Are You A Bradford Pear Tree?

Sheila and I went for a pretty nice little motorcycle ride around town today, minus the very strong wind! Seen many trees and plants beginning to blossom. Even our neighbor had her yard mowed today. It is spring!

As we were riding today, I noticed how many Bradford Pear trees were pretty much in full bloom. They are everywhere! It reminded me of something the Lord stirred in my heart a few years ago. Are you, or is your life, like a Bradford Pear tree? Please hang with me for a bit on this!

They seem to be one of the very first trees to blossom. First, the blossoms are white, then, eventually, turns to the green leaves. Big, full shaped trees. They are beautiful to look at.

Here is what the Lord spoke to me. Fruit trees have fruit on them! Cherry trees, apple trees, orange trees, pineapple trees, on and on. But a tree that bears the name of a fruit and does not have any fruit on it! What is up with that? I realize that it partly gets its name from its shape. But still, no fruit?! A fruit tree with no fruit!

How many of us professing Christians are just like that? A tree that is supposed to bear fruit but has no fruit on it? The scriptures make it pretty plain that the world would know us Christians by our love, or our fruit. Not our doctrine, not by how we look, not our ability to quote Scripture to them, not our ability to tell them how wrong they are in the things they do! By our fruit! Which, according to Galatians 5:22, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. Remember, fruit grows from a seed to full size. You and I may be a little sprout in one of these listed, but more mature in another. The point is that fruit is there and growing!

Remember when Jesus came up to the fig tree to pick some fruit to eat, only to find no fruit on it? HE rebuked and cursed the tree, and that doesn't mean HE cussed it out, for those of us from Oklahoma :). Next day it was dead. Our lives need to have fruit in it or we are not presenting properly the life that is in us to present. If we are by name, a fruit tree, but have no fruit, what good are we? See, fruit trees don't bear fruit for their own consumption! They bear fruit for someone else to feed on!

Another thing about the Bradford Pear, their branches are very brittle. They break fairly easy in strong winds and storms. Remember the ice storms in Oklahoma the last few years? There were hundreds of these trees that were lost as a result of the extra weight placed on them. They don't do well in storms! A friend once told me of an old man that worked in a tree nursery. The story was the old man would go out and shake a small tree he had planted in his front yard. My friend asked him why he was doing that? Would he not kill the tree? The old man told him that when he shakes the little tree, it, by nature, thinks it is in a storm and its roots begin to go deeper to hang on for dear life. The ultimate results is a much stronger tree as it grows and matures.

How about you? Do you do well in storms? Do you stand strong in the face of the storms of life? We all face things, even on a daily basis. It is not that we don't make mistakes, or stumble. It is that we have a Greater One that lives in us, and HE is ready to help us in a moment's notice. HE is our strength! We can stand strong if we rely on the work of Christ HE has accomplished for us. Our problem, we want to try to accomplish it much of the time ourselves!

Finally, to bring all this to a close, how is the fruit section in your life? Are you bearing fruit that others can see, partake of, be fed, sustained, and encouraged? How about the strength in your life? Are you strong enough to weather the storms of life that come? Or do you break and fall apart with every storm?

We have all the fruit and strength we need to accomplish the task HE has for us. 2 Peter 1:3 says God's divine power has given us everything we need for life and for godliness. We need to trust that! HE has given us everything we need through Jesus Christ!

Or, are you a Bradford Pear tree?