5. Family Fruit

Psalm 128:  How joyful are those who fear the Lord, all who follow His ways!  You will enjoy the fruit of your labor.  How joyful and prosperous you will be!  Your wife will be like a fruitful grapevine, flourishing within your home.  Your children will be like vigorous young olive trees as they sit around your table.  That is the Lord’s blessing for those who fear Him.  May the Lord continually bless you from Zion.  May you see Jerusalem prosper as long as you live.  May you live to enjoy your grandchildren.  May Israel have peace!

This is an awesome picture that is painted with words.  Keep in mind this is for the Godly man who fears the Lord and follows His ways.  The two different kinds of fruit represented include grapes and olives.  The wife is depicted to be like a fruitful grapevine.  I find it interesting that a grapevine has lots of branches that go in all directions while producing a delicious sweet fruit that can be used for eating, juiced for drinking, or fermented for wine.  Like a grapevine a woman can be fruitful in lots of areas in life.  In our marriage I have to give my ex-wife incredible credit.  She was a wife, a mother, a teacher, a friend, and she was involved in women’s ministries at church.  And she did everything well.  She was a fruitful grapevine in spite of my foolishness and lack of commitment.  Her heart was and is in tune with her God.  My wife brought a sweetness to our family that could only have been from a blessed woman committed to a relationship with her Lord and her family. 

I mention all of this to say that I can only imagine what God could have done through our marriage if my heart had been as in tune with God and my wife the same way.  The hard learned lesson for me here is in order for that grapevine to be flourishing, it needs watering.  The challenge men is for us to make sure the grapevine in our life remains nourished with the love that will keep her thriving in our relationship and our home.  The old saying is that it takes two, but in a healthy marriage it takes three, Husband, Wife and the Triune God.  The grapevine was created to produce grapes and its vine branches spread out.  As the grapevine is fruitful and flourishing she, the wife, is productive, rich, abundant, rewarding, and successful.  Bottom line is that she is doing all that she has been created to do. 

A vigorous young olive tree is strong!  Olive trees in general are robust.  The first sign to Noah that the flood waters were receding was that a dove brought an olive branch to the ark.  The garden of Gethsemane was an olive grove full of trees.  Oil from olives was used for anointing, cooking, fuel for lanterns and as an offering many times combined with flour. 

As a child I remember our next door neighbor had 3 big strong olive trees.  This neighbor family was good friends with our family.  They had three daughters with the youngest about 4 years older than me and in fact the girls would often babysit my sister and me.  Once a year both families would get together to pick olives.  It was tedious work and you had to watch out where you stepped because if the olives came out of the tree and you stepped on them, they would stain your shoes and anywhere else you walked.  Once all the olives were picked they were taken to a location to be cured.  Not that they were sick or anything, but they would be soaked in a salted solution.  When they came back…it made all the work worthwhile!  They were very tasty as long as you didn’t eat too many.  I think the Holy Spirit can do that in our own life as well.  As we allow the Spirit to soak in our lives and be that “salted solution,” our flavor to the Father becomes that much better.  Plus we can be a better example of Him to those we come in contact with.  To me it’s another example of the Spiritual awakening I’m talking about.  As an olive has a bitter and unpleasant flavor right off the tree, we too have a bitter and unpleasant nature in our fleshly life.  When the Holy Spirit comes in and “cures” us, like that cured olive in the salted solution, we can be a wonderful taste of God in this world.    

Romans 11 talks about the family tree of Abraham and how that tree was the chosen “tree” of God.  But some of the Israelites, Abraham’s descendants, broke away from God not believing that Jesus Christ was the messiah.  At the same time the Gentiles were made right with God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  As the Gentiles believed that Jesus was God’s Son, they became a part of God’s family.  As chapter 11 verse 17 puts it…

 But some of these branches from Abraham’s tree—some of the people of Israel—have been broken off. And you Gentiles, who were branches from a wild olive tree, have been grafted in. So now you also receive the blessing God has promised Abraham and his children, sharing in the rich nourishment from the root of God’s special olive tree.

How awesome to receive the blessing God promised Abraham!  Men, we have the responsibility to be that example of Christ for our kids.  To be the spiritual leaders that they, our children, want to grow up and be like.  So instead of the sentence, “he/she is just like their father,” being derogatory, it would be an incredible statement of praise!  They would want to be olive branches strong and mighty in the family tree.  Women, in your role as the fruitful grapevine, you can come along side your husband and strongly support him in his walk with Christ.  His roots need nourishment and watering just like the fruitful grapevine that you are. 

As I live life day by day, I see only one way to live it.  For me, that is spending the first part of every day in a quiet time with God, praying, reading His Word, journaling and refreshing my spirit.  Then taking the Lord with me everywhere I go and maintaining communication with Him throughout the day.  As we talked about earlier, I am the temple of the Lord and He lives in me, so wherever I am, there He is also.  So why not have fellowship all day long?!  I have found that to be essential in my walk with Christ.  To spend time with Him all day…everyday!  He truly wants to be your best friend.  In my spiritual awakening I believe that a daily commitment to Him would help you to be the husband to the fruitful grapevine and the daddy to the vigorous young olive trees that you are called to be.  Your roots as Spiritual leader in your family will go deeper and you will receive all the blessings that are talked about in Psalm 128.