Reaping the fruit of righteousness

Tell the righteous it will be well with them, for they will enjoy the fruit of their deeds. Isaiah 3:10

Sometimes it can be really hard to keep going doing the right thing when all around appear to be doing whatever they like and getting away with it. However the Bible is full of references to reaping what we have sown and this verse encourages us that righteous deeds will bear good fruit. What is more this fruit is enjoyable.

If we have taken some time tending a peach tree, looking after it through the frosts, weeding round it, fertilising it, protecting the young fruit, when it does produce beautiful ripe peaches we enjoy them. It is the same with the deeds of righteousness. It may take a lot of effort through difficult times to produce it but when we do, we will enjoy the fruit of our labours.

The Bible is full of sowing and reaping and it is abundantly clear that you reap what you sow. In the natural if you plant an apple pip you will get an apple tree not a peach tree or if you sow carrot seed you will get carrots not parsnips. It is exactly the same in the spiritual. What you sow, you will reap (Galatians 6:7).  If you have sown righteously, you will reap the fruit of righteousness.

However fruit takes time to grow. It may appear that ungodly people are reaping good things from bad seed but they are not. In the fullness of time their fruit will come forth from what they have sown.  Paul encourages us: Let us not become weary in doing good for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Galatians 6:9 It may feel like nothing is coming from our sowing but it will.

I believe God wants to encourage and strengthen us today to not give up doing what is right even in the face of discouragement and the apparent lack of fruit and in the face of the unrighteous deeds of others which may appear to be prospering. We will eat of the fruit of our righteousness because good seed produces good fruit and God wants us to enjoy it.