My wife has just bought a hanging tomato plant which already has tomatoes on it as it was cultivated in a green
house.
This got me thinking about the fruit we produce as Christians and what it takes for us to yield good fruit. Here I
don’t mean fruit like bananas or apples, but spirit fruit as described in Galatians 5; spiritual fruit such as ‘Love, joy,
peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.’ [Galatians 5:22-23 NLT]
But, just as with tomatoes, if we have poor soil we will yield a small crop, if any, of spiritual fruit. So as Christians, we
need to provide good ‘soil’ for our spiritual fruit to develop and ripen. Our hearts need to be suitable places where
good spiritual fruit can be grown.
A bad heart equals poor or no spiritual fruit.
A good heart, equals good and bountiful spiritual fruit.
The Bible supports these truths. Luke 6:45 says; ‘A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good
heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.’ [NLT] We can only produce from what is in our hearts.
So how do we get a good heart? By going to the Gardener of our hearts, God. He can take out the things which so
easily entangle and stop us producing spiritual fruit for Him.
This truth is exampled in this illustration:
‘A minister would finish his morning message to his congregation. After preaching with passion and zeal, people
would often comment positively on his service. One man would come and speak to him every week, but not to pass
comment on his preaching, but to talk about his garden. This went on for some months until the minister went to see the man’s garden. It was completely dead. Nothing was growing there. You could see evidence of where the man had been trying, but to no avail. The minister didn’t know what to say, but before he knew what he was doing, he too was now digging the garden. The minister was somewhat confused with the evangelical benefits of digging over a garden, but the man seemed so keen he didn’t have the heart to stop. Then all of a sudden, the minister hit something hard under the ground. On further investigation, it proved to be a WWII bomb. After the police and the bomb disposal team were called, it turned out that the bomb had never exploded on impact, but had still spilt open and left shrapnel all over the garden. It had been a German bomb that was made with a high content of lead, and this lead had actually poisoned the soil in this man’s garden, leaving it dead for the past 60yrs or so. Once the shrapnel had all been recovered, and the soil changed, the garden was back on its way to recovery.’
Maybe your heart needs digging over? Maybe there’s things in your life you need God to remove? If so, go to the greatest Gardener ever, God, and He will cultivate in you a good heart enabling spiritual fruit to be produced.
Every blessing,
Pastor Steve