Flourishing Even More in 2024… in Fruit

    Here in Southern Ontario hundreds of trees in the fruit orchards are flourishing in blossom. The local farmers know that each blossom signifies the potential for fruit, but not every blossom will develop into good fruit. They are always watchful of incoming threats because our changeable weather can bring frost and hail storms or swing from summer heat back to late winter chill in a matter of hours and damage the blossom; lowering, if not altogether removing, its ability to become good fruit.

    We can get stuck in our blossoming stage where we like the idea of good and of doing good but the effort needed to see it through is lacking. We can plan to go to church services/studies or to grow in our faith; we can have nice ideas and talk about them with others, but do our good intentions ever come to fruition? Do we really listen and let God’s word penetrate our heart and let it change us for the better or do we let the world and its ways envelop us like a heavy frost, chilling our zeal and wilting our potential, as soon as we leave the assembly? Do we act on our nice ideas to help another or do we let busyness like a gusty wind pull that blossom from our tree?   

    The devil happily provides distractions so that our blossoms don’t become good fruit. He will tempt us to drop our guard and encourage us toward selfish pride so that we fill our day with things that do not benefit. He wants nothing more than for our fruit to be blighted and wormy; he wants us to be a part of his diseased orchard where he’ll leave us to become further infested and rot.

“Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (Matthew 7:19 NKJV)

    God wants us to produce good fruit. We, as Christians and members of the kingdom of God, are to be bearing the good fruit of God’s kingdom (consider Matthew 21:43). Jesus said that a tree is known by its fruits (Matthew 12:33), and we have within us (as humans with free will) the potential to bear either the fruit of sin (which leads to death) or the fruit to holiness (which leads to everlasting life, Romans 6:21-23); we can choose to be either a tree lost in the darkness of the devil’s decaying orchard or we can be planted and flourishing in the courts of our God (Psalm 92:13-14).

“You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.” (Matthew 7:16-17 NKJV)

    We all are blossoming with potential for good! We need to be determined that we go on to flourish this year in abundance of good fruit. We must remain on guard and be watchful (1 Peter 5:8, Ephesians 6:10-18), and keep ourselves firmly rooted and nourished through study and application of God’s word (Matthew 5:6, 2 Timothy 3:16-17). We must prune out the bad (thoughts, words, habits) and graft in the good (thoughts, words, habits, Proverbs 23:7a, Ephesians 4:29-31, 2 Timothy 2:22, Galatians 6:10) so that the fruit we produce is always good and beneficial!    

    Throughout the month of May, if the Lord wills, we will learn what good fruit is and why it is vital that we bear it.

Are you ready to Flourish Even More in 2024 in Fruit? Me, too!

You can do it! So can I!!