From the moment we’re born, Satan tries to convince us we aren’t enough. His lies come through what we see, hear, read, and experience. If we aren’t careful, his messages form a belief system within us that leads to unhealthy actions and devastating consequences.

Many of us have experienced harmful childhoods. If this is you, I am so sorry. I know your pain from my own experience, but I also know God wants to help you overcome all you’ve encountered. He offers you the hope of a better future (Jeremiah 29:11–14) and promises to restore all that Satan has stolen, corrupted, and destroyed in your life (John 10:10).

I love the symbolism of our lives being like a fruit tree. A fruit tree produces certain kinds of fruits. God wants our lives to make good, healthy fruit, and He helps us do just that through His Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:22–23 says, “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (NLT).

Good fruit comes when we believe God’s truth about us. His truths lead us to become like flourishing trees planted by a riverbank and help us produce good fruit in every season of our lives—even in the hard seasons (Jeremiah 17:7–8).

I produced rotten fruit for years. The lies I believed about myself influenced my actions and reactions and life’s outcomes. My life was like a dry, prickly shrub in the desert. I hurt many people, including myself.

Is your fruit healthy or unhealthy? Unhealthy fruit includes harmful actions such as rage, eating disorders, addictions, sexual immorality, lying, and profanity. It causes unhealthy emotions such as fear, anxiety, depression, obsessive thoughts, shame, and unrelenting grief. It fosters unhealthy attitudes like complaining, unforgiveness, greed, and prejudice. And it allows unhealthy, abusive, neglectful, and destructive relationships (Galatians 5:19–21).

Your fruit exposes your underlying belief system, the root system of your life. It reveals whether you believe what God says or what Satan says about you. And who you believe determines your harvest.

So what does your fruit say about you? Are you peaceful and joy-filled or frantic and desperate? Do you have self-control, or does the littlest thing set you off?

Your fruit expresses your belief about yourself, the world, and God. Could it be that, at your core, you don’t believe God is good and that He cares for you?

Perhaps you have based your perception of Him on an experience. I often became confused about God and thought up my own ideas of what He was like (Romans 1:21), but that didn’t mean they were true. And our experiences do not change the nature of God.

Experiences made me believe I was unloved and unwanted. Maybe yours tell you you’re a failure, stupid, ugly, or unworthy. Those beliefs will hold us hostage until we give them to God—and He wants to set us free!

Ask Him to show you the lies you believe. Then let His Holy Spirit uproot them. Only then will you find freedom and be transformed. God works from the inside out.

Just like a tree needs a healthy root system to produce fruit, you need a healthy belief system based on God’s Word to do the same. Romans 12:2 tells us that God changes us into a new person by changing our thinking. Behavior modification alone only provides a temporary change of fruit. With time, harmful fruit always grows back. Trust me.

Instead, deal with the root cause. How?

1. Identify and confess the lies you’ve believed (Psalm 32:5).
2. Repent of the wrong decisions you’ve made because of those lies (Proverbs 28:13; 1 John 1:9).
3. Replace those lies with God’s truth (2 Corinthians 10:5).

Focusing on God’s truth instead of Satan’s lies is a daily discipline. But the outcome is worth it. You will become a different person, and your life will yield different results.

Remember: God is real, and He rewards those who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). He is good and close (Nahum 1:7). He loves and chooses you (1 Thessalonians 1:4). You are forgiven and accepted, and through Jesus, you can triumph over sin (Romans 5:16–17).

Nourish your beliefs every day by applying the Living Water of God’s Word. You will soon reap a beautiful harvest.

Sheridan Correa is a Trauma-Informed Biblical Counselor. She’s a wife, mother of two teenage boys, singer, and avid runner who has been radically changed by Jesus. She is VL’s director of content development.