Good trees and bad fruit?

God has this endearing way of making us learn things we didn't even know we needed to know. Case and point. For the last two months, I have actively sought the Lord for direction on what to teach during my Sunday night Bible studies in the city. I was quickly coming to the end of a brief study on the early life of Christ. Actually, it was supposed to cover His whole life, butI couldn't seem to laso that one in. From past experiences, I knew I couldn't just go pick up a Bible study at the local Christian bookstore. They never seemed to work. The writers always seemed a million miles away from the situations my girl's faced. Plus, those studies are someone else's words and experiences. How am I supposed to teach that? The Bible isn't like Math or Biology. I guess, in a lot of ways, it's non-transferrable. And besides, there are no Bible studies geared toward this type of ministry anyway. I could say a whole lot about that, but most of it would fly in the face of the little lessons I've learned while preparing the latest study.

I don't know at what point, "The Fruit of the Spirit" popped into my head, but as soon as it did, it seemed the obvious choice. Personally, I wanted to spend the next 90 days or so drilling the merits of abstinence into their heads, but apparantly that will have to wait.

So, I snuck away for an hour, after a particularily trying day of school, and nestled myself into one of those super-cushy chairs at Starbucks and began to alternately slurp my Mocha Frapicino, write a few thoughts, cross reference a few verses, whip out a commentary, slurp some more. Well..you bet the picture.

Finally, after talking to the nice FedEx guy, who came over to see what all the slurping and page flipping was about, I had completed my magnum opus on the first Fruit of the Spirit--LOVE.

Today, as I hurried to reel in any wayward words or missed thoughts, a seed began to sprout in my mind. "A good tree," I read in Matthew, "cannot bear bad fruit." Oh yeah? I can bear some pretty big stinkers. How is that? The question hung there in my mind, unanswered all day.

Until, I began to teach tonight. Suddenly, I knew. It is true I can and do, bear some awful fruit at times. Spend a day homeschooling with us and you'll see. But, that fruit doesn't come from the Spirit who dwells inside of me. No, the bad fruit I so shamefully exhibit comes from my flesh, which is alway and anon making war with my Spirit. Anything that the Spirit does through me will be good. So maybe the good tree in Matthew 7 is not so much the Believer but rather the Holy Spirit who indwells us? The only fruit the Spirit can or ever will produce is good. The only fruit the flesh produces, will be phoney and ill-motivated at best, and worm-ridden at its worst. That is why Jesus says that a bad tree produces bad fruit. Even, when an ungenerated person does good (think Gandhi) God recognizes their fruit for what it is--something rotten, stinking of what He knows produced the fruit in the first place--vain glory, alterior and selfish motives, social expectations, personal agendas, and the list goes on.

Actually He's taught me a lot more, but I want to go read my book, so hopefully at a later time...we'll continue the discussion.