Spiritual Fruit Comes Only From Spiritual Life
"For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Matthew 6:21
Water cannot rise above its own level, and neither can a Christian by any sudden, spasmodic effort rise above the level of his own spiritual life!
I have seen in my own experience how a man of God will let his tongue go all day in light, frivolous conversation; let his interest roam abroad among the idle pleasures of this world; and then under the necessity of preaching at night, seek a last minute reprieve just before the service by cramming desperately in prayer to put himself in a position where the spirit of the prophet will descend upon him as he enters the pulpit.
Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles. The fruit of a tree is determined by the tree, and the fruit of life by the kind of life it is. What a man is interested in to the point of absorption both decides and reveals what kind of man he is; and the kind of man he is by a secret law of the soul decides the kind of fruit he will bear.
The catch is that are often unable to discover the true quality of our fruit until it is too late
Of what do we think when we are free to think of what we will?
What object gives us inward pleasure as we brood over it?
Over what do we muse in our free moments?
To what does our imagination return again and again?
When we have answered these questions honestly we will know what kind of persons we are, and when we have discovered what kind of persons we are we may deduce the kind of fruit we will bear. If we would do holy deeds we must be holy men and women!
