It’s garden season, which is also time to do some weeding. I have been weeding my garden so that what I want to grow in it will grow without the hindrance of weeds. It may be time to weed your garden as well..
So you say you didn’t plant a garden.
But what about the spiritual “garden” of your heart? Everyone is constantly having seed planted in the garden of their heart, either by themselves or someone else, and, unfortunately, it is not always good seed.
God’s law of harvest
What we say and do will is like planting seed, which always bring a harvest in life. That’s a spiritual law of harvest that God has put in place, and it parallels the natural law of seed time and harvest. You will reap the same thing that you sow (seed producing after its kind - Genesis 1:11&12, 24), and although it will be later than when you sow (takes time for seed to produce a mature plant), it will be always be more than what you sowed (principle of multiplication, as mature plants produce seed for future plants to grow from).
What we do about the type of spiritual seed that we plant, or allow others to plant, in the garden of our heart, determines what we allow to exist in our heart and what we will eventually reap, and therefore what our life will end up being.
Why weed a garden?
A weed is any plant growing where it should not be growing, and a plant out of place does not contribute to the wanted garden.
There are two main reasons to weed a garden:
1) Anything that grows in a garden will take nutrients from the soil. Weeds will compete with the plants you want there for these valuable nutrients, hindering the good plant’s growth. If you don’t remove the weeds, they will be aggressive enough to choke out the vegetable/flower plants that are trying to grow there.
In the parable of the sower, we find that a heart that receives the seed of the Word, which can be choked out by the cares of life and the deceitfulness of riches (worldly riches). Spiritual weeds that are allowed to grow take up valuable time and energy and can lure you away from the righteous plants that you should be tending to in the garden of your heart.
So your ability to live a righteous life and reach your divine destiny will be hindered if you let the things of this world and of the devil remain in your heart. These evil “weeds” will not just go away unless you take the effort to get rid of them. They will not die off on their own.
2) Weeds hide the flowers/vegetables that grow in a garden, just as dirt hides the brightness of a lamp globe.
The devil places weeds in the garden of your heart whenever he can because it not only hinders you from your divine destiny, but it hides the true glory of God. Jesus lived a sinless life so that nothing but the glory of God would be seen through what He said and did (John 14:7-11).
We are saved to also bring God glory. Your life will not bring proper glory to God if you have allowed the things of this world and of the devil to be within you, which keep the glory of God from shining through you.
The unbelieving world needs to see the true light of God’s glory (Matthew 5:16), not just some dim brightness coming from a contaminated lamp. They see enough of that kind of light each day in the world.
Examine your garden daily
In II Corinthians 13:5, Paul gave this advice to the church at Corinth: “Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves…”
Just as a gardener checks his garden daily to see what needs attention, so daily you need to examine your heart to see what needs to be fed and what needs to be removed.
How do I know what is a weed?
God has provided two sources of truth with which to identify spiritual weeds: the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.
1) Like a plant identification manual, the Word of God will help you identify those things that are the devil’s weeds (Galatians 5:19-21). As a plant identification manual is very specific about being able to identify plants, so the Word of God is specific about what God considers righteous and unrighteous.
2) The Holy Spirit within you will blow the whistle on the weeds, or sin, and ungodly things in your life as you let Him aid you in tending the garden of your heart.
Because of the sin nature of man, God knew that it would be hard for man to identify and get rid of the devil’s weeds in the garden of their hearts. So, through Jesus Christ, God has made available the Holy Spirit to help believers (John 16:8-11, 13), to guide us into the things of God.
However, getting rid of the weeds is just part of the solution of a weed free garden. The complete solution is replacing the weeds with the proper garden plants.
So not only will the Holy Spirit show you what is holy and what is not, but He will also help you plant the right seed in your heart, so that you produce the “Fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16&17, 22-25).
How do I plant the right seed?
The Holy Spirit will show you what to say and do so that He will allow you to produce the fruit of the Spirit.
The more fruit of the Spirit that you produce in your life the more easily it will be to know when the wrong seed gets planted as well as which weeds are the ones that need to be removed from your heart. The more you allow the right plants to grow in a garden, the harder it is for weed seed to find a place to grow. So it is with your heart.
We are His garden
Our hearts belong to Him. When we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we become His possession, born again to produce a good garden harvest (Ephesians 2:10).
So, like Adam and Eve were assigned to tend the Garden of Eden, so that it would prosper and glorify God, we too should be tending the garden of our heart. We should be making our heart acceptable for Him to approve and be glorified by it.
A weed free heart will bring you closer to God
Want to have a more intimate relationship with God? Let the Holy Spirit clean the devil’s trash out of your heart so that there are no hindrances. A weedy heart is out of harmony with God.
I Corinthians 3:16 states, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” We are called to be Holy (I Peter 1:15&16).
Ephesians 5:26&27 states, regarding the Church, the Bride of Christ, whom He gave Himself for, “that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word (Hebrews 4:12), that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.”
There is nothing more beautiful than a garden without weeds, as the glory of the plants really shine forth. So it is with the Christian whose heart is sanctified (sanctification is a process by which a heart is freed from sin and the control of the devil).
Once you taste the freedom that there is in Jesus Christ being Lord of your life you will never want to go back to a weedy heart.
There is also nothing more glorifying to God than the sanctified life of His children. Jesus was completely sanctified, as there was no sin in Him, the Lamb without blemish. On the night of His betrayal, Jesus made this statement, “…for the ruler of this world is coming (to arrest Him and crucify Him), and he has nothing in Me.” (John 14:30).
You have control of what grows in the garden of your heart. If you let weeds (the things of the flesh and the devil) grow there then that means that your love for the weeds takes precedence over your love of Jesus Christ (which produces the things of God).
Prepare for your wedding
When a man and woman are preparing for their wedding day they both make great effort, willfully and joyfully, to look their best for their future spouse because of their love for each other. As the Bride of Christ we too should be preparing our hearts so that we are at our best when He comes to get us.
In doing so we will have a life that reflects the glory of Jesus Christ (as Jesus did in revealing the Father by what He said and did), and will not only draw others to Him but will prepare us for
our wedding to Him.
Just as in a wedding where the bride and groom expect their future spouse to have no love for anyone else in their heart, so our Lord Jesus is looking for a Bride who has no true love for anyone or anything else other than Him in her heart.
So, the real issue here is this:
Don’t fool yourself. You know the weeds are there! So:
Do you love Jesus enough to get rid of all the ungodly weeds in the garden of your heart, so that Jesus is the only One who has residence there?
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