The Fruit of a Christian

... Before I fell victim to the results of my years in the military I was crazy about growing a garden. My fondest memories of my garden are when my yellow headed granddaughter would come over and the Okra plants towered above my head. The first time she was three years old and I gave her a paper bag, sat on the ground and just enjoyed watching her scurry through the plants picking every pod she could reach. When she could reach no higher and she had cleared both rows and could reach no more she sat down beside me, opened her large grocery bag and told me she did not have enough. The bag was about ¼ full but she wanted to fill it. I made a deal with her there as we were seated, I promised to plant more for a late harvest and I told her that the very best ones were at the top of the plant. She looked and she told me, “Maybe, but those were smaller.” Standing up I threw her onto my shoulders, one leg oner each and told her to hold on to my head.
... As I walked she devastated my crop of new, tender Okra and she filled the bag to the top. She went home and had my daughter fry her some of both the new and the older. She never again wanted anything but the new growth because she learned the lesson that day very well. She is almost 16 today, yellow hair that glistens in the sun and she has a young man that thinks she hung the moon in the sky. She has grown to be a teen aged Christian, the fruit of many teachers within and outside of our family and I'm proud as a new papa of her, she is the fruit of a bunch of Christians. Just as my Okra seeds grew new Okra my family and church family have been growing new Christians for many years now.
... Tit 3:14 And let our people also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses, that they be not unfruitful.
... Every Christian will bear fruit at some point in their journey through this world. As much as my granddaughter brings joy to my life there is a greater joy that is so full I am unable to number the fruit of it. When I was first saved I read the Bible so much that I just consumed it.
... By the second year I had moved so close to God that I fully believed every word of the scriptures, without question. It was at that time that God placed His first calling on my life. I was forty-seven years old and God was calling me to teach. My first reaction was that I was still a babe in the faith, how could I possibly teach anyone? Just after I made my calling known to my pastor a position, teaching Primaries, opened up and of course what should a babe in Christ learn but the, down to earth, fundamentals?
... My wife, a Deacons daughter, co-taught the class with me and it was there that I led my first person to the foot of the cross. He was an eight year old boy that I have since gotten my truck serviced by and as a man he has not turned away from his first love. Before the LORD called me from that church, in Humble, Texas, I taught the men's class in the evenings and every student in my Primary Class had made professions of faith. My next calling was to serve as the music director under a young pastor as he and his wife were being called into the Mission Field in Honduras and together we were busy building the church there in Tomball, Texas and leading the lost to salvation in Jesus, the Christ.
... Soon after young pastor Jones and his wife moved onto the field the LORD moved my family to a small church in Pinehurst, Texas where my wife, daughter and granddaughter worked to build the Children's Ministry with the pastor's wife and I moved into the Prison Ministry. In my years inside the Texas Corrections System the team led thousands to faith in the LORD and I was just awe struck at the movement of God.
... Now, I am stricken with the damage of my years at war in Vietnam and I am stuck to my wheel chair. Many will and do think that God is finished with me but that is not true. I work a few Christian BBS's and folks are still moving to the foot of the cross. I do not have any idea how many have been saved because I obeyed God but I am certain the He knows. Nothing else matters, He knows.
... In summary, the fruit of an Okra seed is some of the best fried okra and some really delicious Gumbo. The fruit of a Christian is another Christian.
... Mar 4:21 And he said unto them, Is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed? and not to be set on a candlestick?