I want to share one of my passions with you. Many of you already know this about me. I LOVE to garden! In the last 2 years, I have learned how to grow vegetables, herbs and even some fruits. This has been no easy task. I have had lots of help from my precious husband, in-laws, and even the internet. This is a very proud picture of what God helped me create. I laugh when I see it because it is so not what I thought I would ever be able to accomplish!

This week as the temperatures started to rise to bearable tempts, I set my weekly goal to clean out my vegetable garden and prep the soil for my spring planting of seeds and plants. I have not had a successful winter garden this year. In fact, it bombed! The consecutive temperatures below freezing during December and January has not helped in the least. It broke my heart.

God has used my garden time on many days to teach me deep things about Him and His Word. I listen to lots of preacher podcasts usually while working out there. It is amazing how God is out there and I feel like he is hand teaching me so many things when we garden. Let me share one of those truths that I was reminded of recently when I read an article about gardening our heart.

Galations 6:7 states “people harvest only what they plant.” Think for a moment, that your heart is like that of a vegetable garden and a garden that needs to be managed. Max Lucado in “Just Like Jesus” takes this analogy a little further.

“Consider for a moment your thoughts as seed. Some thoughts become flowers. Others become weeds. Sow seeds of hope and
enjoy optimism. Sow seeds of doubt and expect insecurity…
The proof is everywhere you look. Ever wonders why some people have the Teflon capacity to resist negativism and remain
patient, optimistic and forgiving? Could it be that they have diligently sown seeds of goodness and are enjoying the harvest?
Ever wonder why others have such a sour out-look? Such a gloomy attitude? You would too if your heart were a greenhouse of
weeds and thorns.”

Weeds and thorns is not what I want to be harvested in my heart. Kinda all goes back to the post I did here where our gratitude toward God produces blessings. The seeds that I sow with God’s grace, mercy, forgiveness, love, kindness, gentleness and self-control all produces fruit that looks like Jesus. That is what I want to be grown in my garden.

Mercy, you should see the weeds that can come up in my vegetable garden! It amazes me at how ugly they can look. It also amazes me at how many weeds there are and how disguising they can be to look like something that was actually suppose to be there. That is sometimes what our heart looks like as well. Attitudes, feelings and thoughts can creep up when we least expect it and blow up a situation and our heart doesn’t resemble anything that looks like Jesus!

In the summer time when the plants are growing like the picture above and I am loving to go and harvest my vegetables. It is so easy to get caught up in the wonderful bounty of what God has grown in my garden. I am almost giddy with excitement when I harvest my veggies. However, I have also noticed that because I am focused on what looks good then I tend to overlook the weeds that are creeping up underneath those beautiful plants. If I am not careful, and continue to over look it then those pesky weeds can overtake my beautiful vegetable.

This also can be like our hearts. We can focus on the things that are going right and the things that look good from the outside world but on the inside we are not dealing with hurt, bitterness and resentment that may have creeped in a long time ago and that weed has grown the size of a monster. It will eventually be overtaking your heart and seep into other places in your life.

Today, I want to encourage you to put on your rain boots (what I wear each time I work in the garden) and your dirtiest clothes so that you can do some gardening in your heart and pull out all those weeds that God does not want growing in there. Ask God to reveal those weeds to you. He will.

1 John 1:9 ” If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

1 Samuel 16:7 “The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

Check out this video!Hopefully it will bless you!