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My kids won’t eat a brown banana. They don’t like a peach or an apple with a bruise. They really like fruit that looks good. I have to admit that I like good looking fruit too! I guess that proves the saying that the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree! We all know that fruit can be under ripe and hard or bitter, or it can be over ripe and soft and oversweet, or even fermented and moldy. Under ripe, green bananas taste like cardboard. An under ripe apple can be very sour, and could make you spend a lot of time in the bathroom —- if you know what I mean. The best kind of fruit we like to eat, is fruit that is perfectly ripe, and beautiful!

God likes beautiful fruit too! In fact, He likes fruit so much that he told each of us to be fruitful. That can mean several different things, but for the most part, He wants us to achieve our goals, and reach our potential. Potential is a result of doing something with what you have. The Bible talks about the Word of God as a seed. We all have access to a Bible and it is full of seeds. When we plant those seeds in our heart, all of the potential God put on the inside of us, can come to pass. It is up to us to put the seed in. Then it needs to be watered (with the water of the Word), the sun (Son) needs to shine on it, and we need to pull out the weeds around it (get rid of evil influences around us). Then the fruit of our life can be what God planned, and your potential can be actualized.

In the life of your family, is the fruit falling close to the tree? Remember your kids don’t do what you tell them, they do what you do! Set a good example. Operate in the fruit of the spirit, and make your family and home life the best it can be. If you’ve been fruitful and multiplied (!!), let’s do our best with the lives God has entrusted to us. If we produced perfectly ripe, beautiful fruit from our lives, it is very likely your kids will have all the tools they need to produce perfectly, ripe, beautiful fruit from their lives too.
Actualize all that potential – It starts with a seed!

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Do you like to see things grow? I’m always amazed at how much my kids grow year by year. Probably you have had an aunt or an uncle, or maybe even a grandparent who told you that you are growing like a weed when you were a child. Well they meant that in a sweet way, because although weeds are not desirable, they do know how to grow. Very quickly they just take over. The same thing happens in gardens. My vegetable garden is especially weedy at this point. Those weeds sure know how to grow. My goal is to actually grow some vegetables in there, so I have to do something about the weeds. That means some work, some sweat, some dirt on my clothes, on my hands and definitely on my shoes. Because my family appreciates “fresh from the garden” vegetables, it is worth the effort.

Growing up physically doesn’t actually take too much effort. As long as you’re putting food in your body, getting some exercise, drinking good pure water, you probably will grow pretty effortlessly. Growing spiritually takes some of those same things. We need good food spiritually (by reading the Word of God, going to church and hearing the Word, and by listening to uplifting music.) We need good exercise (the Bible tells us to exercise our faith, or build our faith muscles so we can do great exploits for God.) Good pure water is plentiful for us, because we have a well of salvation in us, and rivers of life flowing through us. So guess what? You have what it takes to grow up spiritually, and I know that you are good soil for the Word to be planted in, and that you will grow up to become all that God has for you!

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I started off this series on fruitfulness by giving you wisdom from my garden. It thought it might not be a bad place to give you a reminders. So here is a quick synopsis!
1. Be ready, and don’t miss the opportunity – to sow or to reap
2. Be selective about what you do plant – stay focused – too many variables cause stress!
3. Maintain – take care of what you do have – pull weeds and streamline
4. Water – hydrate, keep things moist, they will dry up without the moisture they need
5. Stir up the ground – use your hoe to break up the fallow ground
6. Stay in the Sunlight – you can’t grow in the dark
7. Choose to be fruitful – expect a harvest
I’m sure you didn’t receive any heavy revelation from my garden wisdom, but maybe those 7 points can be a reminder to do the natural things to make your garden grow, and God will do the supernatural part. So often, we sit back waiting on God, when He could be waiting on us! Get planting. He has given you seed. Once the seed is in, maintain it. Don’t leave it to die, maintain it, water it, stir it up! Then stay where the Son is! That’s the SON son! And very importantly, use your expecter! Expect the healthy harvest. You’d done your part, now let me encourage you to expect your harvest to be big!

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Are you a farmer for life? You are probably very familiar with the law of sowing and reaping. Farmers get to be a part of that every year, as they put their seed into the soil and watch it grow and produce a harvest. God thought up that law, and pretty much everything in life operates on it. What you sow is what you are going to reap. I have been reading in II Cor 9 recently and am always amazed at how much God wants to bless us through the law of sowing and reaping. Verse 6 starts this way, if you sow sparingly you will reap sparingly. It goes onto say that as God’s grace abounds to us, we will be able at all times, having all that we need, to abound in every good work. Verse 10 talks about God giving seed to the one who will sow it, and giving us bread to eat, or for our food, or our consumption, and then that He would increase the seed (YIPEE!) and enlarge the harvest of righteousness. Verse11 says that we will be made rich in every way so that we can be generous on every occasion! I love how the Message Bible says it….God is more than extravagant with us, so we can be extravagant with others. Sounds like we get to be extravagant givers! No stingy farmers among us! The abundance we receive, we get to pass on. Do you have an abundance in some area of your life? Why not share it? Give and it will be given again unto you. In my garden we’ve got more than enough to share. Do you want a tomato?!!! Let the generosity and extravagance of God, rub off on you, and onto somebody else!

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As I try to daily maintain my garden this time of year, I also try to daily nourish and replenish my spirit. I have found 3 great ways to do just that! 1) Read the Bible! God wants us to read his love letter to us everyday. Find an way to read the Bible everyday. Use my bible reading guide or one of the many on youversion.com. 2) Communicate with Him! He loves to communicate with us on a regular basis. (Why not tell Him of your love for Him through prayer and worship?) 3) Worship with other believers! He loves meeting us at church, and fellowshipping with other believers. He likes us enough to want to be meet with us more than once a week! He likes being around us daily! (Why not make church life a priority in your week and make Him your priority each day?) If we can begin to incorporate each of these three disciplines into our life – reading the word, talking to God, and being involved in a Bible believing church – we can be on the road to becoming productive for the kingdom of God! I think more than anything, everyone on the earth wants to know they have a purpose, and to know that their life counts. When it comes to making a difference in the world, we do need to be armed with the Word of God, know the power of prayer and the power of praise and worship, and then know the power of being involved in a body where the believers join together to accomplish great things for the kingdom of God. To be able to make a difference, we do need to be nourished and replenished. We stay strong and ready when we are full of the Word, in constant communication with God, and when we know that we are a part of a church family that serves God with us. So keep your garden healthy (!) and make sure you stay nourished and replenished to be productive for the kingdom of God! 1 Timothy 4:6
If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed.

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Intro: Hi, this is Dorette Schaal with an encouraging word for your day. All through this month, we will be talking about living fruitfully. Fruitful living happens as we let the fruit of the Spirit operate in our life. Since we are part of the vine, we should be fruitful! Throughout the Bible you may have noticed that God is serious about fruit. He started earth’s productivity by telling Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply. In Psalms 92, we are told how to flourish, and that is to be planted in the house of the Lord, or in a local, Christian Bible believing Church. I want to be more fruitful, and I want to encourage you to be more fruitful too. Here is your dailyeword.

If everyday I’ll weed my garden, I can catch the weeds when they are small and when they can easily be removed. If I let them grow, and the dirt is hard around them, it may take a shovel and a lot of effort to remove them. A little bit of effort on a regular basis pays off in the long run. A way to apply that to our spiritual life would be to make sure we are saturating the garden of our heart with the water of the Word. If it needs a little fertilizer, do a word study in that certain area, so you are armed and ready with the Word of God to overcome the weed that is trying to take over your garden. We can pull up the weeds that are obstacles in our life by using our faith muscles and see them be removed. We can stay alert and awake, and remove the weed before it goes to seed, because the result from weed seed is only multiplied problems. Consider the dandelion!!! You know what happens with them. One dandelion creates 100’s! Daily maintenance in our spiritual life keeps us living weed free! If we notice attitudes or actions in our life that aren’t in line with our new life in Christ, we need to dig up those weeds. To produce the great fruit that God wants in our life, we need to be the kind of gardener who watches over the field, and makes sure it gets what it needs to be productive, and chases away or uproots anything that is detrimental to the crop’s health. Be encouraged to be a diligent gardener and intentional about taking care of fallow ground by regularly cultivating the hard ground in you! You can live weed free! Todays verse is:
Jeremiah 4:3 For thus says the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem: “Break up your fallow ground, And do not sow among thorns

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I want to encourage you – do what it takes to grow spiritually, it’s worth the effort! This past week, I spent a little bit of time in the garden, and much to my dismay, I found many of my gardens have an abundance of weeds growing among the flowers and vegetables. Just looking at the uninvited greenery that wriggled it’s way into my normally lovely gardens made me think about how daily care (in any area) makes for much less work in the long run.

Isn’t that true about most things in life? I’ve been trying to teach my kids that if you take care of things right away, you won’t have piles of work to do later on. One of my biggest pet peeves is coming home or waking up to a kitchen sink full of dishes. With a busy schedule and lots of activities with church, schooling, recreation, chores, animals to care for, and sports activities, there are many times when dinner happens quickly and then we have to be out the door. The messy pile of dishes meets us when we get back home.

A pile of mess can happen in other areas of life if we don’t take care of things on a daily basis. Little things can creep into our life when we don’t daily maintain our walk with God. Bad attitudes, anger, bitterness, corrupt communication or many other things can slip in if we don’t attend to the garden of our soul. Don’t let weeds grow in your soul, or your garden!

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I got some lovely flowers from my family for Mother’s day, and I am enjoying looking at them through my windows in both my kitchen and my dining room. I have planted some little pots around the house as well, and they are all looking beautiful.

Usually by this time I also have an awesome vegetable garden growing by now. The vegetables I’ve planted are doing ok.. The only things that are doing well are the things that come back on their own, and some new herbs I have planted. Everything needs a little tlc!

There are some important lessons we can learn from the garden, so I think I should share my vast knowledge with you!
1. If you wait to long, you might miss the opportunity. Sometimes we are slow about things for legitimate reasons, but often if we wait too long on some things we will miss an important opportunity. In our area, with a shorter growing season, we want to have things in the ground in time to actually harvest them.
2. Be selective about what you plant. Too many varieties of too many plants give you an over abundance that might go to waste. This is also true of life. If you are too thinly spread, you can’t do any job to the best of your ability. Streamline!
3. Maintain. If you don’t pull the weeds, you might not be able to find the plants! It works in the home too. You might not be able to find the keys, because they are hidden beneath a pile of papers (weeds!). Find a solution that works for you to deal with weeds (and clutter) on a day-to-day basis.
4. Water. Plants don’t survive without water, and neither do you. Hydrate your plants and your body. Priority #1-Water your spirit with the “water” of the Word.
5. Stir up the fallow ground. The soil around your plants needs to be turned over to get more nutrients into the growing plant. As humans, we need our fallow ground stirred too. Don’t get too comfortable just doing what you normally do…..shake things up. Be spontaneous, be creative, do something out of the ordinary. You might surprise yourself!
6. Stay in the sunlight. Plants need to see the sun to grow, and you do too! The only difference is the sun you need is spelled SON! Let the SON in, and shine your light so the whole world can see.
7. Be fruitful. It is of absolutely no use to plant something and not expect a harvest. I plant flowers to grow flowers, I plant vegetables to grow vegetables. If we want a harvest from our life…we need to be planted. Find a place to grow and bear fruit!

Then GROW to your hearts content. Our key scripture this week is found in Mark 4:14-33. I want to encourage you to be good soil that produces 100 fold!

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Happy 4th of July! What a big party today is for all Americans! So much of our nation’s history was founded by godly men and women, longing for freedom to worship God. From the original voyages across the ocean looking for a new world, the explorers were on a mission, to tell the new world about God. When the puritans came from England, they wanted freedom of worship. Not only was the new world a land of opportunity, it was a place where God could be worshipped freely. America’s founders were people who loved God. America was founded on godly principles. We have strayed from that foundation, but thankfully, we still live in a country where we can worship God freely. 2 Cor 3:17 says that where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. We use that verse in our churches all the time. We can apply that to our country too. Where and when we let the Spirit of God reign, we will experience freedom. Let’s not forget the foundations and our humble beginnings. Let us not forget those who gave their lives for our freedom. Let us not forget to thank God, for men and women of courage, who bravely fought for our freedoms. We know that freedom really it does cost somebody something. We are thankful for the people who defend our nation and especially those who gave their lives for America . Our freedom in Christ cost Jesus His life. His was the ultimate sacrifice because He loves you so much. Let us never forget! Happy 4th of July, and Thank God for our freedom.

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One scripture I love to use in prayer is in Romans 8:2. It says that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. What an amazing thing, through Christ we are set free from the power of sin in our lives. The law of sin that started in the garden through disobedience to God by Adam and Eve, has been reversed on our behalf through Jesus. Glory! We can live above the temptations of the enemy. We are no longer slaves to sin. To be set free from the bondage of sin and to be able to live in that realm where the Spirit of Life resides, is true freedom. The law of love, overrides the law of sin. When love came to earth in the form of Jesus, and died on a cross, he made us more than conquerors. Jesus conquered death, hell and the grave, and made us free to live above the world’s system, and to walk in, live in, and abide in the spirit. He was the conqueror and he gave us His victory! How amazing! Is there some area of bondage in your life that keeps hooking you in? The enemy knows where our hooks are. We can rise above his tactics that steal and destroy and live in the abundant life that Jesus paid a huge price for us to receive. Let’s live in that tree freedom.

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