Weeding out the heart

It’s beginning to look a lot like Spring-time once again.  It’s time to dust off the old lawnmower and dig out those flowerbeds that have lain dormant since late fall.

One Spring-time, several years ago, I cranked up the push mower and began to get after that over-grown lawn.  But it wasn’t really the lawn I was mowing, it was those pesky weeds!  Don’t you just hate those weeds?!  While no grass is really growing, those weeds seem to pop up uncontrollably.  And they’re not just a sore sight to look at they really do a lot of damage to your lawn.  They steal all of the minerals and nutrients away from the grass and keep it for themselves.  And if something is not done about them they will wind up taking over your whole yard!  Anyway, I was mowing those things down when my oldest son, Elias, who was three at the time, comes outside crying.  I stopped the mower immediately to discover what was wrong.  He came up to me and said, “Daddy, stop cutting down all the flowers!”  From his perspective I wasn’t mowing down those harmful weeds, I was mowing down all the pretty flowers!

I think a lot of times we do the same thing with the sin in our life.  It looks pretty to us; it’s attractive.  And as we look at it from our view point, it seems to be okay.  It’s adding a little “color” to life!  It’s harmless, right?!  All the while, down in the roots of our heart, it’s slowly choking the life right out of us.  It’s a quick and cheap imitation of what God can and will grow in us if we turn our selves over to Him.

Romans 6:8-12 (HCSB) Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him, because we know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will not die again. Death no longer rules over Him. For in light of the fact that He died, He died to sin once for all; but in light of the fact that He lives, He lives to God. So, you too consider yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires.

Too often we hang onto the weeds of sin instead of allowing the Lord to produce the beautiful, lush grass of faithfulness in us.

Why not turn to Christ and see what He can grow in your life?

Pastor Paul Beam