At the beginning of the fall 2008 40 Days for Life prayer vigil, I took what seemed at the time to be a crazy leap of faith.  Now, a year later, that faith has borne fruit.  Literally.

Olive Tree at FPA

On a Monday night last fall, we joined together with Fred and Sue Rowe and other members of the Kern Region Prayer Watch in a time of intercession and prophetic declaration outside Bakersfield’s FPA abortion center.  Our prayers and prophecies began to be focused upon Israel, as someone observed that the architecture of the FPA building looked like it belonged in Israel.

Then we noticed the olive tree.

In all of the years we have ministered on these sidewalks, for some reason I had never noticed that it was an olive tree before.  It had never grown any fruit that I had seen, so I hadn’t really thought about it.

But now this half-dead olive tree caught our attention, and I couldn’t help but be struck by the symbolism.  I thought of what Jesus did when He found a fig tree without fruit.  He cursed it, and it later withered up and died.

But instead of cursing the olive tree, I thought we should make a declaration more consistent with our hope that this place of death will be transformed into a place of life.  And so I declared that this tree would bear olives, and that this fruit would be a sign of God’s transformation.  It had been our hope and belief at the time that the abortion chamber would close by the end of 2008, so I hoped to see a sign soon.

During the weeks and months that followed, I looked at the tree from time to time, hoping to see some fruit.  But it was still barren and half-dead.

I hadn’t thought much about the olive tree lately, but last Saturday at the vigil, one of the prayer participants from New Beginnings Christian Church walked up to me and said “have you noticed that tree over there?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“It’s an olive tree,” she said.

“I know,” I replied.  I thought of telling her how I had declared that it would bear fruit.  But I stopped myself, thinking that it would just make me look stupid.

Then she exclaimed “and there are three olives growing on it!”

Olive on tree outside FPA

I ran over to look, and sure enough, there they were.  The tree is still half-dead, but it is growing olives!

Some people seem to think that this is not very amazing, because apparently it is possible to cause a barren olive tree to bear fruit by pruning it in a certain manner.  But we have made no attempt to prune the tree, nor have we encouraged the gardeners in any way to prune the tree.

I don’t think it is coincidental that we noticed this fruit at the start of this 40 Days for Life campaign, almost exactly one year from when I first made that prophetic declaration in prayer.

God is transforming this place of death into a place of life, and He wants us to have faith that He can complete the transformation!  Can you believe with me that it will be accomplished?