You will know them
by their fruits.
Matthew 7:16
Have you ever known a person who leads a G-rated life on Sunday morning, but a PG-13-rated life the rest of the week?
Of course he have.
And of course, we’ve all done it.
Maybe you’re not the one who sinks to an R-rated level. And hopefully you’re not descending as frequently to the depths you once plumbed in the past. But occasionally all of us sin and fall short. Sadly, our inevitable human failures wind up branding the church with the mark of hypocrisy. We each and occasionally drive would-be believers from the faith. Why? Because as today’s verse says, the world judges us by our fruits.
The very first Psalm offers a solution. As Psalm 1:3 says, “The righteous are like trees planted by streams of water.”
Living in the desert helped me understand what this means. The desert is predominantly brown. It is deathly and dry. But if you see a trail of green – and even more so, a highway of brilliant yellow leaves in the fall – you can bet there’s a stream of living water!
We are deathly and dry unless and until we plant ourselves near Christ Jesus, who bears the water of true life. And when we plant ourselves more deeply in him, righteousness grows and hypocrisy dies.
In Christ’s Love,
a guy who wants to be
a juicy plum rather than
a whithered and hypocritical prune
because I’m living beside
Jesus’ springs of living water
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