Growing Pains

  

What was once, and could be again, a beautiful garden is now overwhelmed with weeds.  Let me cut to the chase.  Obviously I am not talking about gardens or weeds with this post.  I am talking about our hearts.  We bring them to Jesus is a furious rush of love and in the rapture of those first moments in relationship with Christ, we are much like a freshly tilled and planted garden.  The plants have been placed with such joy and anticipation.  The soil is rich and inviting.  The weather is perfect for germination and the coaxing of life from the seeds we have planted.

Then the weeds.

It seems that over night, our hearts are savagely swarmed by these squatters that simply were not invited to the party.  We pulled them all out when we tilled the garden.  We threw them into the burn pile with such great joy.  In our heart of hearts, we wanted only the good fruit of our garden to be found in our garden.  When we see these weeds, we wonder, "Who did this?  I thought I got rid of them all!  How could this happen!  I am so ashamed and embarrassed by my heart and the darkness it contains."

Two things I want to share with you at this point.  As a new gardener, I am currently engaged with a battle with weeds in my garden and in my heart.  Also, I believe that we (the Church) are currently in this season of battle against spiritual weeds.  So I hope that what I share here will be a help to you.

I spoke to one of my neighbors the other day and as my wife and I were looking at her Herb garden, Rachel asked, "how do you get rid of all the weeds, do you spray?"  My heart sank as I knew that Rachel had noticed all of the weeds in my garden.  I had recently spent several hours weeding our front flower garden by pulling out the vile things by hand.  But my vegetable garden was still full of the things.  Our neighbor said, "Oh, by hand.  My husband uses a hoe, but I like to get in there with my hands and pull them out."  Then my wife asked, "How do you get rid of all of them?  We have so many."  My neighbor explained, "With a new garden, that is what you get.  All those seeds lay dormant in the soil and as you till up the soil and add food and water, they start to wake up and germinate.  Keep at it.  Next year will be easier."

This truth hit me like a lightening bolt.  I had not been attacked by a hateful neighbor who sowed weed seeds in my garden.  I had not failed to pull them all out like I thought.  The seeds of the weeds were already in the soil.  They just had not germinated yet.

So, when you find yourself living a life with Jesus Christ and all of the sudden you wake up to find your heart swarmed with things you thought you had gotten rid of and even new and different things that you never knew were in you, just remember that it is not your failure that caused this.  You are not a disappointment to God.  He is not looking at you and thinking, "Wow!  I did not see that one coming."  You did not know this stuff was in you, but He did when He welcomed you into His arms.  Look at this season of growing and battling weeds as an opportunity to uproot the weeds that you did not know about, but lay dormant in your heart.  Better to get rid of them as soon as possible so you won't have to deal with them later.  And just as my neighbor so lovingly put it to us, "Next year will be easier."  The next growing cycle you go through as a Christian will likely produce some more weeds that lay dormant still.  But it won't be as many and it won't be as discouraging for you.  Next season will be easier.

Remember that this life is a process.  It is the Highway of holiness, not the transporter beam of holiness.  It is a journey to be embraced and not an instantaneous reconfiguration of your heart.  

I want to leave you with this final story of encouragement.

I was standing in front of our church sanctuary one day praying for some people.  I looked at them and with the eyes of my heart, I saw them as frightened little children who really needed Jesus to come and take care of them.  Suddenly, I could see myself that way too.  I was having a deeply spiritual experience with God, but it was disturbing me.  Rather than seeing my need for Christ to come and sustain me and carry me, I saw my own wickedness and darkness and began to feel unworthy of praying for these people.  In my heart I spoke this prayer to God; "How can you stand to love me?  I have so much darkness in me."  Without any hesitation and is quite the startling manner, Jesus began speaking to me.  He spoke the following words to my heart in a way that only Jesus can.  I hope you will hear them as I did and be set free from fear and condemnation for the short falls.

Jesus said, "David, it is a whole lot darker than you think."  This hurt my feelings at first and just as I was about to say, "I did not realize it was that bad.", He continued, "But I love you a whole lot more than you think."  Even faster than my own heart could condemn me, Jesus Christ had crashed through the wall and set me free.

Do you get how vast this love is?  

Do you sense its depth?  

We mistakenly assume that we are loveable.  We are not.  We have nothing redeemable in and of ourselves.  I thought that the garden of my heart was pretty good until the weeds showed up.  And God just says, "There are more weeds in your garden that you could ever hope to pull out, but I love your garden so much more that you think I do."  Is it not a great thing that God's love is not depending on our performance?  The weeds need to be dealt with for sure, but they are not keep Him from loving us.

 

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:38-39

For while we were yet weak, in due season Christ died for the ungodly.
Romans 5:6

Next year will be easier, don't give up.

Conversations With God

About 5 years ago, I began seeking the Lord about who the Holy Spirit is and how He operated in our lives as believers.  Having been to Bible School, I had a great deal of theology in my head.  I knew just enough to know that my knowledge was not enough.  I needed experience and a manifestation of the Holy Spirit in my life.  It was my understanding that the Holy Spirit would empower us to live the life God called us to live and that though His empowering, we could walk as Jesus walked.  One of the things I was very interested in was hearing God's voice and learning to recognize it.  I wanted all that the Holy Spirit had to offer by way of gifts and intimacy with my Father.  I prayed for Him to speak to me.  On the very night that I did this, my wife began having very vivid dreams.  She woke me up in the middle of the night and told me she had these dreams.  God was speaking to her in her sleep and I was jealous.  She did not even want it and I was the one who asked for more.  It was then that I learned that God spoke to me in a different way than he did her.  I was complaining in my spirit about her getting what I asked for.  At that very moment, a voice went off in my head (yes, I hear voices) that was very close to my own thoughts, but very different also.  The thing being said was "What's the difference?"  I was complaining that my wife got something I asked for and the Lord was telling me that her getting it was the same as me getting it; that she and I really were one.  This is one of the main reasons I recognized this as being God.  Who else would correct me, teach me and love me all in one breath?  My Heavenly Father, that's who.  God was speaking to me. 

One way I explain this is that most of us can readily identify where a natural voice is coming from if given enough time to listen and locate the speaker.  still most, but maybe fewer, can also recognize the voice of the speaker.  Now, let's assume that the speaker is speaking in a different language that ours.  We may not understand everything that is being said, but we know who is saying it.  Given time, we can learn what words are being said and how to interpret them.  I believe it to be much the same with God.  He speaks, I recognize it is Him because I am one of His.  The more I listen, the more I'm able to understand what He is saying.  Understanding His words still falls short of understanding His heart or even grasping why HE may be saying what He is saying.  As Paul wrote, "We see in part and we prophesy in part."  Not knowing all of it backward and forward is not a reason not to share what He may be saying to you.  Just remember that you may not be getting the whole picture from Him and your spiritual ears may still have some deaf spots in them.  Share what you may receive from God with humility, but also with confidence.  If you really believe it, be bold.  But don't embellish it or detract from it because it may be rejected.  Remember that the litmus test for anything you may receive in your spirit is the Bible.  It may not be a direct quote from the Word, but it won't conflict with it and the concept will be found there.  Keep in mind though that your current understanding of the Word may be flawed and God will still speak to you.  Sometimes, I fear we reject what we are hearing from Him because we don't like it and we have a poor understanding of scripture.  Many of us interpret the Word based on pop culture lenses and whatever may be trending on Twitter. 

Why am I laying all this on you right now?  I am about to share a great many things on The Refuge City that I believe come from the heart of God.  Some of it is fantastical, some of it is difficult to receive.  But I also believe it came from His heart of love.  From the very title of this blog, to the heart of my ministry to teens at The Methodist Temple or through Chrysalis, I believe that God has a destiny for this city that is much greater than just being nicer than the next town.  While I have eluded to some of these things in the past and I have spoken with many of you directly about what I believe God has spoken over this city, I have recently been convicted about not sharing things more openly.  I have another website called emberfoundry.org/APropheticJournal and I have posted much more there than I have on this blog.  Please feel free to browse that site and comment here if you have thoughts or questions.

I don't expect all of our readers to buy into everything I share in the coming posts, but I do hope that you will give it an honest read and seek the Lord for yourself. 

Time

Why do we hate that things take time? This angst that has set into our hearts to get things done before they are ready to be done has become epidemic in our nation and in the Church. No longer content to cook, clean, prepare, travel or even form relationships the way they used to be done. We now nuke, dispose of, purchase, jet and social network our way through life.

I like fast just as much as anyone, but I have learned that slow and steady really does win the race. There are delicious meals that simply can't be made up to par without tedious and time consuming preparation and attention to detail. There is a quality that is completely lost when dining on paper or plastic. Missionaries used to get over half of their culture shock on the boat ride. Today, they have second and third manifestations of culture shock for years because they had an instant transition to the foreign culture.

The opposition may counter that we reach more for the gospel now and we accomplish such a great deal more in volume than before.

First, I'm not convinced that we are so far ahead of our ancestors in our accomplishments and I am discovering that we may even be doing ourselves a great disservice.

This week I'm with my youth group and we are planning a VBS for a local town near by and we went out to pass out fliers. It was a small town and it took several hours. We may get a nice bunch of kids, but I really don't think we will be seeing a rural transformation over night. The method for ministry for the Church for so long now has been to go to where the crowds are. I know that the motivation we claim is that we are reaching large numbers, but I tend to believe that in actuality, we are just wanting credit for large numbers without the huge effort and the enormous time commitment it takes to actually reach those masses.

We could continue doing rural outreaches for a long time and still only minister to a few hundred over the years. But why would we want to lose out on the Glory God has in these people just because we can get a bigger number quicker somewhere else? I even contend that the end result of our get big quick schemes are a shadow of what transpires in time consuming ministry to others.

Paul traveled far and wide to reach just a few for the Lord. It changed the world in time. It changed the world because it was deeper, stronger and more solid than what passes as evangelism today.

Let us not be afraid to take time.