There is a saying:
What is worse than a worm in your peach?
Half a Worm!
Reading Luke chapter 3 about John the Baptist got me thinking about fruit… It’s not that my life doesn’t bear fruit… it is just that some of the fruit has bugs in them… 🙁
John the Baptist was definitely a black-and-white guy. Turn-or-burn! No middle ground. It feels like John the Baptist is the line in the sand between the old covenant and the new.
Everything depended on you in the old covenant. You carried the full weight of the law. It was up to you. Shape up!
John the Baptist was ready to cut down the useless fruit trees!
“Even now God’s axe of judgment is poised to chop down your barren tree right down to its roots! And every tree that does not produce good fruit will be levelled and thrown into the fire.”
(Luke 3:9 TPT)
But then, Jesus…
Jesus says, that to bear good fruit, you need to remain in Him. He is the reason you are capable of bearing fruit at all.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
(John 15:5 NIV)
If we stay close to Christ, He is our “gardener”. He tends the fruit. 1 John exhorts us to stay in the light of Jesus. If I walk in the light, and you walk in the light, we have fellowship with each other (in other words, we see and help each other grow, as well as spot the bugs and the rot, and help to cleanse it off.
”But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”
(1 John 1:7 NIV)
Which brings me back to the fruit of the day… coffee 😃!
”Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble.”
(1 John 2:10 NIV)
Like the hero of the first story, the Half Worm…
There is the story of you walking with a cup of coffee, and somebody bumps you. If you get jostled and other stuff than coffee spills out, you might have worms in your fruit! Something that has gotten into your life. Something that is pulling you out of the light? Something that shouldn’t be part of you? Time to inspect the tree!
Yesterday, I saw a social post about people not needing God to be Moral. That is true… But our God is our Moral Compass. Without God, morality is a constant decision tree… Do this, do that, I have to check her, I have to watch out for, I have to… I have to…
Inside God, Inside Christ, most of that is gone… replaced by I want to be just, I want to be honourable, I want to be faithful, I want to be… not, I have to be. The Moral Lawgiver is also the fruit farmer 😉
It is John’s “You must bear fruit, otherwise…” vs Jesus’s “You will bear fruit, because…”
So if your coffee is not what spills out when you get knocked around a bit… maybe it is time to check for worms?
Be blessed!!
