pay yourself by investing in a visit with the Fruit of the Vine podcast, with your co-hosts Andrea and Ann Marie from the Charisma Podcast Network.   God created us for His joy. How do we cause God His joy for which He created us? Connection.    Relationship. This is why "religion" unto itself is a dead end road, but "faith" is a relationship when lived as a verb instead of an abstract concept. God wants connection with His children exactly the same way any parent misses their kiddos and longs for time with them to see them and hear them and be among them, and have a moment to feel like that precious pieces of their parent's heart isn't quite so far away for a little while.    That's what God wants every moment of every day, longing to see us and listen to us and adore His kids in His presence. Our Father in heaven longs to lavish us in His glory—and we have no better way to glorify His holy name then by accepting and walking in and living His glory, choosing morning by morning  to build our lives on His Word, obey His truth, and walk in our God-given position of victory, truth, and faith.

Godly friendships are among our Lord's most precious blessings. Connecting with God's other children gifts us the opportunity to present Jesus to other people, to lend a hand in return for grace. Visit with Charisma Podcast Network's Fruit of the Vine co-hosts Andrea and Ann Marie to learn the encouraging testimony of Enrique Suarez and the word God did in his life.

Growing up in the Catholic Church gave Enrique Suarez a knowledge of God, but he recalls having taken some quality naps in church with his Mother when he was a child, instead of learning the Gospel and fortifying his spirit with Scripture. Through a series of destructive choices, he eventually found himself incarcerated multiple times culminating with a twenty-four month sentence in a maximum security prison. During this time Suarez lost his marriage, his family, his business—he later recognized he as like Job, having lost just about everything. But God had plans for Enrique. It was during the thirteen months he spent in prison that the Lord kept him secured and effectively "free" to spend time in the Lord praising God and learning every day. Fortified with the wisdom of God, Enrique rejoined civilian life after his sentence and attacked his service to the Lord with the hunger of a lion. He spent time serving in homeless shelters, street ministry, and every opportunity to honor God's provisions as he rebuilt his life. Later those provisions from heaven would include a certificate from Rollins College while well on his way to earning his bachelor's degree. When he didn't know where to go, God provided. When he didn't understand what was going to happen next, God provided. When the last bits of his life spun out of control, God provided Enrique new mercies, a fresh vision of hope for his life, and a testimony that keeps a wide joyful grin across his face.

 

Sin is a prison that wants to kill you yesterday. It is no respecter of persons while it seeks to drive your existence to nothingness. Travis Hamzik learned this lesson the hard way and now lives the difference between knowing about Jesus versus knowing Jesus. Spend a quickly passing half hour with Charisma Podcast Network's Fruit of the Vine and co-hosts Andrea "Dre" Holder and Ann Marie "Mar" Kelly while they visit with Travis Hamzik and understand the amazing work the Holy Spirit has done through his life. 

Our testimony is God's story He composes through our living our lives. After living a life of total sin, seeking any next pleasures as his only purpose, Travis Hamzik would lose a close friend in a tragic automobile accident when that sin life finally caught up to him. In 2002, his truck overturned and of his two passengers, only one survived. Wracked by guilt and endless pain, Hamzik even considered ending his life if only that would bring the release from pain he craved. Realizing he wasn't actually living for God, he told the Lord that if he could just be set apart for a little while, he would be able to make the changes he had to make. A few days later, an arrest landed him in the local jail and the setting apart season he needed to steer his life onto God's path. From his lowest point during his first night in jail, Hamzik plowed his energy into devouring an old Gideon King James Version Bible and the Holy Spirit ignited the first in the deepest corner of his heart that burns more brightly than ever now several years later. Revelation 3:20 came true for him when gladly he threw open the door of his heart as the Lord knocked.

Want to multiply grace? Die to self. Press in to John 3:30 and live out the prayer, "more of Him, and less of me." God multiplies His grace among us when we finally realize that head knowledge is a dead end if it isn't animated and empowered and activated with heart knowledge, especially that revelation only breaks through with ever-growing heart knowledge. Enjoy a few minute's visit with Charisma Podcast Network's Fruit of the Vineand co-hosts Andrea and Ann Marie during their discussion of God's gifts in His grace.

Our Father in heaven longs for relationship with each of His children. But why don't more of seek Him wholeheartedly, surrendered and sold out to the God of our very creation? The flesh resists under the lie of control, as if we have anything more than an elaborate mirage of control over our daily existence in the first place. How much sweeter, better, and more peaceful when we arrive at the place where we can say truly, "thank God that He is God." He already measures our heart's condition by the overall combination of our words, thoughts, and deeds, and what the Creator of the heavens and the Earth thinks about me is the final factor at the last minute of each day. But if I cannot seek Him and give myself over to Him in the relationship He wants, I have nothing. He is a God of more and more than enough, offering us the light of His truth versus the darkness of this fallen world. Help me to let this heart seek You today, my Lord.

I met the Holy Spirit at around the age of eleven and didn't even know it until nearly thirty years later. I had grown up in the church. I made my decision for Christ at a Southern Baptist church's Spring Revival before I reached the teen years. I went all the way through Sunday School to youth group, from elementary school to college. Later I had that mid-twenties swoon some believers go through when I didn't even bother with His knowing better or did I know better, I just barged forward in late-late-adolescent verve into life after college doing my thing my way.

God in His infinite patience and lovingkindness gave me lots of leash to run off for a while, until He gave me a loving yank and pulled me back in my early thirties. It was a hard day, but a wonderful day. Through it all I tried to stay pressed in, at times more effectively than not. But what little I thought I could say I confidently knew, it was at least that little bit that I thought I knew that I knew, in what the Gospel is about, Who God is, and how I fit into all of His grand purpose far bigger than me.

But it was back at the age of eleven that, as I would only begin to realize years later, the Lord was making in me a heart after His, that had this almost unrecognizable capacity to see the good, humble, possibly even vulnerable heart in every person I encountered each day, whether that was the kindly grandmotherly figure at the grocery store or some hulking wall of muscle from the nearby middle school that would sooner grind my person into a fine powder and sprinkle me over the schoolyard fence into the parking lot. It was my own Mom who saw it, at a time when I was sure no one noticed, not least where I wasn't sure what it was, either. I happened to have overheard her on a telephone call with her twin sister, our beloved aunt, saying something about how, "...even if someone gave him a box of chocolate-covered ants, he'd still appreciate the thought."

The Word of God is Spirit and gives life—but none of that happens until and unless we answer the still, small knock at the door of our hearts, greet Jesus, invite Him into our hearts, and have Him call it all glory for the Father as Jesus dwells in us. If you're thirsty. If you hunger. If you're among the weary craving rest, then be refreshed by wisdom and encouragement in this episode of the Charisma Podcast Network's "Fruit of the Vine" featuring your hosts Andrea and Ann Marie.

Jesus wants us to see Him in Scripture, so that we might discover His message, that we don't have to carry the weight of our sins anymore because He took our sins and nailed them to His Cross—but none of that can happen until we open the door of our hearts to Him. When we build a relationship ship with the Son, we may have fellowship with the Father.

And He is the same Father who does not need us, but wants us, and longs for our fellowship with Him that He sacrificed His most precious treasure, His Son, that we may be declared clean and washed white as newly fallen snow and innocent before Him and thereby spend all eternity with Him in His kingdom. If you are tired of being tired. When—not "if"—you hear His voice. Harden not your heart, and accept the truth that you are His masterpiece among all of His Creation across the heavens and the Earth. And Jesus is a gentleman, He will not barge into your life, but will await your invitation, for He longs to be invited into your heart so that He may bring the Father, too, and dwell within you forever.

How often do we as believers gladly and willingly surrender our whole selves to our Lord—but really we're only giving God the living room and the guest bedroom, when He expects and wants the whole house? There is no good thing our Father in heaven will ever withhold from us, so we need to grit our teeth and take courage and get bold, and give Him our all-in-all, our everything, right down to our very hearts. We can rest in His blessed assurance that good change will come to us when we entrust our whole story to Him. 

Visit with your hosts Andrea and Ann Marie on this episode of the Charisma Podcast Network's "Fruit of the Vine," and enjoy the highly engaging testimony of "Fruit of the Vine" board member Greg King. Like many of us, Mr. King grew up in the church. He knows from Grandma's "church gum" in the bottom of her purse, but then drifted a bit during his teen years. After a gut-wrenching divorce in his mid-twenties and a brief season of difficulties thereafter, Greg ran back to the loving, patient arms of the Father.

Now happily remarried and blessed with five children between his and his wife's first marriages, he has learned the key to pressing in to everything the Lord has for us, and that is spending time in God's Word because getting into the Word means getting into God's presence. And by God's perfect design, the more we press in to Him, His presence, and His Word, the more we want to surrender all we have, like the timeless praise hymn teaches, surrendering all.