Life in the Orchard

Matthew 7:18-20
A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.

Another wise teaching from Christ, then again everything He said was wise. But listening to Christ is one thing, applying the things He says is another.

Fruit.
In the verses preceding this passage in Matthew, Christ is telling His followers to beware of false prophets and false teachings. He also reminds them that these false prophets can come bearing what seems to be Truth and Light, but they could really be harboring Death and Destruction. The way to test them, Christ says, is if they bear good fruit or not...

You might be thinking, "Yea Hackett, that's great stuff...so what?"
So, maybe we should apply it...
And I don't mean apply it to the Church as a whole; at least, not for my topic, because this should be applied to the Church. But let's apply it to ourselves for a moment...

...

Hmm...
I don't like what I'm seeing.

How much fruit do we bear?
Me, personally, my fruit comes in the form of a 10% tithing check, a couple dozen blogs and Facebook Notes, and telling somebody every now and then about the genocide in Darfur...

I should be doing so much more.
Now, take a look at yourself...how much fruit are you bearing? Hopefully more than me.

But honestly, I would say, as a whole, we Christians are like an orchard. It rains twice a week, we are rooted in good soil, the sun shines a lot, we are well taken care of by the Farmer...yet the trees look like it is the middle of winter. No leaves, no fruit, just dead limbs...now, guess who the trees are? Unfortunately, us...

I guess my point is that we really don't take Christianity seriously. We don't have the fruit to show for it, we don't have the results we want, and the world is still dying at an alarming, quickening pace.

Meanwhile, the dead trees remain in the orchard... sitting calmly even as the wildfires of hell consume the world around its walls.
I guess what sucks the most is that dead, dry wood burns the fastest...at least we have the walls of salvation protecting us. But hey, maybe it'd be better if we didn't. Then we might start bearing fruit.

You think that Christ saving us from an eventual hell would be enough to get us to bear fruit...apparently we think we need a little more though. After contemplating these thoughts over the past few days, I honestly don't understand why God still loves us; we sure as hell don't deserve it.

Maybe we aren't as "Christian" as we think we are...

Its time we take a peak over the orchard walls that protect us, it is time to look at what is really happening in the world.
Genocide, rape, theft, murder, war, disease...it is all running rampant; so much so that the 2006 Human Security Brief, done by the Human Security Report Project, listed the state of humanity as "far from positive."

It is almost scary to think that some of those outside the sphere of salvation see the dire state of the world, and we as Christians who have been eternally saved from it do not.

I think we need to take a good long look at ourselves, and look around our little orchard. The Great Farmer stands at the gate, sowing seeds around the entrance, the least we could do is help. Christ, after all, gave His life for us, and our lives should belong to Him now.

We are long overdue to step outside of the orchard...maybe it is fear of life without the wall that scares us into staying. What we need to learn is that the wall goes with us. Christ has bought us eternally; there is nothing to fear. After all, the task before us is not nearly as great as the God behind us.

Christ's command at the end of Matthew wasn't to stay in the orchard, it was "GO and MAKE disciples of all nations..."

Let's get out of the safe zone...
Let's get out of the orchard...

Because, until we do, I will dare to say that we have no right to call ourselves Christians. Christians follow Christ, and we stopped doing that a long time ago.

In Christ,
Hackett