Good Fruit

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Good Fruit

Have you ever tasted a banana that’s gone past its best? It can taste a bit sickly, right?!

Or maybe you’ve eaten a really bitter strawberry or raspberry. 

Or maybe an apple you were eating has had a maggot in! Happened to me once…

Fruit is amazing and life-giving. But it’s even better when it’s good, tasty fruit!

Download

Download this A4 sheet and cut up the flyers and give out to everyone to take away. Or do a similar flyer and get printed up – a company like hippoprint do 50 x A6 flyers for around £17 (October 2018).

 Download the Fruit flyers

Give Out Mini Baskets of Fruit

I also ordered some ‘woven fruit basket miniatures’ – available on Amazon and Ebay from a couple of sellers. 

These are the baskets (pictured, left). They’re very small (about 4cm across) but you can put a grape in there plus perhaps a fruit gum!

They are around £5 for 3 baskets at the time of writing (October 2018).

Alternatively, favour pails / favour buckets are available online and will hold more contents – hobbycraft.co.uk do a version (currently around £4 for 5 pails which are around 5.5cm x 5.5cm).

Inside this, I put some crepe paper, a green grape, a purple grape, a blueberry and a strawberry and gave out one to each person.

I also found some ‘craft leaves’ (from The Works – 50 for £1) and added a leaf to each favour pail.

Matthew 5.6, The Bible (from The Passion Translation) 

“How enriched you are when you crave righteousness! For you will be surrounded with fruitfulness.”

‘Christian’ fruit ‘jokes’ found online… 

(Apologies in advance…)

Does God love everyone? Yes, but He prefers “fruits of the spirit” to “religious nuts!”

What’s so funny about forbidden fruits? They create many jams.

Slightly better…. ‘Did Eve ever have a date with Adam?’ … ‘No, just an apple.’ (OK so not totally Biblically correct, but quite funny…)

Or there’s a picture of Noah holding a pear. There are worms inside the pear saying to Noah, ‘We were told you were taking animals in pears…” (‘pairs’) 

Video – Top 10 Amazing Fruits that grow in weird ways

Direct YouTube linky – https://youtu.be/RRXI51MzdfM (checked April 2019)

Good Fruit – ‘Righteousness’ 

Righteousness means God’s right way of living – seeing, thinking and doing. 

Some Bible versions translate ‘righteousness’ here as ‘doing right’, ‘being hungry for God’ or ‘being right with God and doing right’. 

God loves it when we pursue right ways of living. But more than that, as we pursue God, we become more effective. It’s like a footballer who trains hard and long and watches and learns from a good coach. They get better and their football improves. It benefits them, the team and the fans.

Goodness and Justice

The word righteousness also means pursuing goodness and justice. Pursuing means to actively go after. One of my mates actively pursued his wife. They met but that wasn’t the end of things. He actively pursued her and to his great credit, he still pursues her. As a result their marriage is flourishing. 

When we pursue God, we go after his way of doing things, we also get real with him and we seek both his hand and his face – what he does and who he is. It wouldn’t be much of a relationship if my mate said to his Canadian wife, ‘yep, I love you because I can get Canadian citizenship’. That may not work so well…

Staying connected

John the Baptist talked about producing fruit ‘in keeping with repentance’ (John 3). So producing fruit shows we’re right with God. Repentance just means getting right with God when we mess up. Like we would do with a friend or family member, we just say ‘sorry God.’

When we actively put God first, seek him, the fruit of God naturally flows out of us. The other day, the hose wasn’t working well and the pressure seemed really low. But on investigating, the problem wasn’t the water coming out but the fact that the hose wasn’t attached properly. When we connect our ‘hose’ to God’s tap, then God’s living water flows out and waters the ground around us. Amazing picture huh?!

Variety

When I look at fruit, I also see incredible colour, variety, richness, creativity, shapes, sizes, forms, tastes and benefits. This is the life of us as part of God’s church. This is the kind of thing that we are when we’re attached to Jesus.

Different Kinds of Fruit

There are all kinds of fruit, so don’t compare yourself to an orange if you’re an apple! One of the best things we can do as a Christian is to understand what kind of fruit we are.

Fruit producing is a natural result of staying connected. If a branch is on a tree and is well watered and sun-filled, it will produce fruit after its kind.

Producing and Not Producing Fruit? 

Jesus said we can learn a lot about people by observing the kind of fruit that comes out of them, often when we’re doing well or being squeezed! 

Fruit, naturally occurring always produces seed. Yes, some fruits have been genetically modified not to have seeds (some grapes for example). But in their natural state, they produce fruit. 

So are you producing fruit? Not only fruit by good fruit? 

When a tree doesn’t produce fruit, there’s something wrong in the tree, it’s not being watered or getting enough of the sun or it’s in the wrong environment or it’s in bad soil.  Think about that.

Show and Tell

It’s good to have fruit and be fruitful but like God told Adam and Eve, it’s good to spiritually multiply. So let your light shine, let out all that goodness God has put in you. Don’t get so overloaded with fruit that you bend under the weight and the fruit falls off and rots! The Dead Sea is dying because the water goes nowhere. Release the fruit!

Psalm 1 (from the Passion Translation)

Read the Psalm out loud. Then read the second one out loud together and personalise it.

What delight comes to those who follow God’s way
They won’t walk in step with the wicked,
nor share the sinner’s way,
nor be found sitting in the scorner’s seat.
Their pleasure and passion is remaining true to the Word of “I Am,”
meditating day and night in his true revelation of light
They will be standing firm like a flourishing tree
planted by God’s design
deeply rooted by the brooks of bliss,
bearing fruit in every season of their lives.
They are never dry, never fainting,
ever blessed, ever prosperous…

But how different it is for the righteous!
The Lord embraces their paths as they move forward…

Second time round reading together…

What delight comes to me when I follow God’s way
I won’t walk in step with the wicked,
nor share the sinner’s way,
nor be found sitting in the scorner’s seat.
My pleasure and passion is remaining true to the Word of “I Am,”
meditating day and night in his true revelation of light.
I will be standing firm like a flourishing tree
planted by God’s design
deeply rooted by the brooks of bliss,
bearing fruit in every season of their lives.
I am never dry, never fainting,
ever blessed, ever prosperous…

How different it is for me, one of God’s righteous people!
The Lord embraces my path as I move forward.
..