Have you ever canned fruit? When the season comes, it’s so exciting to see fruit getting ripe on the trees! Tiny, green peaches become big, richly colored, and juicy. Plums, apples, and pears become large and sweet.

Often, God makes the harvest so great that there is too much fruit to eat fresh before it spoils—so we need to preserve it in jars or dry it. The Bible says there’s a time for everything (Ecclesiastes 3:1) and if fruit is kept beyond the time it is ripe, it will spoil. It might get moldy, shrivel up, or simply ferment (become stinky-sour like vinegar). When we eat rotten fruit, it makes us sick—sometimes sooner or sometimes later.

The Creator wants not only the trees to bear fruit—He wants us to, also! But we bear a different kind of fruit, the fruit of the Spirit—“love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” (Galatians 5:22, 23). Jesus tells us “that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain” (John 15:16). He wants us to bear fruit not just once or twice, but always. Remember the story about the fig tree:

“A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down” (Luke 13:6–9).

God is giving us a chance to bear good fruit. Like the man who dug around the tree, the Holy Spirit works in our heart to inspire us to do what is right—and God’s word is like fertilizer to feed our faith. If we trust in Christ, He will preserve us unto eternity. That’s what salvation is—being preserved forever in a freshness better than anything on earth.

So let’s not let the enemy spoil or ruin the good fruit the Lord wants to create in us through Jesus.

“Now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life” (Romans 6:22).