When God Made Fruit

A ministry called “On Eagle’s Wings” sends us interns every March.

Each young man who has come has been saved by Jesus and OEW helps them learn to share their “hope story.” They spend the summer months traveling to different reservations across North America sharing the story of how Jesus saved them. Though each story is unique, the power of Christ has been evident in all of them.

This weekend, our interns hosted an event at the local recreation center. Basketball, rap music, and prizes attracted the teens in our area, desperately in need of hope.

It was exciting to hear both of our interns tell their hope stories to the crowd whose only experience with Jesus may be in their expletives. However, it was more exciting to see how they interacted one-on-one with the people who attended. They walked around, talking quietly with first one person and then another, sharing the love of Jesus in conversation. 

As one of our interns approached a man who has battled addiction for a long time, I wondered why I had not yet tried to talk to the man. I had chalked him up as a hopeless case because I have known him a long time, he was obviously impaired, and I didn’t see the possibility of any fruit coming from a conversation with him.

But, our intern knew by the fruit in his own life to expect fruit from God even where none is yet visible.

When God made fruit in Genesis 1, it had only been three days since all was void. No tree existed. Yet, when God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed,” plants, trees, seeds, and fruit were spoken into existence from the mind of God. 

God brought forth fruit by His Word. 

It was exciting to see that happening in real time as our intern, who has himself been saved and changed by Jesus, planted those seeds in the life of someone who so desperately needs God’s fruit in his life. 

Later, as I talked to the man, I thought about his life. It made me think of the fruit that was at the center of the first temptation as Satan corrupted the word of God to bring about a fruit of his own: death. 

One fruit competed against another within the man beside me. A seed planted may at any time be transformed from death to life. 

The very Creator who spoke fruit into existence also spoke life into existence as His Son was incarnated as the fruit of the womb. 

He was the very fruit who proclaimed, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

God’s fruit hung on a tree. He was plucked, and He died so that He could bring the fruit of eternal life even to those who have tasted the fruit of death and sin.

Paul wrote to the Romans, “Now 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.”

The man remains a container of mucky, black potting soil where the Seed has been planted. Join us in praying for a harvest of fruit in his life as the seed of another’s testimony takes root and God gives the growth.