Weeds Are Like Sin in the Garden of Our Hearts

     

   As I took a morning stroll through my garden today, I was reminded of the opportunistic and pervasive nature of weeds that a gardener has to face each and ever day.  Like sin, weeds grow alongside the beautiful and potentially fruitful plants in the garden disguised as something lovely or fruit bearing.  

   Weeds are plants with no redeeming value for nutrition, food or medicine.  They compete for water, sunlight and nutrients leaving the plants starving.  They grow at an accelerated rate and quickly produce seeds that perpetuate the next generation's invasion leaving an imbalance in the soils nutrients.  This loss of nutrients makes plants weak and susceptible to disease and infestation by insects.  Weeds are difficult to remove because many of them are able to regenerate from a small portion of the plant left unknowingly by the gardener.

 

   Like Glechoma hederacea pictured alongside a fruit bearing strawberry plant above, sin is not only pervasive but deceptive.  Weeds can confuse the gardener on a regular basis especially in the early growth cycle, some weeds, as tender shoots, look as if they could be an important fruit bearing plant.

   As the gardener plants seeds directly into the garden there is a period of time that continual observations must be made in order to identify the germinating plants.  Weeds can be accepted as fruitful just as a specific sin can be accepted by the Christian as an important and productive part of their character that they display that will surely bear fruit.

   Like weeds, sin has no redeeming qualities although the world would try to convince us otherwise in regards to certain sins.   Sin quickly grows in our lives when we ignore it leaving it to compete for the maturing of our character in Christ.  As we avoid doing the intentional necessary and diligent work of rooting out sin, as we see it sprouting forth from our lives, we lose precious resources that are meant to propagate good fruit in our lives, all the while perpetuating the invasive nature of sin in our hearts.  

   Our hearts become corrupted and our minds begin to see the sin as a regular part of our character and we lose site of how the character that God wants to nurture, water and tend to is now lacking in its ability to grow and thrive because of the infestation of sin in our lives.

   We must do the hard work of walking through the garden of our hearts with the Lord on a daily basis.  Allowing Him to point out the sin in our hearts by His word.  Conforming our minds to the truth about our character and the sin that so easily besets us.

   God wants us to be  healthy, vibrant, and fruitful,  producing a harvest of righteousness for all the world to see so that He is glorified in and through our lives.  

   Let us commit to be diligent in our honest approach to our hearts looking diligently and intently at His word to show us the sin that is continually creeping in waiting for an opportunity through the weakness of our selfish flesh.  

Luke 8:4

And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.