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 THE GREAT GARDENER

Job 34:32

“Teach me what I do not see; if I have done iniquity, I will do it no more.”

We know what needs changing in our lives because the Holy Spirit reveals it to us. God’s Word makes it very clear that salvation…from start to finish…is of the Lord. God saves, restores, and transforms us or it does not happen. The capacity to cooperate with Him, to be honest in confession, to have the power to repent and abandon sin, to obey and trust Him are all gifts from Him to those who believe Him. Our faith depends upon Him from start to finish. THAT is great comfort and freedom as my hope is never to be grounded in my abilities, ever, but in Jesus Christ, the One who has redeemed and rescued me for a purpose.

God has made it clear that we can rely on Him for the whole of life, even as sheep rely on the shepherd who leads and protects them.

Only God can plow up hardness of heart in a person so that the mere theoretical becomes relational. Only God can take away shallowness of heart that resists anything inconvenient…like life-change and the hard work of learning to trust Him more than what we feel. Only God can heal a divided heart and remove the idols in our lives that seem so normal that we let them control and distract. The deceitfulness of wealth and the anxieties of life are determined to keep our allegiance divided between the One who can save and things that will never save.

God is committed to every follower of Jesus Christ to make our hearts receptive like deep, rich soil so that as He plants His Word in us, it come alive in us, sending down deep roots, making our lives fruitful to display His Kingdom and character. Let the Lord continue in you the work He has begun. Do not resist His “gardening.” He is the Master Gardener of lives and will remove the weeds that choke, the stones that keep us shallow and the hardness of heart that would cause us to miss out on the fullness of life He has called us to in Christ Jesus.

Isaiah 55:10-11

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout   giving seed to the sower, and bread to the eater, so shall My Word be that goes out from My mouth. It shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”




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