Good Or Bad Fruit?

"Good Or Bad Fruit?"
By Zach Wood
Luke 6:43-45
No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit.  Each tree is recognized by its own fruit.  People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers.  The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart.  For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.

When you go into a grocery store and head to the produce section to get some fruit, how many of you would be grossed out if you saw apples that had brown spots all over them?  How about if the grapes were all smashed and squishy?  What if you went to get some strawberries and you saw mold all over them in the container?  I doubt many of you would make the purchase and take any home to your family to consume.  That would be disgusting.  When you buy fruit, you want to purchase what looks good and ripe.  We would not consider buying fruit that looks gross because we want value in the fruit we buy and consume.

Just as others would be turned off to a gross produce section of fruit in a grocery store, they are also turned off when they look at our lives and see bad fruit.  This is a terrific parable from Christ.  Do you desire people to see good or bad fruit in your life?  Well...duh....of course you want people to see good fruit.  However, many of us live our lives in a way that shows bad or moldy fruit.  The problem is we tend to let so much from the world enter our minds and hearts and we allow our tree(bodies) to become saturated with mold and then our fruit looks gross.  How can we expect others to want to know Christ if our fruit looks bad?  Whatever we are storing up in our hearts and entertaining in our minds will come out in our words and actions.  If that is good fruit, then we will be productive and show Christ's love.  If it is bad fruit, what we do will not be desired by others.

There is probably not one of us who would say we desire to have bad things come from our lives.  We desire and strive for what is good and will glorify God.  It is that daily battle with sin that we all struggle with.  We just have to decide if we are going to be strong in Christ and let Him lead us and guide us so that we show the good fruit and not the bad.  In order to grow, we must be in His Word daily and grow from His teachings.  There is no way around that.  We simply cannot expect to show good fruit in our lives if we are not daily growing in His commands.  There is no way we can expect to show the good fruit of His love if we are not taking the time to grow through His Word.  It is not gonna happen.

It is my prayer and desire that we all live better lives for Christ and strive harder to show good fruit in our lives.  We need to keep our tree full of good fruit.  If bad fruit grows, we need to take care of it and get rid of what is causing that bad fruit to grow.  God will prune us so that we can grow the good fruit.  It might be painful, but well worth getting rid of in order for the good fruit to grow so others can see Him through us. 

Are you bearing good fruit or bad fruit?