Reclaiming What God has Given

I decided to tackle the flowerbeds in our front yard last week. When I say they were overdue for a little TLC, I mean they were overdue a year ago, and now they were just embarrassing.

I threw on my very best doesn’t-matter-how-dirty-they-get clothes, grabbed my shovel, my toddler, and my eight-month-old, and got to work.

Those flowerbeds didn’t stand a chance. They shuttered at the day I was born. I hesitate even calling them flowerbeds more like nonflowering deathbeds.

I was pulling weeds for what felt like a millennium. At some point, I thought out loud, “This is probably something’s habitat. Sorry, little guys!” I pictured a family of beetles running out to the grocery store and coming back to find some crazy woman on a tear had uprooted their life. 

I giggled. 

Right then the Lord began to download some serious TRUTH to my heart. He said to me, “Girl, it doesn’t matter whose habitat it is, this is your HOME. It doesn’t matter what’s taken up residency here, if I didn’t plan it, it has to go. Snakes and bugs live in the weeds. Keep pulling! You’re just making room for what I’m going to do next.”

When I tell you, I nearly jumped out of my clothes, and ran down the street … 

What a WORD! 

Before I knew it, I looked around and every bush, every shriveled corpse of a once flowering plant, every dead thing was roots up in my front yard. 

I had let our flowerbeds go. I had allowed weeds and other uninvited guests to dig their roots deep into the ground God had already said was mine. 

Hint: we’re not talking about landscaping anymore. 

I got comfortable. I said, “I’ll tend to that tomorrow,” until tomorrow became a new year. The seasons came and they went. The warmth of summer faded into an icy winter. I hustled, I bustled, and by the time I looked up I hadn’t read my Bible in months. I couldn’t remember the last time I was still in the presence of Jesus. 

My spiritual garden was unattended to and exposed to the elements of life. The toll was glaring. My fuse was short, anxiety was at an all-time high, and the pressure of going through the motions of life without the Wellspring of it was heavy and draining, leaving me longing for day's end only to close my eyes and start the next day already on fumes. 

How are your flower beds? Are they flowering or are they dry and overtaken by uninvited parasites? What is taking precedence over putting on your gloves, cleaning house, and reclaiming the ground God has given you? Stop giving the enemy room for his roots. 

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples (John 15:1-8).