Episode 60
The Fruit Tells the Truth: What Are Our Churches, Politics, and Work Producing?
How do you really measure success—in your church, your politics, or your work? This episode of Seek Go Create challenges the scorecards we've been taught to chase, from money and influence to attendance and growth, and asks what we're actually producing in our lives and organizations. Is your life built on quick wins, or on the lasting "fruit" Jesus described? Join the conversation to discover why the fruit tells the truth about whose kingdom you’re building.
"The scoreboard is never neutral because it directs attention. What we measure becomes what we discuss, reward, protect, and eventually pursue." - Tim Winders
Access all show and episode resources HERE
Episode Resources:
- NT90 Hub – This is the central website for the 90-day New Testament reading plan, with downloadable, printable plans, background information, and links to all episodes and resources.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Every Kingdom Keeps Score
00:46 NT90 Journey And New Studio
03:28 Comfort Theology Scorecards
06:54 Metrics Aren't The Enemy
08:36 Kingdom Operating Systems
11:01 Sermon On The Mount Fruit Test
16:36 Galatians 5 Community Fruit
19:51 Fruit Test For The Church
22:16 Politics Can't Grow Fruit
24:27 Marketplace Metrics And People
26:41 Looking In The Mirror
28:47 Then Now And Misreading Fruit
31:13 What We Measure We Pursue
33:27 Next Episode Jesus Never Hustled
34:18 Final Charge Trust The Text
Transcript
Every kingdom keeps score.
Speaker:Money, growth, possessions, power, success, influence.
Speaker:Those numbers tell us who is ahead, who's falling behind,
Speaker:and who appears to be winning.
Speaker:But after reading the New Testament in order, I found
Speaker:that Jesus uses another measure.
Speaker:He never said a tree is known by its size.
Speaker:He said it is known by its fruit.
Speaker:You can win everything this world measures and still lose what matters in His kingdom
Speaker:hello, everyone.
Speaker:Welcome to Seek Go Create.
Speaker:This is Tim Winders.
Speaker:I've recently read the entire New Testament in 90 days, and I wrote
Speaker:it in the order that it was written, not the order in your Bible.
Speaker:Kinda reordered it to put it in, not chronological order, but the order
Speaker:that the books were actually written in so they would've come available
Speaker:to the audience of the first century.
Speaker:Powerful, very cool, and fun to do.
Speaker:Really helps with context.
Speaker:The order the letters were actually out and released on the social
Speaker:media of the first century.
Speaker:It, it's when it came to be.
Speaker:And, what's cool is what we can find, it might surprise us, challenge
Speaker:us, and change, it did for me, the way we understand scripture.
Speaker:This series or this continuation of episodes is where I share those
Speaker:discoveries with you pretty much as I'm discovering them also.
Speaker:So you're just along the journey with me.
Speaker:This is not necessarily me telling you the way it is or creating theology
Speaker:or doctrine or anything like that.
Speaker:I'm just discovering things as I go along, and you can join me.
Speaker:If you wanna do what I did, I recommend it.
Speaker:The reading plan is free at k2m.foundation/nt90.
Speaker:You can download it, read along, see what you find.
Speaker:Do it at your own pace.
Speaker:I think doing it quickly is good.
Speaker:The link is down in the show notes.
Speaker:One quick thing for those that might be watching this, this is the first
Speaker:episode that I'm recording in what I'll be calling a new studio, and
Speaker:it's at our, uh, new home we just recently built in Southern Arizona.
Speaker:Still probably be doing things in different places, but this is
Speaker:moving towards being a permanent residence for a long period of time.
Speaker:We're calling it Shalom for peace.
Speaker:And so it's down here in Southern Arizona, kind of the high desert.
Speaker:Beautiful place.
Speaker:Maybe as we go along with other episodes, I'll share more info, but
Speaker:still working on lighting if you're watching this, trying to get things
Speaker:set up, my background, and have a cool painting that, uh, my wife did for me.
Speaker:Glory's gonna be doing most of the artwork here in our home.
Speaker:And so anyway, still working on things.
Speaker:Bear with me.
Speaker:I think it's coming across pretty well, but, uh, if you have any
Speaker:feedback or anything, just let us know.
Speaker:Still getting it all in order, but welcome.
Speaker:Welcome into Shalom Home, and welcome into the new studio for Seek Go Create.
Speaker:On the last episode, we closed out our six-part comfort theology arc. We began
Speaker:with a storm, and we ended by asking what Jesus forms in people who cannot control
Speaker:the weather, which I'll clue us all in here, none of us can control the weather.
Speaker:We might think we can, we just can't.
Speaker:We were talking about peace without control, faithfulness without
Speaker:guarantees, community without sameness, courage without domination, and hope
Speaker:without escape or escape mindset.
Speaker:Over the last few months, those six episodes have also become … This is
Speaker:kind of a view of something coming soon.
Speaker:It's a book called Comfort Theology.
Speaker:I recently finished the second author edit, about to move that along to
Speaker:my editor that will look through and read through and see where it is.
Speaker:But, really proud of it.
Speaker:It's gonna be a great book, and just keep an eye out for that.
Speaker:kind of getting things clarified and just going through
Speaker:sentence by sentence right now.
Speaker:But What came out of that is one sentence that leads directly into this episode.
Speaker:Comfort theology turns gifts into measurements.
Speaker:Money increases, so God must be pleased.
Speaker:Attendance grows, so the church must be healthy.
Speaker:Our candidate or our party wins, so God must be moving.
Speaker:The diagnosis improves, so prayer must have worked.
Speaker:The outcome really becomes sort of a spiritual scorecard for many of us.
Speaker:But this question reaches beyond comfort.
Speaker:Across the NT90 reading, the podcast episodes that followed, and the
Speaker:books now taking shape, I've actually got three books that I'm working on
Speaker:currently, one pattern keeps appearing.
Speaker:every kingdom seems to have a scorecard or some way to measure or keep score.
Speaker:Rome measures power, control, law, influence, and victory.
Speaker:There's a clear-cut victory, especially when we're talking about war.
Speaker:Religion often measures attendance, giving, visibility, certainty,
Speaker:and institutional strength.
Speaker:The market measures money, growth, productivity, status,
Speaker:and of course, possessions.
Speaker:Jesus gives us another foundation and another test: fruit.
Speaker:And it's something that we know, we see it in the Bible, but I think
Speaker:many of us don't really like that measurement, so we try to go back
Speaker:to those other forms of measurement.
Speaker:This episode, though, it's gonna be kinda me working through some things
Speaker:on my own and sharing with you, maybe trying to get closer to that
Speaker:measurement that Jesus talks about.
Speaker:This episode brings those threads together.
Speaker:How do we know whether a church, business, political movement, family, or personal
Speaker:ambition is actually producing something that belongs In the Kingdom of God,
Speaker:the question is not only whether it works, the question is what it forms.
Speaker:So let's dive into it.
Speaker:Measurement, and listen, engineer here, business guy, I mean, I'm
Speaker:a success-minded guy at my root.
Speaker:Measurement is not the enemy, so hear me out.
Speaker:I'm not saying let's stop measuring things.
Speaker:I mean, I like to measure stuff.
Speaker:And, so it's not the enemy.
Speaker:A church needs to know whether bills are paid and whether
Speaker:its work is serving anyone.
Speaker:A business needs revenue, margin, cash flow, customers,
Speaker:clear measures of performance.
Speaker:A nonprofit should know whether resources reach the people it exists to serve.
Speaker:A leader needs goals.
Speaker:I think people, all of us, we need goals, commitments, honest
Speaker:feedback, and accountability.
Speaker:Metrics can tell the truth, and they can be valuable to us.
Speaker:A number tells us what happened in the category we choose to count.
Speaker:It does not automatically tell us why it happened, who carried the cost,
Speaker:or what the process formed in people.
Speaker:Attendance does not reveal whether lonely people are known.
Speaker:Revenue does not reveal whether employees can tell the truth.
Speaker:Political victory does not reveal whether people become
Speaker:more loving, honest, or just.
Speaker:The scoreboard is never neutral because it directs attention.
Speaker:What we measure becomes what we discuss, reward, protect, and eventually pursue.
Speaker:It's also, for me, something that I think about all the time.
Speaker:It's one of the reasons why I have to press it down so
Speaker:that it doesn't consume me.
Speaker:That's part of why I'm doing this episode.
Speaker:That is why the distinction from religion is not God's kingdom,
Speaker:neither is Rome, matters here.
Speaker:Religion, Rome, the market And the kingdom do not merely use different methods,
Speaker:they run on different operating systems.
Speaker:That's the term I've been using, and I think it says it best.
Speaker:It's just a different operating system, and each system rewards different
Speaker:results or different measurements.
Speaker:Rome rewards control, leverage, public power, and victory.
Speaker:Religion can reward visibility, agreement, attendance, and institutional loyalty.
Speaker:It becomes very tribal.
Speaker:The market rewards growth, productivity, profit, and reach.
Speaker:Those systems can produce useful outcomes.
Speaker:Government can restrain harm.
Speaker:Churches can gather and serve people.
Speaker:Businesses can create honest value and profit.
Speaker:But none of those outcomes automatically proves That kingdom
Speaker:life is growing or even healthy.
Speaker:A ministry can increase attendance by making people afraid to leave.
Speaker:They're there because of fear.
Speaker:A company can hit its targets because employees are afraid to speak up.
Speaker:They're just hanging around.
Speaker:A term recently was quiet quitting.
Speaker:They've quit, and they hang out and collect a check, but they're not really
Speaker:putting their heart and their mind and their actions into the mission.
Speaker:A political movement can build loyalty by keeping people angry.
Speaker:You're just mad at the enemy or the other people, the other
Speaker:party, and that still works.
Speaker:The result may look successful.
Speaker:The fruit may tell another story.
Speaker:We get into trouble when the measurement stops serving the
Speaker:mission and begins defining it.
Speaker:Attendance becomes health.
Speaker:Revenue becomes value.
Speaker:Influence becomes faithfulness.
Speaker:Winning becomes righteousness.
Speaker:Busyness becomes commitment.
Speaker:We start reading another kingdom scoreboard and announcing
Speaker:a Kingdom of God victory.
Speaker:Let's talk about what Jesus instructs us to measure.
Speaker:As I'm doing my reading plans and going through the scriptures and looking at
Speaker:things, I'll tell you that the Sermon on the Mount, what we know as Matthew
Speaker:five, six, and seven, has really been a powerful guide and foundation for me.
Speaker:So we're gonna look at some of the things that Jesus talks about in Matthew five,
Speaker:six, and seven, and it really is something that jumped out at me, especially when
Speaker:I was going through that NT 90 plan.
Speaker:I didn't find a collection of random sayings.
Speaker:It's not just a bunch of things grouped together.
Speaker:I found the clearest description of the kingdom operating system, to use
Speaker:that word operating system again.
Speaker:I talked earlier about Rome has an operating system.
Speaker:We see religion has an operating system.
Speaker:The Kingdom of God's operating system is clearly defined in what
Speaker:we call the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew five, six, and seven.
Speaker:Rome blessed the powerful, the conquerors, and the people with status.
Speaker:Modern cultures and governments often bless the same things through
Speaker:wealth, celebrity, political access, military strength, influence, and
Speaker:public success or celebrity Many recognized religious leaders emphasize
Speaker:public piety, purity practices, status, and careful Torah observance.
Speaker:Jesus begins somewhere else.
Speaker:He blesses the poor in spirit, the grieving, the meek, the merciful,
Speaker:the peacemakers, and people persecuted for doing what is right.
Speaker:Then he describes the life that grows from that kingdom: reconciliation
Speaker:instead of protected anger, truth instead of performance, loving your enemy or
Speaker:enemy love instead of retaliation.
Speaker:In Matthew 6, Jesus moves directly into the scoreboards that still direct us He
Speaker:names public recognition, possessions, money, anxiety, clothing, food, and
Speaker:the constant pursuit of security.
Speaker:Stuff, possessions, materialism, that's what he calls out in the middle of that
Speaker:chapter six in the Sermon on the Mount.
Speaker:He does not pretend those needs are unreal.
Speaker:He doesn't discount them.
Speaker:He doesn't say we don't need them.
Speaker:He doesn't even say they don't exist.
Speaker:He says the nations run after them, then gives his listeners another priority.
Speaker:"Seek first the kingdom and God's righteousness," Matthew 6:33.
Speaker:That does not mean money, food, clothing, work, or planning no longer matter.
Speaker:It means they no longer have authority to tell us whether a life
Speaker:is faithful or whether God is good.
Speaker:Also, our happiness and our measure of success doesn't ebb and flow
Speaker:based on what I term our bank account or how much stuff we've got.
Speaker:Jesus removes that from the measuring stick.
Speaker:Near the end of the sermon, Jesus warns about false prophets.
Speaker:He does not say to judge them by title, platform, confidence,
Speaker:vocabulary, or apparent power.
Speaker:"You will recognize them by their fruits." That's exactly what Jesus says.
Speaker:A healthy tree bears good fruit.
Speaker:A diseased tree bears bad fruit.
Speaker:Then Jesus closes with two builders.
Speaker:Both hear his words.
Speaker:Both face the storm.
Speaker:Only one builds on a foundation strong enough to remain.
Speaker:That connects the whole journey.
Speaker:The builder that built on the strong foundation, the operating system of the
Speaker:kingdom that Jesus has just described in Matthew five, six, and seven, that person
Speaker:is who will be built on that foundation.
Speaker:Comfort theology, that we've discussed before, ask whether favorable
Speaker:circumstances prove God's goodness.
Speaker:The Sermon on the Mount says the storm reaches both houses.
Speaker:The difference is not the weather, the size of the house, or how
Speaker:successful the builder appears.
Speaker:The difference is the foundation and the fruit.
Speaker:Crowds followed Jesus and later abandoned him.
Speaker:Religious leaders held recognized authority and still
Speaker:missed what God was doing.
Speaker:Rome possessed scale, wealth, organization, law, and military power.
Speaker:None of those measurements prove that Rome's operating system was
Speaker:good Jesus asked different questions.
Speaker:What grows when this teaching is believed?
Speaker:What grows when this leader gains authority?
Speaker:What grows when this system becomes stronger?
Speaker:And what is growing in me while I participate?
Speaker:Now, we can look at what Jesus says, but many of us kind of have this foundation,
Speaker:because when we bring up fruit, I think many of us, this is what jumps to my mind.
Speaker:We jump to Paul and the fruits of the Spirit.
Speaker:So let's take a look at that, because I think this would be incomplete
Speaker:if we didn't take a look at that.
Speaker:Galatians 5 is the test.
Speaker:I've actually got it opened here, right here in my Bible, but let's
Speaker:kind of walk through it here.
Speaker:I've got it in my notes right in front of me.
Speaker:Galatians 5 makes the test plain.
Speaker:Paul first names the works of the flesh.
Speaker:So that would be that worldly system.
Speaker:So we're, we'll look at that, and then we'll look at the fruit.
Speaker:And there's a pretty healthy list here.
Speaker:Some of those include sexual immorality, idolatry, hostility,
Speaker:strife, jealousy, fits of anger, that's a tough one there , rivalries,
Speaker:dissensions, divisions, envy, and more.
Speaker:go to Galatians 5 and read that list when you get a minute.
Speaker:Then, though, he names the fruit of the Spirit, and this is popular.
Speaker:We have kind of used this often.
Speaker:Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
Speaker:gentleness, and self-control.
Speaker:We often use that second list as a lesson for children or maybe
Speaker:a private character checklist.
Speaker:But Paul wrote Galatians to communities being divided by religious
Speaker:pressure, status, ethnicity, and arguments about who truly belonged,
Speaker:who was in and who was out.
Speaker:This was not merely private spirituality.
Speaker:It was a community test.
Speaker:It wasn't a measurement just for individuals.
Speaker:It was a measurement for the group.
Speaker:Jesus applies the fruit test directly to teachers.
Speaker:Paul applies it to the shared life of a community.
Speaker:That gives us a responsible next step.
Speaker:Examine the systems and institutions people build by asking what
Speaker:those systems consistently form.
Speaker:What is your way of belonging producing among you?
Speaker:Is it producing rivalry, division, anger, or fits of anger, as we
Speaker:heard earlier, and contempt?
Speaker:Or is the spirit forming love, patience, faithfulness, and self-control?
Speaker:A movement can claim a biblical position while producing fleshly fruit.
Speaker:A leader can quote scripture while producing fear.
Speaker:A church can defend doctrine while producing rivalry and division.
Speaker:A person can believe they are fighting for truth while becoming less gentle,
Speaker:less honest, and less loving Christian language cannot make rotten fruit healthy.
Speaker:The fruit tells the truth.
Speaker:So let's look at the church when we begin looking at this measurement or this fruit.
Speaker:In the Comfortable Church episode that we did in the last section of episodes,
Speaker:we asked whether church structures serve the body or whether the body is
Speaker:expected to keep the structure alive.
Speaker:Measurement shapes that answer quickly.
Speaker:If attendance, giving, volunteers, and program activity become the
Speaker:primary scoreboard, people can slowly become fuel for the system.
Speaker:If fruit becomes the test, every structure must answer a harder question:
Speaker:What is this forming in people?
Speaker:What does that test reveal about church?
Speaker:Attendance can tell us how many people came.
Speaker:Giving can tell us how much money was contributed.
Speaker:Volunteer counts can tell us how many positions were filled.
Speaker:None of those numbers can tell us whether lonely people are known.
Speaker:They cannot tell us whether leaders welcome questions.
Speaker:They cannot tell us whether exhausted volunteers feel free to rest.
Speaker:They cannot tell us whether conflict is addressed with truth and mercy.
Speaker:They cannot tell us whether vulnerable people are protected when
Speaker:protection becomes inconvenient.
Speaker:A church may need buildings, budgets, leaders, programs, and schedules, but
Speaker:those structures must serve the body.
Speaker:The body does not exist to keep the structure alive.
Speaker:If the structure grows while love shrinks, the fruit tells the truth.
Speaker:If the platform expands while accountability disappears,
Speaker:the fruit tells the truth.
Speaker:If people learn to perform while hiding pain or ignoring it or denying
Speaker:it, the fruit tells the truth.
Speaker:The question is not whether the church is efficient, and I'm
Speaker:an engineer, I love efficiency.
Speaker:the question is whether the body is alive.
Speaker:Now, we can look at it for the church.
Speaker:We can also shift and look at it as we relate to government and politics.
Speaker:In the episode
Speaker:In Religion Is Not God's Kingdom, Neither Is Rome we separated political
Speaker:outcomes from kingdom outcomes.
Speaker:If we tried to legislate what only the spirit can grow,
Speaker:Galatians 5 gave us the test.
Speaker:Rome can pass laws, restrain harm, organize power, and declare winners.
Speaker:It cannot produce the fruit of the spirit.
Speaker:That test remains necessary.
Speaker:Politics rewards urgency, conflict, loyalty, and attention.
Speaker:Anger can mobilize people quickly.
Speaker:We see that all the time.
Speaker:Fear can raise money.
Speaker:Contempt can keep a group united against an enemy.
Speaker:Those methods can work.
Speaker:They can also form us.
Speaker:They can also bond us.
Speaker:If political participation teaches us to repeat claims we have not
Speaker:checked, the fruit tells the truth.
Speaker:If it makes cruelty entertaining, the fruit tells the truth.
Speaker:If we excuse conduct from our side that we condemn in others,
Speaker:the fruit tells the truth.
Speaker:Ouch.
Speaker:We can vote, serve, advocate, and seek just laws, but no election
Speaker:makes the character of Jesus optional, at least for those of us
Speaker:that claim to be Jesus followers.
Speaker:If someone doesn't care about that, go for it.
Speaker:But those of us that claim that we are in God's kingdom and we follow
Speaker:Jesus, it's not optional for us.
Speaker:Winning does not make hostility holy.
Speaker:Losing does not make hatred faithful.
Speaker:The kingdom does not need rotten fruit to protect it And so we
Speaker:can kind of move and look at what that does for us also in business.
Speaker:We've looked at church.
Speaker:We've looked at government.
Speaker:Let's look at the marketplace.
Speaker:Let's look at business.
Speaker:Business gives some of our clearest numbers, and I'm a numbers guy.
Speaker:I love some of these numbers when it comes to business: revenue, profit,
Speaker:growth, productivity, market share, deadlines, output, number of employees,
Speaker:buildings, all of those things, customers.
Speaker:Those numbers do matter.
Speaker:I'm not saying ignore those.
Speaker:A business that ignores them may not remain a business very long.
Speaker:But a healthy business asks more.
Speaker:Can people tell the truth without fear?
Speaker:Are the people that are associated and attached to our organization thriving?
Speaker:Do leaders use authority to serve or control, manipulate, lord over people?
Speaker:Are promises kept when keeping them costs money?
Speaker:Are customers treated as people or just transactions?
Speaker:Does urgency become a permanent excuse for disorder?
Speaker:Do strong results cover harmful conduct?
Speaker:Are people developing, or are they being consumed?
Speaker:People are not output.
Speaker:A company can demand excellence without treating people as machines.
Speaker:A leader can hold someone accountable without humiliation.
Speaker:A team can move quickly without making panic its culture.
Speaker:Profit can be good fruit when it comes through honest value, wise
Speaker:stewardship, and useful work.
Speaker:Profit becomes incomplete evidence when we ask it to excuse
Speaker:everything required to produce it.
Speaker:Just look the other way.
Speaker:Only focus on the bottom line.
Speaker:Or, and I've heard this recently, "It's just business." It's just business.
Speaker:The fruit test does not weaken leadership.
Speaker:It makes leadership tell the truth.
Speaker:All right, we've looked at organizations.
Speaker:We've looked at church, government, business.
Speaker:Let's look in the mirror now.
Speaker:Let's look at what it means for me.
Speaker:It is easy to apply this episode to institutions and leaders.
Speaker:The harder question is personal.
Speaker:What is my way of living producing in me?
Speaker:And truthfully, that's all that we can control.
Speaker:We can't control all the organizations, governments,
Speaker:institutions we interact with.
Speaker:We might be able to influence them, and we might even be leaders in some
Speaker:of them, but we can really only control us and what we see in the mirror.
Speaker:Is ambition making me more faithful or more anxious?
Speaker:I have to ask that question often.
Speaker:Is my pursuit of truth making me more loving or more contemptuous?
Speaker:Is my work forming patience, or is hurry training me to treat people as
Speaker:interruptions or just cogs in the wheel?
Speaker:Is my desire to protect family producing wisdom, or is fear asking for control?
Speaker:Is my theology producing humility, or does it make me certain that
Speaker:I am the person who finally sees what everyone else missed?
Speaker:And that is Tim talking to Tim.
Speaker:If you wanna listen in, you're welcome to.
Speaker:Many of us deal with that, I'm sure.
Speaker:Fruit grows over time.
Speaker:It's not instant.
Speaker:That means one difficult day does not define us.
Speaker:One impatient response does not settle the question.
Speaker:But patterns matter.
Speaker:What keeps growing?
Speaker:What do people experience around us?
Speaker:Who are we becoming?
Speaker:The Spirit does not merely help us defend better ideas.
Speaker:The Spirit forms a different kind of person.
Speaker:Now, as we've done in many of these episodes, let's kinda look
Speaker:at then and now and then us.
Speaker:What does it mean for them, the first century person?
Speaker:Jesus spoke about fruit to people surrounded by religious
Speaker:authority, competing teachers, and Rome's visible power.
Speaker:Paul wrote Galatians to communities pressured by rivalry,
Speaker:status, boundary-making, and arguments over belonging.
Speaker:Who was in and who was out?
Speaker:The first believers needed a way to recognize what was truly from God.
Speaker:Titles, heritage, confidence, and visible power were not enough.
Speaker:Fruit revealed the source.
Speaker:Where do we misread it?
Speaker:Where have we possibly taken this and misapplied it?
Speaker:We often reduce fruit to private niceness.
Speaker:Then we evaluate churches, political movements, businesses, and leaders
Speaker:by scale, success, influence, or whether they support our side.
Speaker:We use different measurements.
Speaker:We don't use the measurement of fruit.
Speaker:That separates personal character from the systems our character builds.
Speaker:And if those systems are made up of people, shouldn't they reflect that body?
Speaker:Jesus and Paul do not allow the separation between those two.
Speaker:They are one.
Speaker:So what does it still mean for us today?
Speaker:In how we treat people, fruit means truth without contempt, boundaries
Speaker:without hatred, and strength that protects rather than humiliates.
Speaker:In religion and church, fruit means love, accountability, shared burdens,
Speaker:and leaders who equip rather than dominate, or as we see in the Bible,
Speaker:leaders that wash the feet of others.
Speaker:In politics, fruit means conviction without cruelty, participation without
Speaker:panic, and honesty about every side.
Speaker:In business and work, fruit means integrity, useful service,
Speaker:responsible results, and people treated as more than output.
Speaker:How we treat people, build churches, engage politics, and conduct our work
Speaker:reveals what is growing within us.
Speaker:What we choose to measure eventually becomes what we pursue.
Speaker:If we measure only money, growth, possessions, power, success,
Speaker:and influence, we will shape our lives around gaining more of them.
Speaker:I have done that.
Speaker:I would venture to say that many of us have.
Speaker:And I'm not saying to throw those out.
Speaker:Those numbers may help us manage something, but they cannot tell us
Speaker:whether we are becoming more like Jesus.
Speaker:Fruit is harder to measure.
Speaker:Love does not fit neatly on a dashboard of KPIs or measurements or a scoreboard.
Speaker:Neither do joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
Speaker:gentleness, and self-control.
Speaker:But fruit does leave evidence.
Speaker:Are people becoming more loving or more hostile?
Speaker:Are leaders producing peace or fear?
Speaker:Are churches forming mature people or dependent consumers?
Speaker:Are businesses creating honest value or consuming people?
Speaker:Is influence making us gentler or more controlling?
Speaker:Is success producing gratitude or superiority?
Speaker:A large tree can still produce harmful fruit.
Speaker:A small tree can still provide something really, really good.
Speaker:The question is not only whether the church, business, movement, platform,
Speaker:or influence is expanding, the question is what kind of people are being formed.
Speaker:Love or hostility, peace or panic, patience or constant urgency,
Speaker:kindness or contempt, gentleness or domination, self-control or outrage.
Speaker:That fruit reveals the operating system beneath our language.
Speaker:It also leads to the next question.
Speaker:If fruit matters more than visible speed, why are so many of us always rushing?
Speaker:Why do we treat hurry, exhaustion, and overload as
Speaker:evidence that we are committed?
Speaker:Jesus carried the most important mission in all of history.
Speaker:He worked faithfully, but hurry never seemed to become his master.
Speaker:That is where we're gonna go next in Jesus Never Hustled, Why Do We?
Speaker:Or the way I'm wording this episode, Did Jesus Hustle?
Speaker:With a big old huge question mark.
Speaker:We're gonna attempt to answer that in the next episode.
Speaker:Don't forget, the reading plan is at k2m.foundation/nt90, k2m.foundation/nt90.
Speaker:Notes or the link should be down in the notes.
Speaker:Download it.
Speaker:Read it.
Speaker:Grab it.
Speaker:I think you will dig it.
Speaker:And if what you've been taught, I've been saying this a lot, if what you've
Speaker:been taught, including what I say here, does not match what you read in the
Speaker:text, I think you should trust the text.
Speaker:I'm Tim Winders.
Speaker:Keep seeking.
Speaker:Remember, a scoreboard can declare a winner, fruit reveals which kingdom won.
Speaker:See you next time
