Your works aren't to try and grow fruit.
That is the work of the Lord.
Your work is to present yourself a living sacrifice. To abide in the Vine. IOW, Rest in Christ.
That is how the fruit is grown. Not by your work.
Any work that the Lord requires He Provides for.
John 15:4-5
4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
5 I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
But the fact remains that Jesus' workmanship in us and thru us, will employ our will, and by our free will we must obey God in the wake of the spirits guise and Jesus' Lordship and empowerment. We must place our minds in Christ, we must stand against the enemy, and we must submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ doing what He makes clear for us to do.Therefore our spiritual life is that of faith in Christ thru righteousness, which is Christ Himself living in and thru us onwardly; the mark of His Lordship and our obedience is good works being God's directives and purposes and intentions being empowered within us to serve Him.
We not only must try to do His will but we need to do it with confidence (without doubting) knowing He has our back as He commissions us.We must exhaust all of our strength in serving Him in obeying Him in placing our mind and soul and body led by the spirit of God in communication with our spirit, in serving Him. This is Jesus in us as our life as He completes us in maturity; and His will being accomplished by His will of us being Co-workers with Him in our disposition in Christ-likeness. This is righteousness; namely Jesus Christ in us completing us, yet, all the while, we are in the mix excising our will at all times as He empowers and is faithful.
In the John passage when Jesus drew his picture of the vine he knew what he was talking about. The vine was grown all over Palestine as it still is. It is a plant which needs a great deal of attention if the best fruit is to be got out of it. It is grown commonly on terraces. The ground has to be perfectly clean. It is sometimes trained on trellises; it is sometimes allowed to creep over the ground upheld by low forked sticks; it sometimes even grows round the doors of the cottages; but wherever it grows careful preparation of the soil is essential. It grows luxuriantly and drastic pruning is necessary. So luxuriant is it that the slips are set in the ground at least twelve feet apart, for it will creep over the ground at speed. A young vine is not allowed to fruit for the first three years and each year is cut drastically back to develop and conserve its life and energy. When mature, it is pruned in December and January. It bears two kinds of branches, one that bears fruit and one that does not; and the branches that do not bear fruit are drastically pruned back, so that they will drain away none of the plant's strength. The vine can not produce the crop of which it is capable without drastic pruning--and Jesus knew that.
Further, the wood of the vine has the curious characteristic that it is good for nothing. It is too soft for any purpose. At certain times of the year, it was laid down by the law, the people must bring offerings of wood to the Temple for the altar fires. But the wood of the vine must not be brought. The only thing that could be done with the wood pruned out of a vine was to make a bonfire of it and destroy it. This adds to the picture Jesus draws.
He says that his followers are like that. Some of them are lovely fruit-bearing branches of himself; others are useless because they bear no fruit. Who was Jesus thinking of when he spoke of the fruitless branches? There are two answers. First, he was thinking of the Jews. They were branches of God's vine. Was not that the picture that prophet after prophet had drawn? But they refused to listen to him; they refused to accept him; therefore they were withered and useless branches.
Second, he was thinking of something more general. He was thinking of Christians whose Christianity consisted of profession without practice, words without deeds; he was thinking of Christians who were useless branches, all leaves and no fruit. And he was thinking of Christians who became apostates, who heard the message and accepted it and then fell away, becoming traitors to the Master they had once pledged themselves to serve.
So then there are three ways in which we can be useless branches. We can refuse to listen to Jesus Christ at all. We can listen to him, and then render him a lip service unsupported by any deeds. We can accept him as Master, and then, in face of the difficulties of the way or the desire to do as we like, abandon him. One thing we must remember. It is a first principle of the New Testament that uselessness invites disaster. The fruitless branch is on the way to destruction.