The Orchard

I want you to imagine a great orchard. In it we see two specific trees. One is large and beautiful, its branches are full and green, it creates shade in a perfect circle, but it has no fruit. The second is small, it’s bark is falling off, only a few branches have green and it looks almost as if may die soon, but though the tree may not be beautiful it does have some fruit. Now between those two trees which one is more helpful to the farmer?

Now I want you to think about which tree you are in your walk with Christ. Are you maybe a little bit ugly on the outside? Are some things around you not the perfect picture of Christianity but your producing fruit? Or are you the tree that looks perfect from the outside but isn’t producing anything?

As I’ve been thinking about it I think I realized that so many of us are more like the green tree. We have persuaded ourselves to think that G-d wants our lives in order and looking great from the outside before we produce any fruit. We have convinced ourselves that if we are going to produce any fruit at all it better be perfect, just like the rest of us. But I don’t think that is what G-d desires from us at all.  But even a sour fruit the farmer can make a pie out of.

Here’s what I am getting at. Think of all the times you haven’t done something that you know G-d is asking you to do for the simple reason you didn’t think you could do it as well as you should or as well as someone else could. When did you have the thought ‘I can’t share the gospel with them because I can’t explain it right’, or ‘I can’t give that man money because it won’t be enough for him to actually buy a meal’, or ‘I can’t go comfort them because I am not good at it’, or ‘I should let so and so do it, they are better at it then me’. You’re not bearing fruit because you fear imperfection. An imperfect fruit is better than no fruit at all.

Satan knows that if you never begin to produce fruit because your afraid of messing up, you won’t be a threat. So to put it simply… get out there and do it. You’ll mess up but that is what all of Christianity is about… grace. Now go out and make some fruit.