One of the things a person learns from the farm is that the ground does not care what it grows. Even though the farmer intends to grow soybeans, grass, weeds, and those pesky cocklebur seeds find a way to the ground. In the summer that became my job…Cocklebur Killer!  We walked the bean rows before the cockleburs could seed out using a shaft with a very sharp hook on the end to cut the plant down.

But why kill cockleburs? Cockleburs are thieves. They steal precious food & water from the soybeans and if they are found in the harvest it will reduce the price a buyer pays for the crop. If you have never experienced a cocklebur, they are a green plant that produces berry-like fruit with many barbs.

Our lives are like the field, we will produce something, but what? Jesus told us in Matthew 7:16-20, “You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. Can you pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 A good tree produces good fruit, and a bad tree produces bad fruit. 18 A good tree can’t produce bad fruit, and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit. 19 So every tree that does not produce good fruit is chopped down and thrown into the fire. 20 Yes, just as you can identify a tree by its fruit, so you can identify people by their actions.”

Then we learn from Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

So, what do your actions & responses resemble when the server in the restaurant gets your order wrong, or the person at DMV tells you to come back with more documentation or your boss hurts your feelings or you get caught up in heated political arguments that you have no control over, or ?????

It’s a choice. Are you the good fruit of the soybean or the cocklebur? Being a “Follower of Jesus” is 24/7…good conditions & bad! What do people say behind your back…do people see Jesus in you? Jesus said it this way in John 15:18, “This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”