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Seed-Bearing Trees

by Jerry Ousley  
9/11/2015 / Christian Living

As a kid, awe, okay, I like doing it as an adult too, one of the great things about eating watermelon is spitting out the seeds. We'd get into contests to see who could spit them the farthest. In our early teen years the church we attended owned a campgrounds out around Paris, Indiana.

Every Labor Day weekend they would call a work meeting at the campgrounds and we'd help the men and women all we could but frankly the highlights of that Saturday included swinging on grapevines, taking a dip in the swimming hole, and towards the end of the day, eating watermelon and spitting seeds. I know, it didn't take much to entertain us and it was a simple thing but I'll probably remember those times until the day I die.

Now-a-days they have bred fruit that doesn't produce seeds. It's convenient. It's good if there are little children eating it because it removes a good deal of the chocking danger from eating fruit. But in many ways I miss those seeds. We buy a lot of seedless grapes and that's good for our grandchildren because they dearly loves grapes. Of course you can still buy the old fashioned kind that has seeds.

One year we had thrown a watermelon rind out in our garden. We didn't think much of it at the time but it was kind of neat because the next year when we planted a garden right in the middle sprouted up a watermelon plant. I suppose there were a few seeds left in the rind and one or two of them did what came natural.

Seedless fruit may be okay for eating, but when it comes to the trees in God's fruitful forest, we must bear fruit and we must yield seeds. Some trees bear their seeds in the fruit, such as the apple, pear, peach and so forth. Others yield nuts that contain their seeds. Others, like the maple, bear those little "twirly-gig" things. Still others may produce flowers and the bees carry the pollen to other flowers. The point is that they all produce seeds which carry the capability of growing another tree.

Jesus told a parable in Luke 13:6-9 which says, "He also spoke this parable: 'a certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, 'Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down. Why does it use up the ground?' But he answered and said to him, 'Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.'" What a lucky day for that fig tree! If it wasn't yielding fruit neither was it yielding seeds. It was an unfruitful tree and like in the other examples we've discussed, it was good for nothing but to become fire wood.

But the keeper believed in second chances. He asked the owner to give him one more year with the tree to see if he could get it to begin producing fruit. As believer's in Christ we want to produce fruit but we also want our fruit to contain seeds. The seeds are our witness for Christ. When they are planted in fertile soil they will grow into new trees keeping the forest of God populated.

Let's first of all make certain that we are producing fruit in our lives. The fruit is what draws others to the seeds. But we've also got to make sure that we aren't producing the kind of fruit that is seedless because once the seed has done its work a new tree grows. But no tree grows from seedless fruit. Make sure that you are a seed-bearing tree in God's fruitful forest.

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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