Making a Salvation-Garden free of weeds

19-21Post this at all the intersections, dear friends: Lead with your ears, follow up with your tongue, and let anger straggle along in the rear. God's righteousness doesn't grow from human anger. So throw all spoiled virtue and cancerous evil in the garbage. In simple humility, let our gardener, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life.

22-24Don't fool yourself into thinking that you are a listener when you are anything but, letting the Word go in one ear and out the other. Act on what you hear! Those who hear and don't act are like those who glance in the mirror, walk away, and two minutes later have no idea who they are, what they look like.

25But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God—the free life!—even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action. That person will find delight and affirmation in the action.

26-27Anyone who sets himself up as "religious" by talking a good game is self-deceived. This kind of religion is hot air and only hot air. Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.

James 1:19-27, The Message

This portion of scripture is tough, because there is SO MUCH HERE! For starters, James writes and says make it clear, post it everywhere... "Lead with your ears." Somehow that image is a bit funny to me. Mostly because in my minds eye, I see people walking with their ears forward. But in reality what James is saying is that its more important to listen to God and THEN do something. Most often, we have this problem where we want to do something spiritually FOR God, THEN listen as He praises us, "Oh Sam, you did such a wonderful job, great work. I really needed your help!"

NO! God doesn't need our help... Let me let that sink in for a second. God doesn't need your help, or my help, or anyone's help. He's GOD!

While I am making you panic in your seats, let me reel you back in by saying the following: God WANTS your help! He longs for you to be involved, but He's such a good God, He wants you involved on HIS TERMS! His terms are actually way better than any we can come up with ever! Problem is, when we begin using our own terms and using our tongues instead of our ears, we tend to get into trouble. God wants us to avoid that by listening instead, then doing after we know what He wants from us. By acting before listening, we are allowing weeds to form in our Salvation-Garden.

The only way to really pull up the weeds is by "circumcising the ears"(to quote Bishop T.D. Jakes)! By getting ourselves to the point where we do not listen to anything or anyone when they do not align with God and His plans for our lives.

Another major thing that James says is "don't just be a listener(paraphrased)." Be a doer... You may have noticed that this is the complete opposite of the first weed I mentioned. We can also take the stance of waiting for God to speak, then just waiting and waiting and waiting and never doing anything with what He said to do. What if Jesus had just said, "Ok Father, You want me to sacrifice myself for everyone ok. What else?" and just sat there in his prayer time praying and seeking God. At what point does it sound absurd? James goes on to describe the absurdity of the picture. He likens it to when a person looks in the mirror and goes away and not only forgets what he looks like, but also who they are! That's another weed while we are at it...

We can also run the risk of just listening and allowing fear to paralyze us to not acting on what God wants, when God wants it.

In my life, God told me at 17 that I would be a pastor. I pushed it away because I didn't think it was possible. I allowed my fear of one aspect to keep me from doing ANYTHING AT ALL. Now, I am finally coming back to it, and even though I don't pastor a church at the moment, I know that God has it mind for me, and when I am ready and he's ready, it will happen. We do know some things that God has told us to do. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.... and Love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37). Another is to "Go into all the world and preach the Good news to all creation." (Mark 16:15).


These weeds, when in growth, can paralyze, strangulate, and even kill Christians. I urge you friends. examine your hearts, re-read this portion of scripture and uproot any weeds of religion, or hard ears or hard hearts. May God give you the strength to do what needs to be done in your life and the wisdom how to do it..

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Analyst's view of Luke pt. 3

Luke 1:21-38 And the people waited for Zacharias, and marveled that he lingered so long in the temple. 22 But when he came out, he could not speak to them; and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple, for he beckoned to them and remained speechless. 23 So it was, as soon as the days of his service were completed, that he departed to his own house. 24 Now after those days his wife Elizabeth conceived; and she hid herself five months, saying, 25 “Thus the Lord has dealt with me, in the days when He looked on me, to take away my reproach among people.” Christ’s Birth Announced to Mary 26 Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!”[a] 29 But when she saw him,[b] she was troubled at his sayi
Read more

My daddy

In this world where so many are fatherless, many are frustrated and angry at their fathers, I want to take a few moments to talk about my dad. My dad was a fighter! When I say fighter I don't mean that he fought for money, or was in the Army. What I mean is that my dad fought many problems. He fought long days to provide for our family, he fought the attitudes my siblings and myself had towards him. He fought rejection, he fought loss, he fought being without a job, he fought the end of our church, he fought so much. It would be easy to look back at one of those areas and say, "Dad you didn't do enough!" It would be easy to look back at the long days he spent trying to provide for us away from us; a task that I cannot fathom at the present. Why do I bring this up? Why did I talk about him? The biggest reason is that today he embarks on perhaps the biggest journey of his life. He leaves for a 6 month job. A job that will take him THOUSANDS of miles away from his wife,
Read more

Lead like Jesus

but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great  millstone  fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. - Matthew 18:4 but Jesus said,   “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”  - Matthew 19:14 These two verses make it abundantly clear to me that Jesus' mind is focused squarely on the children. In fact, Jesus makes it clear to us that if we mess with Children's access to God, we have some serious consequences awaiting us.   We see these verses and my mind immediately jumps to what we see in the present day. Lawmakers, teachers, activists, and people who are NOT you are trying to dramatically change your children. I get the understanding that interrupting children's access to Jesus is a big deal.  Jesus mentions that we shouldn't infringe, impact, or worst of all, cause a little one to sin. But what we see is quite the o
Read more