weeds

Fresh Manna
by Pastor Tim Burt

I’m a gardener. I love to garden. My mom helped instill that in me when I was young. I never realized at the time the spiritual lessons God would teach me from gardening and how much it would impact my life.

You’ll find that in every garden, weeds that you never planted spring from the ground. Your heart and your garden are the same. Weeds – fears, worries, and evil imaginations invade your heart and mind that seem to come from nowhere. Jesus in trying to teach His disciples about how our heart and mind works used gardening and farming illustrations. Jesus taught, “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ ” ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.” Matthew 13:24-28

Satan is always trying to plant seeds of fear in our heart. It’s by design. He would rather have you have faith in your fears than faith in God’s promises. Why? Because your faith is what brings forth its crop. When you allow weed seeds of fear to grow in your mind and heart, then fear, discouragement, and hopelessness is the crop you will reap. Consequently, you have to work to keep out things you do not want in growing in you. You have to dig up what shouldn’t be there and cast it out! What does a heart with weed seeds planted in it look like? Jeremiah 17:5-6 reveals this saying, “This is what the Lord says: “Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans and turn their hearts away from the Lord. They are like stunted shrubs in the desert, with no hope for the future. They will live in the barren wilderness, on the salty flats where no one lives.”

When you plant good seeds in a heart of good soil that trusts God and puts faith and expectation in His promises, then you will reap a good crop. What does a good crop from your heart look like? Jeremiah 17:7-8 (NLT) describes it like this: “But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they go right on producing delicious fruit.”

My gardening reminds me what I should meditate on – God’s promises believing they are mine by faith. What I should not allow in my heart are the circumstances that pop up daily that are weeds of fear that try to undermine my faith. I will dig them out and cast them into a pile to be burned or discarded. If I keep my heart good soil and profess and pray God’s promises over my life and others, I will see my harvest and I will become like that tree planted by the river that stays green and is not bothered by heat or long months of drought.

God’s Word is our riverbank for our roots to go down into. Remember today that the promise He promised you is this: “Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of my love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you.” Hosea 10:12 (NLT)

In His Love,
Pastor Tim Burt