"It doesn't matter how high you jump when you praise God. It matters how you live when you come back down!" We have to be very careful, as Christians, to produce good fruit! No one is perfect and we all have room for improvement but we do not want to turn away nonbelievers by our bad fruit!
Authentic Christians should overflow with the fruit of the Spirit. Galatians 5: 22-23, "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." When we "do" for Jesus it should flow out of our "being" in Jesus. John 15: 4-5, "Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. 'I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.'"
The Pharisees had a negative influence on others because they were fake. Regarding the Pharisees, Jesus said, "They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules." Matthew 6: 5, "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full." Saying all the right words while mistreating people will produce bad fruit. No one wants rotten fruit and rotten fruit will fall by itself.
We need to be real and seek authenticity in others. "If you are being put on a pedestal, you only have one way to go: down. If you are admiring some 'spiritual giant' you will surely be disappointed." Let's concentrate on producing our own good fruit.
"Fake grass never grows."
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