Pulling the Weeds

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I am not a gardener.

I can hardly manage the minimum required landscaping in my neighborhood.

I can, at this moment, identify one dead rose bush and one dead maple tree.

It is confirmed...I am not a gardener.

That being said - I can identify the lush and leafy weeds that grow like crazy when everything else around it has withered and perished by my hand.

It's incredible really.

But, there they are.  Everyday.  Mocking me.

A few days ago I decided I was going to go outside and pull up those ugly things and reclaim my yard - barren as it is - but I was going to give it a go.

And so I slipped on my pink gardening gloves that are really more just an accessory.  Not looking forward to the thorns and thistles that lay in wait for my delicate hands, I also opted to cover the pink gloves with my husband's work gloves.  I felt protected.  As an after thought I grabbed the tiny shovel and the tiny three-pronged fork-looking tool (not a rake, but maybe a trowel...nope...a quick Google search showed me that the shovel might actually have been a trowel...I don't know...but do you know what I'm saying???)

Anyway - and off I went - ready to lay those killers to rest.

As I worked my mind wandered.  I was fascinated by the many different varieties of weeds my black thumbs could grow!  Some were prickly.  Some were pretty. Some came right out of the ground with little effort on my part and some had roots that resembled tree roots (and uprooted the sod when I pulled with all my might).  Some were small and mighty and some were huge but popped right out - roots and all. Some grew amid other plants, entangling their vines around my precious (and few) greens.  Others popped up in the middle of the grass.  While others grew right out of the rocks.

I started thinking about the lies that I hear and believe.

They are like the weeds I was pulling.

Some lies are prickly - and they hurt immediately.

Some lies are pretty - and they are harder to detect.

Some can be pulled quickly and tossed without much thought.

But other lies have thick, deep roots that are really hard - if not impossible - to get out of my mind.  And the more I pull at that lie, desperately trying to get rid of it, the more it hurts.  And sometimes, I can only get rid of part of it - and it lays just under the surface, ready to reappear and mess with me over and over again.

Some are small lies, but so deep it takes a lot of effort to pull them out completely.

Others are huge, but if I can get a good handle on it, I can control its effect on me.

And then there are the vines, that creep around my good thoughts, wrapping and entangling and attaching itself to the positive thoughts until I can no longer decipher which is which, often times killing both in a desperate attempt to kill the lie.

In his article, "Weeds!", Mike Ford writes this:

"What do weeds do? They choke, entangle, and steal. They hinder fruit from 

maturing. They may not necessarily stop growth, but they can slow it 

down to the point that fruit never ripens. The spiritual parallels are evident."

And that's exactly what the lies we believe do to us.  They choke, entangle, and steal.  They hinder our fruit from maturing.  They may not necessarily stop our growth, but they slow us down to the point where our fruit never ripens.  And we become paralyzed by the lies.

In Matthew 13, Jesus tells a Parable (a story) about weeds.  Later on in the passage he clarifies what He had been talking about in the Parable (because some are a little trickier to understand than others.

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples came to him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil.

~Matthew 13:36-39~

Satan is the Father of Lies - he loves to whisper in my ear the lies and insecurities and imperfections I have.  And if I don't deal with those lies immediately, they grow deeper roots and more prickles and are much harder to get rid of later.  

So what can we do?

We have to take captive every thought (2 Corinthians 10:5), identify the lies of the enemy, and replace the lies with the Word of God.  Christine Caine says, "Know what your Daddy says about you. Grab the lie and say, "My Jesus wouldn't say that to me.""

Nothing shuts the Enemy up faster than telling him the truth and exposing his lie to the Light (say it out loud - give Jesus access to the lie, even if there is a partial truth to it - hear me friends - DO NOT let shame replace God's grace).  Grab the root of that lie and pull with all your might - even if it hurts.

Join me as we continue to dive into the destruction that lies will leave for us, and the truth that will cause those lies to wither and die.

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