Weedless is my God lessons. Curious about my title selection? Here’s the story:

One hot summer morning, about 5:30 am, a very pregnant me decided to go weed the garden. It had been a neglected task. If we waited past 7 am, the bees were everywhere and it was just too hot. Not to mention 2 sweet kids would be needing their mommy. I love gardening- it is one of the places I connect so much with God (and a lot cheaper than a trip to the beach– my other “special” God place). So, on this hot, muggy morning, I started at the last row pulling up weeds. some were small, just sprouted– man those were easy! Then there is the “ground cover” weed– it spreads like wild, but doesn’t take deep roots. Among these two “easy” weeds, were some monsters who had taken root over a few weeks and were buried deep. I had to be very careful to not disturb the root system of the plants we were growing as I dealt with those weeds. And over the next two hours, God really spoke to me:

• the new sprouted “weeds” in life are so easy to pluck out. This could be the start of a bad habit, or temptation to sin. If its dealt with quickly, no real harm is done.
• “ground cover” weeds spread quickly. Like, literally…overnight. This reminds me more of bad habits. Or things that we let take the place of our time alone with God. Hey, they might even be good things…..lets call them the “BUSY” weeds.
• Ah…and then there is the dug-down-deep, can cause a crisis in life if you don’t do something weeds. These stink. Its when we’ve let temptation grow and lead to sin. But you see, there is a gradual change from the “sprouts” to the monsters. at the different stages, plucking those weeds might move a little dirt, or create a hole. But as I said before, once they were monsters, they could very well kill the plant by destroying its root systems.
• There were a few deep, thick rooted weeds that I could not remove alone. Ah, what a lesson we see in scripture. James 5:16 says “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” Confession of our sin to each other brings healing, it lets some much needed oxygen in. And then praying together, as well as the accountability allows us to lay ourselves open before Jesus, and BE HEALED. Will new sprouts come? Absolutely, but when we are grounded in truth and have accountability with the Holy Spirit that resides within us, and our fellow Christians, we don’t let them grow a single day.

Our quiet time with the Lord is made to bless us, and to keep the open lines of communication. An awesome Bible teacher once reminded me that “missing our quiet time does not wreck God’s plan”. And it doesn’t make Him angry at us either. One of my favorite verses in Scripture is found in 1 John 1:9 “But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” It’s in the time I spend at the feet of Jesus that he gently opens my eyes to the sprouts of sin in my life. And He will even pick them out, and it really doesn’t hurt. The truth we see in 1 John 1:9 also applies to the monsters we quietly grow. The confession and removal may “hurt” a little, or even a lot. But He forgives us, and He cleanses us. And a life cleansed by  Jesus is a life worth living my friend.

Here’s to living WEEDLESS!