Below is this week’s gospel encouragement to you.
Don’t swallow the watermelon seed or a watermelon will grow in your stomach, my parents said. Do you remember that? Where did that old wives’ tale come from anyway? I think our parents knew that it was unhealthy for our young digestive system to swallow them.
But when you swallow the gospel seed God takes up residence in your heart. This means you fully tasted the gospel, you didn’t just look at it, you heard, received and therefore tasted and ate it. The gospel seed was rooted in your heart but don’t worry, the gospel seed is supposed to grow in you because Jesus lives in you. The gospel seed planted in your heart has sprouted and is bearing the fruit of the Spirit in you and through you (Luke 8:11, Galatians 5:22-23).
You have tasted, ingested and are living not with a watermelon growing in your stomach, but with the fruit bearing Spirit of God who sprouted in you the fruit of love, joy, and peace welling up from the gospel that was planted in you and the love of Christ is abounding in you as you bear the fruit of righteousness.
“And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, 10 so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.” Philippians 1:9-11
No, there’s not a watermelon growing in your stomach but you are being transformed inwardly, being renewed day by day even as outwardly we are wasting away in these jars of clay (2 Corinthians 4:7). We are being renewed daily inwardly and bearing fruit outwardly that will never die. You are bearing fruit of eternity, lasting fruit that never dries up, living a new life that will never spoil with a new heart that can never be changed.
Your hard heart was exchanged by God and He will never replace it again because you’ve died with Jesus, we’re buried in a tomb and rose again. You are rooted forever in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Bearing fruit and loving others comes natural to you because of who you are in Jesus Christ. Jesus bore the pain and suffering on the cross being trampled upon like grapes in a winepress. The Vine of life hung on the cross and shed His blood under God’s wrath, judgement, and condemnation so you could drink in the life of Jesus, the liberty of the Spirit, and the love of God.
Are you celebrating this good news today? There’s no watermelon growing in your stomach but the word of God, the gospel of your salvation has been planted in your heart and is forever growing so you will never be a tree that bears bad fruit or no fruit at all.
“But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7-8
Sure there may be times where you feel like you’re not bearing fruit or you’re struggling in the flesh. The world may be coming at you, sin is tempting you and the enemy may be luring you, but you are stable and satisfied in Jesus Christ. You are just as stable as His life, free from sin‘s power, forgiven in His death and alive through His resurrection.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you.” 1 Peter 1:3-4