Ceuti67's Blog

On a few occasions this spring my wife and I have rolled up our sleeves and set to work, determined that the pesky, and invasive spring weeds in our backyard would get the “boot”. My wife does an amazing job making our yard beautiful, but her arch enemy….WEEDS, were gaining the upper hand in some parts of the yard…so they had to go….all of them – the dandelions, crab grass, all of them. No place to hide – we are coming for you! This garden was going to get in shape.

At the end of each full on assault against the weeds, we dragged ourselves back into the house, satisfied with a job well done. The area where dandelions used to reign was now mainly just overturned soil—weed free at last.

How did this happen? How did the weeds take over so much? We know this happens pretty much every year…but a few short days later we looked out again and we could hardly believe our eyes. Just a few days had passed since our great victory and once again the weeds were mounting their tenacious and predictable comeback in an attempt to completely overgrow and overpower our lawn yet again!

So again, back we go and set to work. And once again we were merciless, yanking everything out of the ground. When finished, there was no offending weed anywhere….a sight to behold it was.

This is starting to feel like a never ending dance….UGH!

Full disclosure – I am not the “green” thumb in my family…I totally rely on the knowledge, creativity, and desire my wife has – to make our place beautiful – and she does! While at work recently I mentioned our garden dilemma to a colleague who I know loves to garden (he is always talking about his gardening on the weekends – so I knew he’d have something to say). I confessed to him “I just don’t know what to do! Why do these weeds keep coming back?”

Without missing a beat, he immediately replied. “Have you been planting good plants in their place?”

The question might sound like a rhetorical one, but it wasn’t. We hadn’t always been planting anything different in those areas of the garden at all—we’d just been trying to remove the weeds and hoping good plants would grow on their own…or at least that it’d stay weed-free.

I can only imagine the look on my face, when Jim continued to explain by saying, “You have to plant good plants in the garden so there’s no room for the weeds to grow. And you’ll have to nurture those new plants and watch for weeds sneaking through, pulling them before they multiply. I know my wife does this throughout the garden regularly – but I confess I can often not tell the difference between a “good” plant and a weed….and that is a problem in itself, isn’t it?

This lesson drew my mind to life and sin we so often struggle to “pull” out of our life. If we want to get rid of sin in our life, we have to not only repent and remove it from our life, but also we must not neglect in putting on Christ Jesus. We need to turn to away from sin and toward the Savior. Actively pursue HIM. Make decisions to watch, read, spend our time, etc., in ways that promote HIS Fruit growing in our lives. For example, if you struggle with complaining, don’t just stop complaining, but also start praising. If you struggle with an addiction, don’t just stop, but also start filling your time with pursuing Jesus. What do you need to put off/put on today?

“to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” Ephesians 4:22-24 (ESV)

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