James 1:21 – "So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls."
As a young Boy Scout, I took great interest in foraging through the woods. I loved to study and identify plant life. I would spend hours, sometimes, in the forest, looking at the different types of trees and plants and identifying them. It was one of my favorite hobbies.
Despite that interest, when it came time to work on my gardening merit badge, I absolutely struggled. Looking back now, it became pretty obvious what my problems were. I hated to weed and hoe. Sooner or later, the weeds would always seem to overcome my garden.
There simply was no substitute for the hard work of going out on hands and knees, pulling out the weeds around my garden plants. It was a weekly and sometimes almost daily discipline that I just couldn't seem to conquer. At the end of the gardening season, my harvest wasn't so great. I ultimately got the gardening merit badge, but I often wondered if I really deserved it.
For us as believers, the idea of weeds growing in our garden is inevitable. Those weeds for us as believers are quite comparable to the evil and bad things that arise in our lives. They may be habits. They may be a failure to create habits, but they all have the effect of weeds that have a tendency to choke out the productivity of what we're trying to accomplish in our garden.
Today, take some time and look at your garden. Be honest, take a hard look at what weeds are growing. They may be bad habits or just bad conduct. There is no discipline other than to get on your hands and knees and pull those weeds out. Change your conduct, change your actions, and make healthy the Word of God that is planted in your heart. It will produce fruit of a heavenly character.
Stay healthy and have a blessed day!
~Dean Burnetti
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