For the last few weeks, okay months, I've been pretty lousy at pulling the weeds in my garden. Armed with gardening gloves, a shovel and rake, I began the process of tidying the back yard this afternoon. As I waded through the mud, digging up all the weeds, it reminded me of how sin left unaccountable can grow at a rapid rate, infiltrating everything in its path. There were so many weeds, I could scarcely distinguish between the vegetable plants, shrubbery and weeds. I almost uprooted vegetation I planted with care months previously.
Left unattended, botanical pests such as Morning Glory had grown rampantly in my garden and started to wrap around my vegetable plants, slowly killing them. In the same way, sin, when allowed to grow in the garden of our hearts, takes hold of all of the good, beautiful parts of our lives and takes over. It moves into even the good parts of our lives and before we know it, robs us of our spiritual fruit.
The weeds had gotten so out of control in my yard, that despite some heavy rains and frequent watering, it appeared some of my plants had been choked by the weeds and were dead. To my amazement, several of the plants were alive and had ripe vegetables. Just so, sin covers up the fruit in our lives, hiding our potential and stunting growth in the areas of our lives God wants to grow.
Yet with with regular maintenance (the weeding of sin from our lives), goodness has plenty of room and sunlight. Though it can be strenuous work and not very fun, pulling sin from the roots deprives Satan of having any strongholds in our lives.
Watering plants (going to church), fertilizer (getting spiritual sustenance from reading the Bible) helps plants to grow but when plants don't have adequate sunlight or are overrun by weeds, all the watering or fertilizer in the world won't save them. Simply put, plants won't grow well and you won't grow spiritually without regularly clearing out the "weeds".
As brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge and uproot the weeds in our own back gardens. I promise you, any garden, or person for that matter, will thrive with this kind of regular maintenance.
