It’s the 1st of
October 2013, and all I can say is “Wow!” can’t believe we just have 3 months
left in this 2013 chapter.
One interest that I have been
cultivating in the last year or so is gardening. Growing up, I had a front row
seat to how my mom could literally transform any yard from boring to wow! She’s
been blessed with a gift and understanding of plants. In my case, I think my
interest has been fuelled more by the desire to have “pretty
surroundings”...lol.... Nothing is more gratifying that having beautiful
surrounds, esp when you have had a hand in “creating” what you see.
Anyway why all the talk about
plants and gardens? Well, I’ve come to see and experience that gardening can be
likened to our faith walk. Many times we
have an idea of what we’re praying and trusting God for (vision) but a lot of
the time we have no idea of the process that will get us to where we want to
be.
A very beautiful summer flower is
the Dahlia. My mom has them in her garden every summer, and they add amazing
colour and interest come December/January. They are prolific in their blooms,
and they are super hardy. Now in order to get the pretty dahlia blooms, the
starting point and preparation is anything but glamorous. Firstly, these flowers grow from an ugly
looking bulb/root. In fact when you look at it, it looks dead, useless, beyond
redemption. Basically it’s only good for the compost heap. This very
uninteresting “seed” needs to be planted into the ground, covered and left there
until the first rains come. When my mom
told me how to plant these (I raided her compost heap for these roots) it definitely
took a little bit of faith to believe what she was saying. I trusted her advice because after all, she’s
been an accomplished gardener for a few more decades than me. So anyway I
planted these Dahlias about 5 weeks ago, and whilst I was waiting for the
spring rains I decide to aid the process by watering what was to the naked eye
was just a patch of dirt. 5 weeks on and I have shoots, and the excited
anticipation of the colourful booms come December.
I think this is a parallel
analogy of how God works with us, as far as growing and cultivating our faith
is concerned.
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Firstly, often times the preparation of our
hearts is a painful and frustrating process; all the digging and tilling. As
God begins to weed out what we don’t need in order to receive His best we moan,
we complain, we groan. In fact we fight Him all the way. In order for us to
receive the seed of his promise into our hearts, we need to allow the continual
weeding and breaking of the “soil”. This aids the seed to take root and to
ensure that nothing hinders its growth.
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| Sowing the seed. Sept 2013 |
·
Secondly we need to water what God has deposited
in our spirits through His word, whilst holding on to His promises. Especially when it really seems
like nothing is going on. I tell you in the last 5 weeks, I’ve been like a
mother hen, anxiously waiting to see the first shoots of my plants. Daily; I
watched over my “dry bed” for the first peak of life; watering it, willing the
shoots to come through. I found that it
really stretches our faith to continue believing in the face of “nothing”. The
assurance that we do have is that the seed is in the ground, and it will be a
matter of time before we start to see what God is doing. It’s taken me 5 weeks
to see the shoots of my plants, but I reality, it can be months, even years
before we see what God has promised come into being.
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| Preparation often belies what is yet to come. Sept 2013 |
Hebrews 6: 11 – 12 says “ And we
desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to the full assurance of
hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who
through faith and patience inherit the promises”
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| The first signs of "promise". Oct 2013 |
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Right now, as excited as I am to see that a lot
of those bulbs really did contain life in them, I know that my flowers still
have a while to go before I see them mature and start producing beautiful colourful blooms. I need to tend and
nurture them, feed them with manure, pray for more rain, watch out for diseases
or white-fly; remove stubborn weeds. Basically I need to look after these
plants until I see the fullness of what they can be. So often times we get
excited to see God moving, that we forget that we need to remain diligent in
our prayers and intercession, in our devotions; in our positive outlook. We
need to remain in the word. The parable
of the Sower in Luke 8:4 does give us a warning that we need to ensure that
when the seed of promise is planted in our lives, that we keep the condition of
the soil of our hearts good in order to see the fruit come forth. I’ve come to really appreciate that in the
faith walk we don’t just stop when things are now going well. A saying that I
read recently was
“The amount of prayer, and
struggle that it took for you to get to the place of promise; is only a portion of the of the amount of diligence in prayer you will require in order to stay
there”
It’s so easy for us to become
complacent once we have received that new job; bought that new house; seen our
children healed or whatever form your faith battle takes on. But we can’t just
be fasting and warring in the spirit when we need a breakthrough; we need to
cultivate a way of life that sees us diligently fasting; praying, and
interceding. Now that I have planted
Dahlias in this bed, I expect the Dahlias to be a permanent feature in my
garden. It’s not just for now, all the effort that I have already put in and
must continue to put in will
ensure that every December/January I can experience a burst of colour in my
garden.
Hebrews 11:1 says “Now faith is
the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen” (NKJV)
I like how the ESV puts it “Now
faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of
things not seen”
A lesson I have come to learn is
that the assurance and conviction that we have through faith needs to be an
on-going thing. It’s not just for the battle or challenge in front of us. It needs
to become interwoven into our being so that it becomes how we think, and how we
act. We need to live in such a way that the evidence and fruit reveals this
sustained assurance and conviction, even when it seems “nothing” is happening.
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| Uo-close. Dec 2013 |
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| The Promise - Beautiful Blooms! Dec |
Be blessed J
