There are so many good things that God wants to grow in us. He wants to grow in us the gifts of patience, peace, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self – control, of which, I think, we all want some more. But the thing is that when we look at our life, we might look at certain areas and ask the question: “If God wants to grow this in me, why I don’t see more of it?”. Maybe some of us had been wrestling with this for a while. We want God to show up, we want Him to change us, but we don’t see it happening. Or maybe some of us have questions about how God works in us, and why He isn’t changing us more than He is.

The good news is that Jesus actually predicted this would happen when one day he was telling the Parable of the Sower that gives us the supernatural view of what’s going on when God wants to change us, when He wants us to grow but nothing is actually happening. When Jesus told this parable about the farmer sowing the seed, He didn’t tell this to give us a bunch of guilt or shame over how we haven’t grown in the past. The reason why He gives this parable is that He wants to give us hope for today and the future. What we’re going to see in this parable is that we are forgiven for whatever led to this point where we are in our life.  Whatever growth failed to happen… maybe it was our fault or maybe it was the situation around us. Jesus knows and He gives us this parable to give us hope and direction for the future.

In Matthew 13:22 the seed falling among thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word making it unfruitful. Jesus points two things that can get in the way, that can choke out the good things that God wants to grow. First is that we have some worries in life that can choke up the good things that God wants to do. Here we don’t want to minimize the things that we worry about, but at some point we have to minimize the value of worrying. Because it does not add or change anything, it can’t take anything away. All it does, all worry does is that it drains our time, our energy, our rest. And it’s not something that anyone of us wants. If we have some worry, that worry has driven us to seek help inwardly, seek help from our self and that can minimize the help that God wants to do and what He wants to grow in us. The other thing that Jesus wants to point to, which seems like something completely different, is the deceitfulness of wealth, that if we have enough wealth, we won’t have to worry. We won’t have to seek anyone’s help. We’ll be fine. But He wanted to tell us that wealth can make us happy, but only for a short period of time, it is like a sugar high kind of happiness that leaves you worse than before. The deceitfulness of wealth is that we need more and more and it never gives us what it promises. The deceitfulness of promises is dangerous, because it leads us to seek help from no place. The reason why it is dangerous is because it leaves us to a place where we think we don’t need anyone’s help. So, the remedy is this: when it comes to our garden, the things that God wants to grow with us and sow in us must be seen in our way of life. Thus, I think we need to do this: Get out our gloves, get on our knees and start weeding. It’s time to look at that worries and say, “worry, it’s time that we had to talk. Worry, it’s been fun having you in my life but it’s time to replace you with something better”.  Let us bring into prayer all our worries and allow God to take control over it. The weight of our future is too much for us to carry. Let us ask God to remove those worries and replace them with the promise. May He may give us the strength, hope and faith. Lastly, it’s true that we can’t go through our entire garden in one day and weed the whole thing, but what if today we put on our gloves, we got on our knees, and we humbled ourselves before God to let him determine what gets to stay and what gets to go. As we take this first step, we could also ask God to give us the faith, trust, strength to remove what does not belong to our garden that is sown by Him. So that what He wants to grow can thrive.

 

 

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