Scripture: Mark 7:20-23 — “And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
You are a fruit producer. You can’t help it. Regardless if you have awareness of it or not, Some kind of fruit is constantly coming out of you? The question is, what kind are you producing? The fruit mentioned in the passage today is not just bad. It’s wretched. But there is something even uglier at the root of it.
Fruit is totally void of any sort of capacity to make itself better. It originates from a tree root, and depending on the condition of that root, the fruit that comes from it will rise or fall to the level its health. The root is responsible for the uptake of water and nutrients essential for the production of good fruit. If it is an unhealthy root, then whatever comes from it has no chance of somehow defying the principles of healthy root function and making itself better than what is. Another way of looking at it is to think about fruit as being a tangible representation of the parts of the tree and its root that you cannot see.
The same thing is true in us. Whatever fruit is emanating from us, is a tangible representation of what people can’t see on the inside. It’s not just a revelation for others. It’s also good for self-evaluation. Think about when you get sick. How do you know? Something physical happens, such as; a fever, nausea, body aches, swollen glands, or even exhaustion.
Imagine trying to cure your sickness by just focusing on the symptoms. Of course, it helps while your body fights off whatever is happening inside, to use some helpful medications to temper the symptoms. But just treating the symptoms won’t address the cause of them.
Your spiritual life is not complicated to understand. Whatever the condition of your spiritual root is, will directly translate to the quality of your spiritual fruit. And yet, the tendency is to focus almost exclusively on what is manifesting out of us, when it is actually originating inside of us.
With good intentions we talk a lot about being careful with what we put into our soul. Again, that is good. Yes, it’s damaging to watch movies with content that will partner with temptation to induce sin. It’s absolutely destructive to expose yourself to negative talk and slanderous social interaction. But it is a futile effort to be free of those things by exclusively addressing them while ignoring the reason they are there in the first place.
Do you ever wonder where the willingness to participate in harmful behavior comes from? The truth is, partnership is a fruit. Partnering with the aforementioned behavior happens because of a battle being waged on the inside. The presence of those things aren’t the cause of the problem. They are the result of the problem.
So what is actually the problem? As it says in the passage today, the stuff that defiles you is produced from the inside. Your heart must abide in God, or there is no chance that it will not eventually be destroyed from within. The problem resides on the inside. Not the outside.
It’s time to take a journey to the root of the fruit. Stop “putting lipstick on a pig”, so to speak. Don’t misunderstand., you are not the pig in this analogy. Sin is the pig. And there is nothing more that satan wants you to focus on than aiming for purity by trying to correct the bad fruit of a bad root.
Your daily focus before God, should be to invite Him into the foundation of your life. Like the foundation of an old house that has settled into the imperfections of the ground it was built on, your heart has also settled into tendencies and dysfunctions that came from your past. Naturally, your foundation has developed some cracks and crevices. Like the old house, this can lead to uneven floors or cracked walls allowing things to come in that will further weaken your life.
We sometimes ignore the things that require the process of sanctification. We do this because of the immediacy of God’s grace to come into our life and release us from the eternal punishment of sin. Thank God that His sacrifice on the cross which provides freedom from the penalty of sin is instantaneous for anyone who will receive it into their heart. But imagine a salvation that saves you from hell and promises heaven, but still leaves you to the torture of darkness here on earth. Yes, the struggle of life on earth is the battle with darkness. But the victory of heaven is available to you now, precisely to protect you in the midst of the battle.
So while victory in Jesus is not delayed, victory over past hurts are realized through the continued work of the Holy Spirit who provides perfect and patient counsel. It’s the blood of Jesus that paid the price for your salvation, and it continues to flow down into your life. Almost as if you are standing at the foot of the cross in real time, letting His blood run to the cracks of your foundation to strengthen what satan wants to weaken.
It’s time to allow God to put a stop to what brings defilement. To end the cycle of bad fruit that sprouts up from a root in need of His healing. Your foundation is crying out to be rescued from iniquity. It’s a cry to stop visiting your past without letting God restore your foundation which has been weakened by it.
Ask Him to strengthen your root. To bring healing where compromise has been allowed in. Surrender what is on the inside so that what manifests on the outside is good and pleasing.
Reflection:
- Ask God to show the cracks in your spiritual foundation. What caused them? The easy answer to that, is a sinful world. The hard answer, is whatever experiences you’ve had that you would rather ignore.
- Invite God to walk you through healing over these things. Who is He showing you that you need to forgive? Are you willing?
- Your flesh sees your wounds as the breeding ground for the anger it craves. Your heart is in need of continued sanctification from past wounds. Ask God to deliver you in the midst of your experiences today.
- Ask God for action steps to stop the cycle of bad fruit in your life. Repent of nurturing an unhealthy root and ask God to bring restoration of good fruit.