I love to eat vegetables, but I’m not good at growing them. My parents have green thumbs and can grow anything. However, I kill silk plants. Either I overwater them or not enough. I had a friend who gave me a cactus and said she guaranteed me I could not kill it. Wrong! One morning I woke up to see it had sunk into itself and toppled over. I called my friend to tell her I proved her theory wrong and the cactus was dead. She couldn’t understand it or explain it, but finally she agreed maybe gardening wasn’t my gift.
If I were to be honest, I would expect there is a something missing in my gardening skills. I believe it is passion. I want to grow flowers and vegetables, but I don’t want to put the work into caring for them. As a result, either my flowers die or my vegetables don’t produce.
This is the same way with our relationship with God. If we don’t have the passion to go along with our desire to follow God, we end up not producing anything of worth for God.
In 1 John 14:27 Jesus states,
I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives.
Just like a vegetable or a flower, a seed has to die in order to live.
When we die to ourselves this allows God to produce in us the ability to grow many new kernels. But, the seed has to be watered to give it life. How do we water ourselves? By reading God’s word and allowing the living water to give us the sustenance to become deeply rooted. We also have to be careful who and what we surround ourselves with because they can becomes the weeds who want to choke us out. We can’t grow without allowing the Master Gardner to tend to us. This will mean pruning and shaping us into a healthy plant which gives us the ability to bear fruit for the Kingdom.
Dying to self is a hard and painful process, but the rewards are great. Our flesh is weak, but John 3:30 says,
He must become greater and greater, and I must become less and less.
We need to have a desire and a passion to produce in God’s garden. What are you yielding in your garden? Is your garden filled with rocks, thistles and weeds or is it full and ready for a great harvest.
I may not be able to grow flowers or vegetables, but when I’m passionate and desire to plant seeds of God’s hope, love, grace and mercy with others, these are the only gardening skills God really wants from me.
