Pastor Chuck would be the first to tell you, "To God be the glory!" 😄 Prayers for dear sweet Katie!!
Carole, thanks for the update on Darlene. Prayers continue for her, sweet Katie, cousin Howard & YOU! 🙂
Hello Everyone,
Do you like my new Tie?
With this no explanation is necessary.
As St. Thomas Aquinas said. To anyone who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To anyone without faith, no explanation is possible.
My Garden of Love
Anybody that has ever worked in a garden knows that it takes work to grow food we can enjoy.
It takes a lot of love, sweat and careful tending in order for a garden to be successful. There are some things a gardener needs to do in order to begin a garden.
The gardener must prepare the bed, plant the seeds, take care of the plants, control the harvest, make sure the garden receives water. Every gardener who follows these processes should have relative success.
Working in a garden is a labor of love because it takes time to tend and care for it. There are moments of joy, frustration and pain. Joy comes from seeing the plants poking through the soil and start reaching for the sun. There can be frustration when animals eat your young plants and the pain can come while watching some of the plants die.
Gardening and farming are examples used in the word of God. If you do a study on gardening terms from the bible, you will find sowing, reaping, harvest, seed, soil and the list goes on. Each one of these terms is found in nature, and they also have spiritual applications.
God intended nature to be one of the ways he taught men spiritual lessons. Proverbs 6:6 says, "Take a lesson from the ants, you lazybones. Learn from their ways and become wise." Luke 12:27 says, "Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are."
As we can see from just these two verses alone that God wants mankind to take lessons from creation. Not that we worship nature, but we can learn spiritual lessons from it. The lesson we can learn from gardening is simple, and the rest of this will try to expound upon those principles.
Working in the spiritual garden takes effort, just like working in a natural garden. Scripture shows us how to get our spiritual gardens ready for planting. Hosea 10:12 says, "I said, Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you.
As we can see in Hosea we need to prepare the ground of our hearts, just like a gardener prepares the natural ground. It must be tilled and broken up, ready for the planting of the seed. The seeds that we use in order to reap a spiritual abundance in harvest time are found in the word of God.
One such seed is the seed of faith; this is found in Matthew 17:20, "You don’t have enough faith,” Jesus told them. “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard seed, you could say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it would move. Nothing would be impossible."
The mustard seed is said to be the smallest of all seeds. If we have faith the size of that seed we can believe and the impossible can happen. Just like working in a natural garden takes effort, so too does walking out the Christian life. Faith is the very essence that gives our lives meaning, it births the unseen into reality.
In God's word, we also see the principle of sowing and reaping. Galatians 6:7-8 says, "Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant.
Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. We can see from these verses that if we want a harvest that is beneficial, we must sow good things. If we sow things that bring death and decay, then that's what we'll reap.
In closing we see that the principles of spiritual gardening are essentially the same as natural gardening. First we have to prepare the soil. We must break up the fallow ground, or untilled soil, of our hearts. Then we have to plant the right seeds, faith, kindness, meekness, love and things of that nature.
We must plant the proper seeds if we want to reap a good harvest, otherwise if we sow to the things of the flesh that is what we will reap come harvest time. Now you have the basic principles of working in your spiritual garden. Be sure to keep the seed watered, safe-guard it from things that would devour it.
When it starts producing life, guard it against anything that would destroy it. Once harvest time comes there will be fruit that brings life to your soul, and others may also eat from the fruit of your works.
Love to All
Carol, eyes feel GREAT! I go in this Thurs to have the pressure rechecked. 🙂 I'm asking God if I can get off my other 2 eye meds. 🙂 Prayets for Bill. Is he better today? Thank you for sharing that Howard knows our Jesus!
Roy, love the tie!! 🙂 So good to see you!! 😄
Roy, love the tie!! 🙂 So good to see you!! 😄
I'm sure all the prayer warriors are praying for Hannah, who was kidnapped, and the family who must be going thru such deep pain! The kidnapper has her now in deep wilderness. Lord help and protect Hannah and comfort the family and friends!!
Wished I could have updated last night, but Hannah is now safe & abductor was killed. 😄
