The Fruit You Get!

“But not that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.” (Romans 6:22 ESV)

I had a dream where I was at a park which had a fig tree in the center. People who passed through that park all walked by the tree. Many stopped to eat of the fruit.

There was a woman there who seemed to talk with everyone who stopped for fruit. I watched her for a long time.

When it was getting late I approached her and asked her why she came to the park every day. She replied, “Why, I come for the fruit!” I told her that I had watched her for a long time and she never once ate so much as a single bite. She exclaimed, “No, you’re right. But everyone else did, and they left with even more.”

It wasn’t long after the dream that I came across Romans 6:22. The phrase that caught my attention was, “the fruit you get.…” In all of my years as a Christian, I have not once heard a sermon about the fruit we get, only the kind we are supposed to bear. It got me thinking about how such a scripture could play out.

Romans 6:22 says that “the fruit you get leads to sanctification.” But I’ve only ever heard that our sanctification leads to fruit! Isn’t the fruit supposed to be the evidence of our changed lives?

The short answer is “Yes,” but how do we learn and grow? Would we be able to know the taste of passion fruit by reading about it? How do we comprehend love if it has never been modeled for us? How do we live joyfully if we don’t understand what true joy is? If we haven’t seen someone patient in their afflictions, how will we know how to glorify God in our suffering?

I’m not always the quickest, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that the woman in my dream came to the fig tree expecting to bear fruit, not gather it. She met people wherever on their journey they were. She had no expectations from them; she only concerned herself with what she could give to them.

My dream was kind of liberating. It gave me a new understanding of how we grow as disciples and how we should approach disciple making. The bottom life for me is this: I have learned far more about how to live a godly life by watching those already living godly lives; and I’m sure that the example I have set before others said more, for the worse or the better, than any words I have spoken.

Avail yourself of the fruit that is given so that in due season you can give it back to others.

Blessings on your week!

P.S. I am in Guatemala this week building a house for a needy family with Casas For Christo. I would appreciate your prayers, that our lives would speak volumes where our words fail (yeah… I don’t speak Spanish!).

Image by Hitesh Choudhary on Pexels