Bearing Fruit

 

⁹ For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

¹⁰ And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹ being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully ¹² giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.

¹³ For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, ¹⁴ in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

—Colossians 1:9-14

 

I want you to imagine with me for a moment that you are a farmer. Can you do that? Of course you can. And, on your farm you have a very large field. Your field stretches from way over there to way over here. All through this very large field you have planted fruit trees.

Now planting those fruit trees was only the beginning. Starting in the very early days of spring, you would have to put fertilizer around those trees. You would have to make certain the trees have enough water. You would have to carefully remove any weeds that might grow up around the trees and steal nourishment away from them. You would have to work very, very hard. All through the summer months and into the fall, you would have to care for those trees in the hope that when the time of harvest comes they would produce beautiful, juicy, delightfully tasting fruit.

Now imagine if you were that farmer and you went out into the field at harvest time expecting to find fruit and the first tree you came to had not one piece of fruit on it. Why you would look that tree up and down. You would move branches aside. But no matter where you looked, no fruit.

So you would move on to the next tree. You would look up and down, move branches, but—wait a minute—no fruit. Hey, what’s going on? At the third tree, no fruit. At the fourth tree, no fruit. Not one tree in all of your orchard has fruit. What a terrible disappointment. All that work, and nothing to show for your effort.

In the Bible, Jesus tells us that we have to make certain our lives do not become like trees that do not bear fruit. We have to respond to the love of the Christ that occupies our hearts by living out that love in our service to others.

Through acts of kindness to others, by doing what we know is right, by sharing what we have with people in need, we show that Christ’s love lives in our hearts.

We have to always remember that because God loves us so much, He sent His Son Jesus to be our Savior. Our response to this great act of God’s love is to make certain we show His love to the people with whom we come in contact.

Every time you say a kind word to someone or give someone a cheerful smile, you show them Christ’s love. Every time you give someone less fortunate than you part of what God has given you, you show them Christ’s love. Every time you tell someone that “Jesus loves them, too,” you show them His love.

Will you pray with me?

Thank You, God, for loving me. Thank You for sending Jesus. Thank you for helping me show that I love You by being kind to others. Help me to be a person who does what You want me to do. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

_{Copyright © 2011 by Dean K. Wilson. All Rights Reserved.}