Your Life is Valuable Enough to Bear Fruit!

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before that my mother had a green thumb.  She could break off a branch from a bush and stick it in the soil and roots would appear and that stick would become a bountiful bush! It didn’t matter what the plant was, she could make it grow.  She could even make something out of plants that others throw away.  Take the horse apple. Now everyone knows you can’t eat bois d’arc apples, only squirrels find them edible. But mother would take those ugly knobby green blobs, slice them thinly, plop them in the oven and out would come interesting “flowers”.  I think the reason Mother was so talented at her gardening was that she loved it. It was more than a duty or a chore. It was something that gave her extreme pleasure. Sometimes she’d be burning hot in the summer sun with sweat streaming across her face. She’d whistle a little tune and keep working.  It never crossed her mind to quit because she loved it. She loved the outcome of what her efforts would accomplish in the lawn and the garden.  You could say she stayed rooted right there until she was done.

God loves to make something from nothing. We are like broken dead twigs in the garden of life and most of us, if truth be told, are throw-aways. We didn’t produce fruit or beautiful flowers. We just existed. But God came into our lives to make something that we never thought we could be.  As He prunes and replants us, we flourish. It never crosses God’s mind to throw us away. What He begins He will continue. He made a way to tend our lives throughout history by His sacrifice on the cross. If it were merely the cross, then death would be our answer. But He went beyond the cross to new life. He rose again, so that we too can rise to new life. He took our little bent, misshapen and unusable lives and caused them to bear much fruit for His Kingdom.

And He always tends to our needs with His loving hands, because we were rooted and established in His love.  Oh there will be times when we feel destined to be plucked up and placed on the burn pile, but God will have none of that.  He never tires of tending His garden of love, so that He is with us, his flourishing plants, forever.

Oh beloved, you may not realize how valuable you are to God. Others may have told you you had no value or given you the idea that you are not worthy of being regenerated, but you are! It doesn’t matter what type of soil your life was beforehand or whether you produced good things, it just matters that He is calling you out of your own mess into His loving care! He will show you wonderful things about your life as you learn to trust in and lean on His Word! He chose you specifically to bloom where you are planted, to produce where you are set and to live a flourishing life of abundance in Him! He loves you, He will tend to your life needs and He will watch over so that the weeds of life will not take root anymore.  And His love and care are all that really matter!

Proverbs 12:12  Thieves are jealous of each other’s loot, but the godly are well rooted and bear their own fruit.

Colossians 2:7  having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. (NAS)

Ephesians 6:17-19 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God. (NAS)

John 15:5 Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.