SpringCleaning! Landscaped – March 18

SpringCleaning!
March 18, 2021

Landscaped

James 1:19-21, ‘Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God’s righteousness doesn’t grow from human anger. So throw spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life (MSG).’

I thought today we could do some SpringCleaning in the garden of our souls; some weed-eating and tilling of the soil, overturning the unyielding ground. We must dig deep to find the fertile soil that lies beneath the surface, in dark and dank places where things begin to grow and take shape.

I realized while lingering over life that there are two kinds of soil, and in both kinds, anything can spring up. Just as in a plot of land, what a gardener does, the steps he takes, how he approaches the process of what he wishes to cultivate, determines what comes forth for harvest.
I am a very haphazard gardener. I have some flourishing flowerbeds and pretty patches, but I toss some seed out there and plop little bundles of starters in rich wet soil, and I let the process do the rest. And often seeds sprout into a picture on a packet and the little shoots I tucked into pockets of earth grow happily and multiply.

But not always. The best thing I ever do is plant those beauties that come back year after year and I need not do anything within that part of the production. My mom is the opposite. She digs a lengthy straight line a couple inches deep and carefully places a row of seeds inside the dirt; then cautiously brushes the soil back on top and puts a little happy marker on the end of each perfect row that says, ‘Hi, I’m Rose!’ ‘Hello, I’m Iris!’ ‘Daisy, that’s me!’

There are also some gardeners that imagine the yield before the process even begins but are unwilling to put any of the work in required to have a garden, and unfortunately, a barrage of weeds consume the ground where the seeds were planted. Therefore, nothing much ever comes forth. He can have dirt, equal amounts of sun and shade, the right seeds, but unless he takes some extra effort to cultivate what he planted, and where he planted it at, the seeds remain under-cared for and never thrive.

So is the garden of our souls. We can have fertile soil and all the right conditions for what God plants within us, but it too can never spring up and never prosper due to our lack of caring for what God put inside each of us. And sometimes what is good that God planted in me has gotten choked out by the bad the world rained on me, and it didn’t take long for what should have blossomed and flourished, to be snuffed out just like that.

That’s why it is important today for us to weed our soul gardens. Listen, few will ever plant flowers in your garden and few will take time to weed your garden. They got their own to tend to. So it’s important that you don’t expect somebody else to plant you a flowerbed but you certainly can plant your own. And to do that you must start with good dirt, a fertile soul to plant something in, ground that has been worked and cared for so that what is planted has a chance to grow. But it doesn’t stop there. What God has scattered in your soul requires fertilization and cultivation so that it can take root, be nurtured, mature, ripen and bear the yield that He purposed for your life to harvest.

We must tend to any weeds that threaten to stunt, steal or stifle our growth so things like gossip, envy, anger, lust, perversion, manipulation, dishonesty, to name just a few, must be weed-eated out of our hearts where only goodness should thrive. It is not going to weed itself so we must take intentional effort to weed out the areas that suck us dry and hold us hostage to our previous sin lives. Once we take measures, however, to grow a fruitful garden, you will be surprised how peaceful it is to care for it and the reward it yields.

Beautiful you, we think that dirt is disgusting and dark is oppressive but those exquisite and stunning blossoms didn’t get into your vase without being buried in the dirt and allowed time in the dark to grow. Someone rototilled that soil, turned it and worked it, fertilized and watered it, and took time planting and nurturing so that the harvest was plentiful and magnificent. The Beholder desires to be pleased with the fruit that is flourishing in your life so He can use it for His glory and someone else’s good.

Come with me in March and let’s clean house!
If you are anything like me, you have kept some things around far too long
and now they got to go! And with the Lord’s help, they can!