In The Garden

It amazes me that even as our world seems to be filled with so much inconsequential nonsense and hype, the power of God's creation still speaks volumes to a hurried, worried, fractured world. I recently took this picture while strolling through the Chicago Botanic Gardens (a taste of heaven on earth for me).  I had come off a busy week and was taking some friends to see the fall colors and everywhere we walked was a picture that spoke louder than any sermon about God and His love, mercy, grace and comfort to us world weary travelers.

I love how just walking through a field or grove of trees or beautiful garden, immediately recalibrates my mind to focus on the truly important things of life and to feel gratitude and peace well up in my soul. God says in Romans that His creation speaks loudly of His existence.  I concur. I often walk these garden paths and imagine myself in the Garden of Eden where God walked with Adam and Eve in the "cool of the day", communing with them.  I have often walked through the Botanic Gardens and seen birds, chipmunks, butterflies, geese, swans, deer, and even wooly caterpillars, and every imaginable plant and flower,  and felt my spirit stirred by the magnificence of almighty God.  And always I remember a song my grandmother used to sing, I have a copy of it on my prayer room wall, "In the Garden".  I've always loved this song and it has become a theme of  sorts in my life the last l5 years or so.  I feel like God has worked in me a bountiful  harvest of peace and joy and that I am happy to "bloom where I have been planted" for this season of my life.

The words to this song will always speak to me of God's walking through life with me.  He walked through life with my Grandma Brady and as she walked with Him she prayed for us, all her grandkids and great-grandkids, just as she had for her own eight kids! She was a gardener, a tiller of soil, a harvester. I was always amazed at the bounty that could come from her vegetable garden and nourish us so much when we sat around her table, just as her prayers nourished us.  I think she learned a lot about God's nature and faithfulness by working in her garden planting seeds, pulling weeds and waiting for harvest while depending on the Good Lord for sun and rain. She, too,was one who walked with God in the garden in the cool of the evening ~  thinking and praying over the needs of her large family whom she loved so much and thanking Him for caring for us all.

I can hear her singing in her little kitchen as she's rolling biscuit dough with her apron on and her hands dusty with flour:

I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses
and the voice I hear falling on my ear, the Son of God discloses.
And he walks with me and he talks with me and He tells me I am His own.
And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.  

Now I hear her singing as she stands beside me in the little white church by her house across the creek.  We would visit her in West Virginia from our nomadic lifestyle as a military family.

He speaks and the sound of His voice, is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
and the melody that He gave to me, within my heart is ringing
And he walks with me, and he talks with me and He tells me I am His own.
And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.

The Garden, a theme that has run through my life and brought me joy. The irony is I don't have a green thumb at all like my grandmother or even my mother who could grow anything! But I have been able to grow in my faith that God planted in me at l6.  I found out a few years ago that my name, Teresa, means harvester!  Just as my grandmother and many wonderful mentors have planted seeds in my life, I love to plant the seeds of God's word and watch them grow. I have planted seeds in the lives of students as a teacher, I have planted seeds in the lives of friends and other women that God has called me to as a mentor, and I have planted seeds in the lives of my own children in our home. I have not been a perfect gardener by any means, but I have walked with the Master Gardener and asked him to send water and sunshine on those seeds that there might be an abundant harvest to His glory. I sometimes think of my reunion in heaven with my grandma....I want to sing "In the Garden" with her
as we walk with God "in the cool of the evening".

Galatians 6:8b-9 He that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap everylasting life. Be not weary in well doing, for in due season we will reap a harvest if we faint not.

Embracing Who You Are

Often as women we do not embrace who God made us. Watch the following video and be inspired to thank God for all that He made you to be. Let it encourage you to embrace who you are and live for Him confidently.

http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=FFCC2JNU

 

Often, as women, we spend many years believing the lies of the enemy about who we are.  Since the creation of Eve, the enemy of our souls has been determined to rob us of our special place in the heart of God.  He wants to destroy our confidence and make us believe we are worthless and ugly and are "never going to be enough" for God to use us. God made woman the crown of creation, and satan has been jealous and angry about it every since and has determined to destroy us.

This story of Christopher so encouraged my heart because it reminded me that God is the one who speaks truth about who we are. God is the one who has a plan for our lives. God is the one who delights in us and finds us precious to Him.  God is the one who so wanted fellowship with us that He sent His own son, Jesus to die for us.

Christopher could have believed all the lies spoken about him and had a very different outcome, but Christopher obviously had an awesome mother who embraced who Christopher was and that God gave him to her. She must have taught him that he is only as disabled as his thoughts let him be. He is amazingly well educated and capable of communicating despite his disability.  After watching this I couldn't help but cry over the beauty of Christopher. He is a brother whose light shines brightly here on earth and I can only imagine the crowns that will be bestowed by our Father on him for embracing who God made him to be.

Will you and I continue to believe lies about who we are? Will we keep repeating the tapes from our past that say, "you're incompetent," "you're ugly", "you're useless", "you're too emotional", "you're
not smart enough",  "you're a failure"....any of these sound familiar?  We must choose to stop the lies as soon as our enemy begins to play the CD in our thoughts. Take those thoughts captive to Christ and allow Christ to show us the truth about ourselves and then embrace who we are and thank God for what He is doing in us!   Who we are is not about our dress size, wardrobe, abilities, disabilities, education, title, or age.  Who we are is about who God says we are. He has called us His children.
He has said that we are co-heirs with His son, Jesus. He has said that we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. He has said we are His jewels. He has said we are His delight.

We are able to embrace who we are because of His great love for us. His love has bestowed great value upon each of us. We are each unique and precious and irreplaceable to Him! Let us rejoice in this truth and be set free!

Thank you Christopher for showing us the love of God so magnificently that we might embrace who we are too!

Flourishing Garden or Wasteland?

Just as in the natural world there are obstacles to growth, so there are obstacles in our lives to our spiritual and emotional growth.  In the natural world if there is not proper food and water a plant will not grow. In the natural world if there are weeds and they are not tended to, they will overtake and choke out the life of the plant.  In the natural world light is a necessary element to most plants.

In our life as Christian women, there are obstacles to our spiritual growth and to enjoying the life that God has given us. God delights in us according to Zephaniah 3:17, and Jeremiah 29:11 says he has plans for us to give us a future and a hope!  That sounds like "abundant life" was on his mind doesn't it?

 

But sadly many Christian women aren't experiencing that abundant life, and many are even living rather chaotically and far from the peace that Christ died to bring to us.  Many women have been sidetracked and sidelined by obstacles that the enemy of our soul has thrown at us, many of us, have let "weeds", "drought", and "lack of nutrition and light" impede their growth.

To be healthy we need to drink deeply of the "living water" that Jesus says is in him. We need to stay close in relationship to the Lord. We need to spend time just being refreshed by soaking in His presence. That takes a commitment of our time and will. Will I find a quiet place to just play some praise music and give my attention to adoration of Him. Will I thank Him? Will I confess my need of Him?  We need to purposely choose to make time for Him, to be refreshed by being in the presence of the living water instead of going through perpetual drought.

We need to also be feeding on the right things in order to grow. Have you seen tomato plants and other plants that are given special plant food or fertilizer? They thrive and grow awesome vegetation and flowers. We must overcome the obstacle of starvation of our spirtual life.  "Man doesn't live by bread alone, the scriptures tell us, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." Most of us don't miss too many meals, we wouldn't let ourselves go hungry or eat only junk foods, yet we often starve our spiritual life, choosing to fill up on the junk food of life like entertainment, possessions, and status.  We must feast upon God's word and take it in so that it might change our attitudes, deal with our woundedness and pain, and strengthen us for life in a fallen world.  The fruit of our lives will evidence what we are feeding on.  I want to feast on the truth of God's word, not the "wisdom" or cheap substitutes of this world.

Weeds can also destroy a beautiful garden.  Wrong attitudes and motives, complaining, murmuring, being judgemental and critical of others, having perfectionistic, unrealistic expectations, being disobedient and prideful are all like weeds that grow and choke the life out of us and rob us of the beautiful plans God has for us.   Murmuring and complaining cost the Israelistes 40 years of wandering around the same mountain instead of taking possession quickly of the promised land.  Weeds need to be plucked out of a garden regularly to keep it vital and growing, the same is true of the "weeds" our enemy has sown in our lives. We must apply the "weed killer" of God's truth to the weeds in our life.  We need to ask the Lord to show us what weeds are growing in our life and to seek from His words the truths that will kill those destructive weeds.  It takes persistent application!

How about light? Are you letting the light of God's presence and His word move through you to others?  All around us there are people who are like limp, dying plants that are planted in the darkness and need to be transplanted into the light.  As the Light of the World has shone on you and given you a new life and encouragement and brought freedom, so God asks that we function as light bearers in the garden of  His world.  We are to shine the light of truth, encouragement, and love on those God has put in the circle of our influence.  Darkness is an obstacle to growth, and can lead to death. Jesus said we are to be in the light as He is in the light. We must battle the darkness that tries to encroach upon our lives. What we see and hear and give our attention to can bring darkness into our life.  We don't want to give place to these things that darken our minds, hearts, and souls. Remember Jesus said that we are the light of the world and that's because if we are in relationship with Him we bear His light to this dark world. His is a Kingdom of Light!

The Bible says we are to be rooted and grounded in Jesus to have an abundant life in this world and to overcome pain and loss. We get to choose whether our life is a beautiful, flourishing garden or a weed infested, wasteland. God has given us a free will to make that choice. He has given us the tools we need too. He says he is the vine or root and we are the branches.

  I choose to seek that my life becomes a beautiful, vibrant, colorful, butterfly filled, aromatic garden, don't you?