Weeds and the Master Gardener

I'm a novice gardener – I really love digging in the dirt, sticking some seeds in the ground and then watching God do His thing to bring forth life. It's an amazing process to me how God can make so much come from such a tiny little seed. Now – I'm definitely an amateur gardener and really have no idea what I'm doing, but one thing I do know: weeds are bad! So every few days I find myself hunched over, pulling those wretched intruders up and away from my precious budding fruits and veggies.

As dirt piles up under my fingernails and my hand fork busily loosens up those stubborn weeds, I can't help but liken them to the sin in my life. Like weeds, sin incessantly threatens to take over my heart each and every day. Like weeds, sin can grow in all shapes and sizes, sometimes even mimicking something beautiful, but turning out to be toxic in the end. Like weeds, sin may start out as a small thing, not seeming to be much of a threat, but left untended, can develop into an ugly monstrosity that will wreak major havoc to the life around it.

If you know anything about weeds, you know you can't just mow over them (they'll come right back up with a vengeance) – you have to yank the suckers up by their nasty old roots. So like pulling weeds, I should ask God to help me daily attack sin at its root – even though it can be mighty frustrating and seem hopelessly futile at times, it is a part of life as long as I am planted on this earth.

As Rick Countryman says, “Like a garden that's unattended, sin will grow like weeds in your life. We don't have power over the weeds, over sin. But God does. Jesus, the Gospel, is the RoundUp for the sin in your life. It's the only thing that can deal with it.”

So, even though my natural self wants to bar the gate, I must be diligent to allow the Master Gardener into the garden of my life to do His digging and pruning, painful though it often is. The soil of circumstances in which His divine purposes have placed me are the perfect breeding ground for not only potential beauty to grow, but also for the latent sin that still lingers in my heart to be revealed.

Just as a garden cannot be untended and expected to not be overrun by weeds, there will always be work to do in the soil of my heart, till the day God calls me home. And on that great day, when my spirit is set free from this place, there will be no more weeds – no more sin to struggle against...there will only be pure beauty, thanks to all that Jesus has done! Until then, He promises to faithfully prune my heart, lovingly pulling away all that hinders my growth in Him. And even though I often struggle against His cultivation processes, I'm forever thankful that He will never give up on the garden of my life.

“He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit

he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” - John 15: 2

“...the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”

- Hebrews 12: 6