Lessons Learned in the Garden

• Prepare the soil ahead of time, hard work as it is! It is much easier to plant in well-tilled and tended soil. As I learned today, it is also much easier to pull weeds out of well-loosened soil! It made me stop to pray that God would make my heart soft so that it might not only produce much healthy fruit, but also so that it would be that much easier to attack and weed out sin.
• Tending your garden in small daily amounts is a lot easier and much more effective than attacking it in marathon spurts here and there, which are tiresome and leave much too much time in between for weeds to grow! Slow and steady really does seem the best process. The more regular time I spend in the Word and in prayer, the more I will know the Lord and hopefully grow in delighting in Him. This, in turn, will keep my heart soft and help me identify and repent of sin much earlier in the process.
• Good weed prevention is key - mulch, weed barriers, etc., because once seedlings pop up, unless you are very familiar with what you have planted, you won't know the difference between wanted and unwanted ones and will have to wait until they are more full-grown to distinguish between the two. Hence, more work later and more time for the weeds to steal food and sunlight from the plants you are cultivating. I need to be daily repenting of sin, laying my heart before the Lord and asking Him to open my eyes. I also need to be daily delighting in Him, which will serve to wean me from my sinful habits and desires. It is much easier to deal with sin in its infant stages than to wait until it has conceived and borne bad fruit.

Just some thoughts as I was weeding today. May the Lord give me grace to delight in dependence upon Him, to repent daily of my sinful heart, and to rejoice more and more in His amazing work on my behalf! May He be glorified by the fruit I bear!