So I’ve been a bit quiet on here…not because not much is happening, but the very opposite, so much has been happening! You can now read about all that here, here and here!
Something I’ve done a lot of recently is gardening. Now, I’m not a natural gardener, let’s just get that clear from the start! My Mum is great in the garden and I do my best to absorb as much as I can from her. And in keeping with my adventure in imperfection, after about 4 years of working away at our garden, I have very much accepted that sometimes plants fail. Even when they’re the right kinds for the soil, even when you water them regularly…but not too much! Even when you wrap them up against the frost, feeling like a fool with the fleece and the string, manhandling the fronds of a phormium! Sometimes, they just don’t make it.
Stunning ‘bleeding hearts’ in my garden this year
How is it that other people can grow beautiful delphiniums and lupins in their garden, meanwhile in ours within days everything, including the flowers had been ravaged by slugs and snails?!
It really brings home that parable about the kingdom being like a seed…we can plant it, water it, tend it, but only God can make it grow and thrive!
All this, would you believe, is by way of introduction (the Lord hasn’t yet seen fit to teach me to write concisely just yet, and I’m acutely conscious of this!), to say that whilst in the garden, God has been whispering his words of truth and revelation in a way that makes me almost glad of my dirt-encrusted nails and aching body at the end of the day! I’d like to share these with you in a series of bite-sized posts, so here goes:
Garden gem number 1: A wolf in sheep’s clothing
All is not what it seems. My son has been with me much of the time in the garden, and he loves to bring me little things. Yesterday’s offering was a note, ‘For Mummy’ with a small pink flower in the note, he was quite egalitarian ..there was one for Daddy too. It was one of the flowers from a small pink bindweed creeping along the edge of the lawn in our neighbour’s front garden.
What could I say, but thank you! I resisted the temptation of telling him that although it was pretty, it was from an insidious and pervasive weed!
How many things are there that come into our lives like that bindweed? So sweet, pretty and innocent-looking. Who would think it could choke the life out of other plants?? Who would think that that tiny plant with the tiny, delicate flowers could get…everywhere.
I think some coping mechanisms are a bit like that. That thing we do to make ourselves feel a bit better when we’re tired/angry/frustrated/disappointed/bored/ashamed/sad/lonely. ‘It’s harmless surely. I’m not hurting anyone when I…have that drink, eat that chocolate bar, smoke that cigarette, swear out loud, flirt at the bar’, or whatever your outlet might be. (And I’m speaking to myself here!)
‘What’s so wrong about that anyway, everyone’s got to have a vice or two, and no one’s perfect!’
And there’s the rub. The best lies are twisted up with the truth. We might not (immediately) be harming anyone else, but we’re more than likely hurting ourselves. We’re seeking comfort, security, escape in something other than the one place we can truly have our needs met … In our heavenly Father. And when we expect those things to fix the way we feel, ultimately we’re doomed to disappointment. Eventually, as so many of us know, our release becomes our snare. Instead of the promise of freedom from that bad feeling we were hoping to escape, we find ourselves trapped in a cycle of bad feelings, short term distraction or numbing, and then the bad feelings return, now accompanied by their brothers in arms: shame, despair, failure, and they call for more escapism once again – and there’s the loop we don’t know how to get out of.
There’s only one way to deal satisfactorily with a weed. That is to pull it out it the root, and to get all of it out.
As I’ve said to my boy, there’s just no point pulling off only the flowers or the leaves, we have to dig down. Hold it at the base, use just the right amount of strength and wisdom to work it free. Then we bin it all carefully, we don’t just chuck it in the grass ready to put down roots elsewhere!
The good news for us, and for dealing with those pretty little weeds with the oh-so deep roots in our lives…? It’s Jesus of course. He is the author of our salvation, the bringer of peace. And he left us the Holy Spirit who reveals the truth in our lives. When we ask him to ‘search us and know us’, he will show us the roots deep down, and it is he who empowers us to expunge that weed once and for all. We are made new in Christ Jesus, and when the Son sets us free, we are free indeed!
Did you know you can ask the Lord to reveal the roots of that pain in your life? He is the great gardener and he doesn’t just yank those lies, vices and deceptions out. His grace is sufficient for us in every circumstance – praise the Lord! The only way we can know whether we’re deceived or not is by holding up every belief against the benchmark of truth that is the Word of God. That is Jesus. When he brings into the light those lies we’ve believed, and of course we have all believed and still believe different lies (don’t kid yourself that you’re not deceived, after all how would you know – surely that’s the point of being deceived??), then He will empower us to repent of those lies believed and to break the power of them in our lives. Instead then we can receive the glorious truth of God’s love and his truth that shines a light in all those dark places. 
Dancing in the Spirit 