In the past I have struggled with gardening; pulling out weeds over and over every week, frustrated with the fact that they just keep coming back no matter what I do. I tried to prevent those darn weeds by pulling them but it wasn’t until I washed (so to speak) those weeds with a liquid weed killer that I finally got results. Have you ever had that problem? Not only are there weeds in our physical world but in our spiritual world as well.
In Matthew 13:37-39 Jesus tells us that the world is like a field and there has been planted good seed by God and weed seed by the Devil. In fact, the bible goes on to say that at the end of the age, every weed is pulled up and thrown into a fiery furnace to be burned up. (Matt. 13:40-42, Matt. 15:13) Yikes!!
“Lord, I don’t want to be a weed.”
(This was a short little prayer I wrote when I originally did this study in 2009.)
So to prevent becoming a weed, first you have to know what a weed looks like.
Weeds are:
Planted by the enemy of our souls (Matt. 13:39)
Offended by the truth (Matt. 15:12)
People who follow religious teachings and rules meant to control the lives of others (Matt. 15:9)
People who honor Jesus with their words, but their hearts don’t know him at all (Matt. 15:8)
People who have an “unclean” heart and speak out of that (Matt. 15:18,19)
What is “unclean”?
-Evil thoughts
-Murder
-Adultery
-Sexual immorality
-Theft
-False testimony
-Slander
-Whoa! Wait a second, you might be thinking….”Hey, I have done some of these things on this list.” Well you know what? So have I! The good news is that time isn’t up yet; you still have time to ask God to forgive you and then move on. Don’t continue in that behavior and it will be as if you never did anything at all.
One last thing to add to what weeds are:
Everything that causes sin (Matt. 13:41)
So that last sentence pretty much sums it up. Unless you have led a perfect life, you are a weed. So what can be done? Now that we know what a weed looks like, how do we prevent ourselves from living the life of a weed?
The answer: Get into relationship with Jesus Christ, the gardener of our souls. Let him wash you with forgiveness, washing away all of those weed qualities and turning you into good seed.
The Gardener knows we aren’t perfect, so he is always waiting to restore us to the good seed that we are intended to be. So what’s stopping you from your weed prevention?
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