Jesus challenged ways of thinking common in his day and ours. We tend to think “producing” is just about goals and results, with no place for “soft” values like love. But Jesus told his disciples he had called them to “go and produce fruit,” and linked their ability to do that with living in God’s love and loving one another. Acts said it worked. The disciples did “produce fruit, so much that a mob in Thessalonica said they’d been “disturbing the peace throughout the empire” (or, in the King James Bible’s superb phrase, that they had “turned the world upside down”—Acts 17:6).

• Read verses 9-15 of this passage again, this time imagining that the words are coming from a workplace leader to the people (including you) on whom that leader is depending to “bear fruit.” How do you think that kind of message would affect your attitude, and that of others, toward working in that place? How would it shape communication and cooperation in that workplace?
• If you can stretch your imagination far enough to envision what the first question asked you to imagine, then picture these words immediately following: “I chose you and appointed you so that you could go and produce fruit and so that your fruit could last.” Would the challenge to produce lasting results affect you differently in the kind of environment verses 9-15 would create? Does this make you want to choose Jesus as your ultimate “boss” in life? Why or why not?