The Fruit Sells the Tree

Hi friends, and thank you for joining me for today's reading from the Our Daily Bread Devotional. I'm Elissa Morgan, and today's devotional is entitled, The Fruit Sells the Tree. A nursery owner set out to sell peach trees.

She considered various approaches. Should she line up leafy saplings and burlap sacks in a beautiful display? Should she create a colorful catalog picturing peach trees in various seasons of growth? At last, she realized what really sells a peach tree. It's the peach it produces.

Sweet smelling, deep orange, and fuzzy skinned. The best way to sell a peach tree is to pluck a ripe peach, cut it open until the juice dribbles down your arm and hand a slice to a customer. When they taste the fruit, they want the tree. God reveals Himself in a wrapper of spiritual fruit in His followers—love, joy, peace, forbearance, which is patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. When believers in Jesus exhibit such fruit, others will want that fruit as well, and therefore will seek the source of the fruit that is so attractive. Fruit is the external result of an internal relationship—the influence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Fruit is the dressing that beckons others to know the God we represent. Like the bright peaches standing out against the green leaves of a tree, the fruit of the Spirit announces to a starving world, Here is food.

Here is life. Come and find a way out of exhaustion and discouragement. Come and meet God. Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Galatians chapter 5, verses 22 to 26. Let's pray. Holy Spirit, we welcome You to come into our lives, till the soil that is our hearts, and grow there those characteristics that help us to look like You, because they look like Jesus. In Your name, amen. Thanks for listening today. My name is Elisa Morgan, and today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.