Orange Trees!

I was on my way to the post office to drop off some mail and noticed what used to be a very lovely orange grove. However, right now it’s not so lovely. Weeds are overtaking all of the trees. What started with one little piece of growth has now grown up, around, and in the trees. They can hardly survive because they’re being choked out; not getting enough air or nutrients. They’re not producing fruit, they can’t—they have hardly any life left in them, how can they produce something else?

Isn’t this how it is with sin and us? What starts as just one little compromise, one little sin becomes bigger and bigger until it overtakes us, sometimes it overtakes our whole life. That one curse word, that one drink, that one little peek at porn on the internet, that one little ounce of unforgiveness (I’m talking to myself here too) and before we know what happens, it grabs us and begins to grow. We begin to separate ourselves from God (because we know we’re wrong) so we’re not getting our nutrients, our “life” from our provider. We’re being choked out and we’re not producing fruit in our lives either.

We have to be so careful to not allow that kind of "stuff" into our lives or our hearts. We have to immediately take every thought captive and focus on pure things, good things. We have to run to the life giver Himself, allow Him to plow up our weeds, give us some life, and then we can go back out and produce some fruit for His glory and His kingdom….