Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit.    Matthew 12:33                                                    

My father-in-law has several citrus trees scattered throughout his yard and a few years ago we were waiting for the huge green orbs to ripen. Every day we checked to see if they’d finally turned orange so we could eat them, juice them, and turn them into delicious desserts. One day they did finally ripen. The kids swarmed the trees, rushing to be the first to pick a fruit. Hands full of oranges thrust towards my face. “Peel mine! Peel mine!”

Laughing, I chose an orange from the shortest darling, eagerly tearing the skin off. My father-in-law came around the corner of the house just as I popped a wedge in my mouth. My mouth puckered and I spit the fruit on the ground while he laughed at me and the kids wondered what was wrong.

It was juicy but it wasn’t sweet like I’d anticipated.

The fruit looked good on the outside but it tasted both bitter and sour. So I asked him, “Why are these so bitter? I don’t understand why these ripe and juicy oranges taste bad when they should be sweet. Why are they bad?”

I’ll never forget his answer. When the tree was planted, it was planted too close to a lemon tree so the orange tree had gotten its nutrients from underground, absorbing sourness from the lemon tree. The sour taste from the lemons were soaked up by the orange tree’s roots and that’s what the orange tree produced. Sour and bitterness from the lemon tree because that’s what the roots soaked up.

How much is that like our spiritual life sometimes? We become like what we absorb. If we’re soaking in the truths of Scripture and resting in God’s presence and His love, then we’ll produce sweet fruit.

The truth in you produces sweet fruit.

We  produce the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22) like gentleness, patience, kindness and love when we soak up Jesus. But if we are not spending time in prayer and reading the Bible, we end up absorbing toxins, resulting in bad fruit like the bitter orange tree planted too near the lemon tree.

What kinds of nutrients are you soaking up? Where do you spend the majority of your time? Where you spend your time and who you spend your time with is a good indicator of what kind of fruit you’ll produce.

What fruits are you producing? Patience, joy, peace, love? Or perhaps you’re more easily irritated, unhappy, or even causing strife among your family and friends?

Take some time today to rest in Jesus, cracking open your Bible that’s maybe been closed too long. Pray for insight before you read, asking God to open your mind and your heart to his message to you. Ask him to create in you a new heart, stripping you of any bad fruit, and producing good fruit so that people everywhere will see him living in you.

Spend time with Jesus. It’s worth it.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  Galatians 5:22-23