Our Stories
Lessons from the Garden
By Keith Ferrin | posted 07/05/2007
"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." (James 5:16)
Kari and I were out working in the yard this weekend and she told me about a couple lessons God taught her as she was working. I've come to realize that when my wife says, "Hey, God showed me something" then it's time to listen. So I listened.
She started by saying that a few days earlier she had come out to water her newly growing - about three feet tall - sunflowers. She noticed that some Morning Glory plants had grown up and wrapped themselves completely around the stalks of the sunflowers. Her first temptation was to grab the Morning Glory plants and rip them up. As she pulled the first one, she realized that if she kept pulling, the Morning Glory would completely destroy the young sunflowers. They were too intertwined to simply rip out.
So there she was, purposefully, carefully, deliberately removing the Morning Glory from the sunflowers. As she was doing this, she felt God saying, "You must be just as purposeful, careful, and deliberate when dealing with sin." Sometimes we simply try to "pray away" sin. Other times we just try will power - only to find that will power lasts hours, days, or weeks, but the sin almost always finds its way back.
How often do we stop and ask ourselves what steps need to be taken to truly unwrap this sin that is holding on and overcome it? Prayer is absolutely a piece of this puzzle. That said, I have found that when prayer doesn't also have some action steps attached, it is typically prayer with me doing all the talking and very little listening. When I actually seek God's wisdom and guidance on something, He usually shows me something I need to DO to move toward making that happen. What steps do I need to take to avoid a certain temptation? What do I need to purposefully fill my mind with to alter a sinful attitude? What steps to I need to take to restore a broken relationship?
Answering these questions takes a lot more work than simply saying, "I need to get rid of this sin" and tossing up a token prayer. But answering these questions is also more likely to untangle the sinful weed that is currently strangling us.
Lesson #2 came as we were out in the flower garden together. To paint a little bit of a picture for you: Our house has a 75' flower bed that runs in front of our house with a gravel parking strip in between the flower bed and the paved street. I was weeding at one end and she was pruning the roses down at the other. One thing we've always noticed is that the north end of that flower bed has way more weeds than the south end. There are more weeds in the flower bed itself, and more weeds in the gravel parking strip.
As I was lamenting the fact that we keep pulling weeds and they keep coming back - just as strong as ever - my wife pointed out that we've never done anything to truly kill the weeds in the gravel. We just cut them back with the weed eater. We pull the weeds out of the flower bed, but only 12 inches away, we do very little. If this problem is ever going to get fixed I need to completely kill and remove the weeds in the gravel as well.
Again, Kari made the connection to sin. We may appear to be dealing with our sin, when really we're doing nothing to get rid of the cause of the problem. Whatever we surround ourselves with - people, media, etc. - WILL have an influence on us. Continually reacting to the symptoms of the sin will have only temporary impact. Just like weeds, sin needs to be dealt with at the root.
Living and Learning in the garden,
To respond to this message, email Keith at keith@thatyoumayknow.com.
Keith Ferrin is founder of That You May Know Ministries.
Keith
|
"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." (James 5:16)
Kari and I were out working in the yard this weekend and she told me about a couple lessons God taught her as she was working. I've come to realize that when my wife says, "Hey, God showed me something" then it's time to listen. So I listened. She started by saying that a few days earlier she had come out to water her newly growing - about three feet tall - sunflowers. She noticed that some Morning Glory plants had grown up and wrapped themselves completely around the stalks of the sunflowers. Her first temptation was to grab the Morning Glory plants and rip them up. As she pulled the first one, she realized that if she kept pulling, the Morning Glory would completely destroy the young sunflowers. They were too intertwined to simply rip out. So there she was, purposefully, carefully, deliberately removing the Morning Glory from the sunflowers. As she was doing this, she felt God saying, "You must be just as purposeful, careful, and deliberate when dealing with sin." Sometimes we simply try to "pray away" sin. Other times we just try will power - only to find that will power lasts hours, days, or weeks, but the sin almost always finds its way back. How often do we stop and ask ourselves what steps need to be taken to truly unwrap this sin that is holding on and overcome it? Prayer is absolutely a piece of this puzzle. That said, I have found that when prayer doesn't also have some action steps attached, it is typically prayer with me doing all the talking and very little listening. When I actually seek God's wisdom and guidance on something, He usually shows me something I need to DO to move toward making that happen. What steps do I need to take to avoid a certain temptation? What do I need to purposefully fill my mind with to alter a sinful attitude? What steps to I need to take to restore a broken relationship? Answering these questions takes a lot more work than simply saying, "I need to get rid of this sin" and tossing up a token prayer. But answering these questions is also more likely to untangle the sinful weed that is currently strangling us. Lesson #2 came as we were out in the flower garden together. To paint a little bit of a picture for you: Our house has a 75' flower bed that runs in front of our house with a gravel parking strip in between the flower bed and the paved street. I was weeding at one end and she was pruning the roses down at the other. One thing we've always noticed is that the north end of that flower bed has way more weeds than the south end. There are more weeds in the flower bed itself, and more weeds in the gravel parking strip. As I was lamenting the fact that we keep pulling weeds and they keep coming back - just as strong as ever - my wife pointed out that we've never done anything to truly kill the weeds in the gravel. We just cut them back with the weed eater. We pull the weeds out of the flower bed, but only 12 inches away, we do very little. If this problem is ever going to get fixed I need to completely kill and remove the weeds in the gravel as well. Again, Kari made the connection to sin. We may appear to be dealing with our sin, when really we're doing nothing to get rid of the cause of the problem. Whatever we surround ourselves with - people, media, etc. - WILL have an influence on us. Continually reacting to the symptoms of the sin will have only temporary impact. Just like weeds, sin needs to be dealt with at the root.
Living and Learning in the garden, To respond to this message, email Keith at keith@thatyoumayknow.com. Keith Ferrin is founder of That You May Know Ministries. |
