Tag Archives: garden

Becoming Deep Real Authentic Women of God

PART 1 (Disclaimer. This message was written in 2018, however, it is still very applicable today.)

     I have a confession or two that I want to make; I love my gardens.  I love my vegetable garden. My Peaceful Garden I sit and drink my hot tea in. And my flower beds!  I even love to weed my gardens. I know you are thinking I have lost my mind. All I can say is,  it relaxes me. I really enjoy weeding, until I come across the THING. The thing I have to confess to you I really don’t like!  It’s those things that stop my tomatoes from growing big and red and delicious!  It’s tomato worms. I really don’t like tomato worms.  I get excited because I see a nice big tomato growing on the vine and then look closer only to find a tunnel through the underside courtesy of a now plump green tomato worm.  Seeing these creatures leads me to want to ask our God, “Why oh why did you create them?”  

     I know they must have a purpose or God would not have created them.  It makes me curious about their purpose because I know they really bother me with their feeding on my beautiful tomatoes.  Well, the tomato worm’s purpose for today is to serve as an illustration for me. Soon after I saw the first plump critter, I realized he is a lot like the enemy of our souls and the barriers  he puts in our paths keeping us from having the connections and relationships God created us for.  The plump lime green critter seeks to feast on my tomatoes and therefore stop me from being able to enjoy some delicious homemade salsa or a slice of fresh tomato on my hamburger.  In a slightly similar fashion, the enemy seeks to devour any chances we have to enjoy and grow in our relationships with our Abba Father and each other.  

     Satan uses many things to attempt to destroy and/or block our relationships. We are just going to focus on four barriers in total. For the next several weeks I will share how we can break free and become Deep Real Authentic Women of God.

     Barriers can be spiritual and/or emotional chains that bind us and keep us from being free to be who God has created us to be.  I am learning when I give God my chains, he breaks me free of them and redeems whatever area of my life I have been in bondage to. The Lord is in the habit of replacing beauty for ashes.

     In preparation for this message, I put out a question on Facebook to see the most common barriers people experience in their relationships with God and others.  While there were a variety of responses, I found many of them fit under similar headings and there were several people with similar responses.  The order I am sharing with you is for the purpose of the flow of the message.

     Next week the barrier discussed will be fear.

#BreakingBarriers#Reconnection

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There’s Manure?

Through a meditation, I was prompted to ask God, “Light of the World, shine your light on the corners of my soul and show me what’s there.” In my mind, I heard, “There’s manure.” My thoughts traveled to poop? There’s poop? Excrement? Remains of dead things already digested and passed through. WHAT?

Next thought … It’s time to shovel the pooh away. Allow it to be used as fertilizer for whatever God will grow. The beautiful garden he’s planned for, in my soul.

This is a truly interesting train of thought. At first it seems pretty bizarre, that is until I dove in deeper to the significance of manure.

“Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard, and he went to look for fruit on it but did not find any. So he said to the man who took care of the vineyard, ‘For three years now I’ve been coming to look for fruit on this fig tree and haven’t found any. Cut it down! Why should it use up the soil?’ “‘Sir,’ the man replied, ‘leave it alone for one more year, and I’ll dig around it and fertilize it. If it bears fruit next year, fine! If not, then cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6-9 NIV)

Jesus shared this parable about the gardener’s plea for the property owner to give the fig tree one more growth year to produce fruit. In return, the gardener would nurture the tree. Fertilize it. Care for it. According to commentary notes I read in my study Bible, it actually takes four to five years for fig trees to bear fruit. The property owner only wanted to give the tree three years. The gardener would have known more about the needs of the growing tree. The mention of fertilizing the tree indicates that the man who tended to the crops would do everything he could to save the tree. To give it a chance to produce the desired fruit. The vineyard owner was impatient. The gardener was gracious and patient.

I’m working out what this passage has to do with me having manure in my soul. The remains of digested dead things.

This thought train leads me to a guided prayer I took part in later, in the same day as the earlier mentioned meditation. In this visualization, I was standing in my backyard with an ax in my right hand. It was hanging down by my side. The anger bubbling up in my gut wanted to come out through the swinging of the ax into the large log of wood resting on the ground in front of me. I could sense Abba Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit standing with me encircling the log. As prompted, I asked Jesus what he wanted me to do. “Hand me the ax,” was his reply. I complied with his request. I could see the mound of wood to be split that lay in the distance.

As I stand there, Jesus surrounds me with his presence and wraps his arms around mine cupping his hands over mine. He put the ax back in my hands, only this time his hands were securely around mine. He lovingly said, “You’ve been trying to do all this on your own. I’ve given you this tool and you’re not using it. We are going to cut the wood together.” 

Where do these story elements take you? Other than frustrated because I didn’t put it all together for you. I would love to read about your own thoughts. Please share them. 

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Inner Strength…Resilience (Part 2)

Part 2 of 3 Japanese Knotweed.

     My mind wanders from the dahlia (from Part 1) to another plant I am very familiar with. Japanese Knotweed. This ‘weed’ is lacking in the beauty and desirability of the dahlia, it does share characteristics of strength and determination. Knotweed, I’ve realized, is a solid example of resilience.

     My journey with Japanese Knotweed started a few years ago when this pesky plant kept popping up in a flower bed that I had painstakingly arranged with my desired decor and plant life. This determined pest didn’t fit the profile for what I had planned. My husband dug the root out and burned it, only to have it grow back quickly. The first summer I was mildly annoyed at it. By the next summer I was too busy to worry about my flower beds, therefore the persistent plant was allowed to grow as it wanted. Our third spring with our unwanted guest was a new story for me.

     As the new growth of the season began to sprout up out of the ground, I decided to discover what this species of plant life was and eradicate it for good. My iPhone revealed to me what we were dealing with. Japanese Knotweed. Wanting to learn what I was up against, I dove into finding out about this invader. My soft investigation on the  web yielded enough information to know this plant would be a challenge to rid my yard of. Determination drove me to try nonetheless. Advice from the web was mixed. Some said don’t mess with it. Others gave simple detailed instructions as if it were an easy thing to do.

Web details about Japanese Knotweed:

~ It’s considered one of the world’s 100 worst invasive species. Its bamboo-like stems can grow up to 15 feet tall at a rate of up to four inches a day.

~ Live Knotweed is practically immune to burning and it releases chemicals into the soil that can stop other plants from growing.

~ Shoots can grow through weak spots in walls, asphalt, and concrete.

     I set out determined to win this battle. No plant was going to defeat me. I would dig every last root out of the ground. My first attempt seemed like a win, briefly. My husband and I dug up many shoots, laid them on boards to dry out and be burnable. This was a defeating exercise! Each root we dug out revealed more below the surface. Every small win seemed to be a bigger loss. Hours upon hours of digging resulted in more and more shoots coming up out of the ground within 48 hours. I lost sleep. Japanese Knotweed became a topic in most of my conversations and even a blog post or two. I wanted to warn everyone about this extreme invasive plant that was near impossible to eliminate. 

     Feeling defeated and at my wits end, I called an organization that deals with invasive plants. The expert on the other end informed me it’s best to leave it alone or hire a knowledgeable landscaper specially trained to uproot/destroy it. This at a cost of about $100.00 an hour with a time frame of 5-10 years to be completely rid of it and no guarantees it would be entirely gone. Our other option was to personally spend 5-10 years treating the plant leaves each fall with two potent chemicals, at a cost of around $125.00 a year. None of these options seemed doable to me. I lost more sleep. Hiring someone wasn’t an option we could afford. The thought of putting strong chemicals in the ground where our drinking water comes from wasn’t an option I was in favor of either. I decided to concede to the knotweed. It will just grow in the yard, untampered with by me.

     Through the course of battling this formidable opponent, I began to ask God, “What do you want me to learn or take away from this experience? There’s got to be something good in this.”

Look for the conclusion in Part 3.

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Jezreel: God Plants

  Recently I had this image of a beautiful garden. There was an array of colors and types of plants and flowers. What made this garden different from any other was that God revealed to me this garden is within my heart, not in my yard. As I began to contemplate what God was trying to show me, I looked out at my backyard. I am a very visual person. Looking out at my outdoor flowerbed, I could gain a clearer image of this garden the Lord was showing me. Colorful flowers. Weeds. Grass. All these things are found in the flowerbed in my yard. My thoughts drifted deeper into what this garden image could mean. I’m all about mental pictures and examples that help me to understand concepts and also be able to share with others.

  Our creator God (Elohim), is extraordinarily creative; not only when He created all things in the beginning, He is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. This means He is still extraordinarily creative now. In God’s revelations to me, He shares mental pictures and illustrations to go along with them. This garden in my heart is no different. Our Creator shared with me that He plants (Jezreel) seeds of beautiful fragrant flowers and varying plants in my heart. The enemy comes along and plants weed seeds and destructive plants in my heart. However, I can’t place all the blame on the enemy because I sometimes allow these seeds to be planted or even dig the ground up and plant them myself. At times, the destructive plants have been placed there by someone else and I had no say in it. All is not lost! God is the Master Gardener. He can uproot any weed, any destructive plant. Some keys to the garden becoming free of the weeds and destructive plants is for me to invite the Master Gardener to enter my garden and give Him access to every aspect of it. I have to allow Him the freedom and unlimited access to every seed, flower, plant, weed, and blade of grass growing in my garden. Even the ones that I don’t like but have grown so used to having there, I don’t think I know how to live without them. Even the hefty destructive plants with the thick roots that grow down very deep.

  God, my Master Gardener knows the plan for my garden. He has always known the plan and can see the beautiful lush garden that will be when the pruning, weeding, and yanking is complete. I need only to trust in The Creator’s plan. When I was born, my Heavenly Father had already planted the seeds of love, joy, peace, compassion, grace, mercy, forgiveness, redemption, and restoration in my heart. He has entrusted the care and growth of the seeds to first my parents and then to me. I can choose to allow the weeds and destructive plants that exist in my heart garden or I can relinquish control to the One who created my heart.

  What about you? Besides the lovely things the Creator planted in your heart, what else has been planted there? What are you willing to allow the Master Gardener do in your heart garden so that it can become what He created it to be? Have you invited Him into that space? Have you given Him freedom and access to prune, weed, and yank out whatever He deems necessary? You are loved by the Creator of your heart! Because you are created in the image of God, you are worthy to be called a child of God; all you need to do is invite Him into your life and accept His forgiveness as you admit to Him that you have sinned by allowing the weeds to be planted in your heart and also planted some there yourself. He’s running toward you! Will you meet your Heavenly Father in the garden of your heart?

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