Garden Heart

My favorite metaphor is that our hearts are like a garden with flowers and weeds and that God is the gardener. 

If we submit to His work on us - to me that is allowing people to correct me and being very honest with myself and others about my shortcomings but also coming to God and meditating on Him every day - God will work out the weeds and cultivate the beauty

Faithful Are the Wounds of a Friend

It's not often that I know exactly what the title is.  Today, I do: faithful are the wounds of a friends.

I am in pain.  The tears were streaming down my face and my nose was getting all stuffy and my throat had that weird, painful lump in it.

I am so, so, lucky to have the opportunity to go through this pain, to have friends who will inflict it - showing their true love to me.  I boast that I will only shine brighter because of it. I will only be stronger.

I had to look at the truth tonight.  I knew what the truth was but I had forgotten it, forgotten the conclusion to the truth.

When they call it the "ugly truth" it is just that.  It's the kind of truth that gives you a red, puffy face and a snotty nose, it's the kind of truth that makes you want to put your face on the ground and stay there for hours because you know that this simple gesture would be better than anything else you could think of doing.

Ah, the truth.  It was the same thing I've hear for years and I responded the way I always do - with resolve to be quiet and still and let the spirit of God change my heart.

That's the only way I'll be new.

That's the only way I can truly love.

~~~~~~

A checklist.  That's what I make my friends feel like.  A checklist that I quickly grow to despise.

Over and over, I will learn that it doesn't matter where I live, or where I work, or what I eat or how I entertain myself - I will be blown about by every wind and thought that comes my way, unless my heart be in the right place.  That place is in Christ.
My. Heart. Has. To. Be. In. Christ every day.

I was looking for an answer, I was saying

"God! what willest Thou for me?"

I got my answer. Right now.  Right where I am.

It amazes me and terrifies me how easily Satan deceived me into thinking that it was all outside circumstances and that I was dissatisfied because of my job and where I live - no, I was dissatisfied because I was not in unity with God and I was inverted into myself.  My eyes and heart were not open to the hearts of my friends, only to the circumstances and checklists.  They need me to care just a lot more and in all the words I heard about the things they are annoyed with and the attitudes they feel from me, the conclusion in my own heart is that this is all symptoms of a deep, deep sickness in me.

I often think, and would like you, reader to consider, that this sickness is like weeds that twist their way into our hearts. Some people call it "baggage."  Throughout our years, from childhood on, we grow in patterns of thinking and in patterns of actions.  All of us have human patterns like this - good and bad.  As a Christian, I believe that God tends us like a garden, taking as much time to weed out the bad and cultivate the good as it did for all of it to grow up in us.

Weeds drop seeds at every level of soil and so they will come back again and again and the Lord will work them out again and again.  One year pulling them up by hand, another year digging them out with a spade and yet other times, burning them with fire.  Don't mistake me:  this working will only continue and progress as you and I submit to it.  In my life, God speaks to me in my heart about His will but MUCH more so through people and my friends.  They are affected by my behavior and so clearly see my patterns, while I might feel that I am getting away with something.

We must be open to correction and willing to look at the ugly truths and the hard truths.  We must be willing to be crushed and yet rise up right after the crushing to go to our Lord and be healed!

This is not to say that it is pain always, for there are times when one is flourishing with roses and gardenias - there is always good and bad within a garden.

My friends did not tell me I had a sickness they only showed me the symptoms, but I know that I need to run to Jesus and lay down at His feet every morning, every night.  That if I do this and open my heart to His work, my friends will truly feel His love and ALL my dreams will come true because my dreams will become one with God's will.


Psalm139:

O that you would slay the wicked thoughts in me O God! Depart from me, therefore, Satan!

He speaks against you wickedly, the enemy takes your name in vain. Do I not hate him O, Lord. who hates you?  Do I not loathe the one who rises against you? I hate him with perfect hatred, he is my enemy.

Search me O Go and know my heart, try me and know my anxieties and see if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the

Way Everlasting.