Wednesday, June 27, 2018

27 June 2018 - in due season



Just so, every good tree bears good fruit,
and a rotten tree bears bad fruit.

Do we endorse people or plans mainly because they sound good? Instead, we should endorse them based on their history of good fruit. When we are trying to see what we ourselves should do next we can also look to see what has borne fruit for us up until now.

A good tree cannot bear bad fruit,
nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit.

What do we do about all the bad fruit we find in the world and especially in ourselves?

In the world we find that many of the trees are in fact dead already. They don't bear fruit because they don't have life. But, like the dry bones in the valley, they can live again. The world is, in many ways, like Judah in the days when the book of the LORD was lost. The world doesn't know about the contents of our message, nor the life which is available to them. They try to bear fruit, fail, and become frustrated, not realizing that an ingredient vital for life is missing.

We should have deep sympathy for the world, because more often than not we try to bear fruit without God's help. We invest in branches of our own trees that are already dead. The LORD wants to prune those branches so they don't hinder us. He wants to water us with his Holy Spirit so that the fruit we bear is the fruit of the Spirit. The Spirit enables us to have "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control". He makes these fruits possible in spite of circumstances. We are like new life in the desert.

For waters break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water (see Isaiah 35:6-7).

These are the waters for which we must thirst. We must look to the LORD for them and rejoice in them as he drenches us with his grace.

You visit the earth and water it;
you greatly enrich it;
the river of God is full of water;
you provide their grain,
for so you have prepared it.
You water its furrows abundantly,
settling its ridges,
softening it with showers,
and blessing its growth (see Psalm 65:9-10)

May the LORD teach us to receive more of his Spirit today. What fruit is he asking us to bear for him?

Behold, I long for your precepts;
in your justice give me life.





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