We Bear Fruit

How shall we love? What does love look like? What does love include? We need to spend some time together, before God, contemplating the invitation to a life that leads with love. Of course, we need to do more than just contemplate, we need to love. We step out; we reach out; we invite and encourage; we lift up and help heal. And sometimes we get it wrong, and sometimes it isn’t received in the spirit intended. But we keep at it. We keep loving because that’s what it means to be Easter people. We are the people who ask, “How shall we love?”

Throughout the three weeks of this series, the theme of giving glory or glorifying God arises again and again, and that raises important questions for worship planners and leaders: “How do we give God glory? Do we reduce glorifying God to praise and thanksgiving, or is there something more to this glorifying business? Something that encompasses the whole gamut of our relationship with God? Something less shiny and yet more glorious?”

Abbreviations:

• UMH: United Methodist Hymnal
• TFWS: The Faith We Sing
• W&S: Worship and Song

Theme hymns for this series:

• Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee UMH 89
• God the Sculptor of the Mountains TFWS 2060
• Lord, Be Glorified TFWS 2150
• To God Be the Glory UMH 98

Music Resources

How do we give glory to God? By producing the kind of fruit that says more about who God is than about who we are. By producing the kind of fruit that God calls for rather than what we prefer. That means we need to learn about the God we love. We need to know who this God is and what this God wants before we can bring the offering and produce the fruit that gives God glory.

• Love Divine, All Loves Excelling UMH 384
• All Who Hunger TFWS 2126
• Lord, I Want to be a Christian UMH 402
• Like the Murmur of the Dove’s Song UMH 544
• God the Sculptor of the Mountains TFWS 2060
• Canto de Esperanza (Song of Hope) TFWS 2186