What we feed grows

I truly appreciate a beautiful garden, but I’m no gardener. My approach to gardening is simple: I visit the local nursery and buy pots—hanging pots or whatever catches my eye for an instant garden. This year, my pots, in various sizes and locations, have thrived remarkably well. In fact, I’m still caring for the potted plants I purchased back in May—and they’re still blooming! Typically, by late August, they would be wilted and faded.

So, what was my secret this year? I watered them! Yes, that was my big lesson.

Isn’t that true in life? We nourish what we want to grow and withhold from what we want to fade away.

In Galatians 5, the apostle Paul discusses two types of fruit that our lives can produce: the fruit of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit.

The “flesh” doesn’t refer to our physical bodies but to the desires that pull us away from God’s Holy Spirit. These desires can manifest as hate, impatience, bitterness, selfishness, rudeness, chaos, and self-indulgence—none of which align with God.

However, when we commit our lives to Jesus, He grants us His Holy Spirit. The power of the Holy Spirit helps us “starve” those fleshly desires and put them to rest. By ceasing to feed these harmful impulses, we create space for the Holy Spirit to produce fruit within us that leads to positive life changes.

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
—Galatians 5:22-23 NIV

Left to our own devices, we might seek revenge when wronged, but the Spirit encourages us to extend kindness. In our weakness, we may yield to temptations that separate us from God, yet the Spirit calls us to practice self-control.

Are you experiencing love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control? If not, perhaps we need to reflect on what we are nurturing. Because what we feed grows!

SK buddy

Last weekend I had the privilege of spending some time with my nieces, Maggie and Roslyn.  What a joy to hang out with a four year old and 6 week old!  It was bliss. And if you have you ever had the opportunity to be with a little person, it does put everything in perspective.

Maggie (4 yrs old) and I were laying on my bed just chatting about Junior Kindergarten and her new friends.  Life is simple at four.  Recess is a highlight because that is when she gets to see her friend who is in a different class.  But, she informs me she has met new friends and she even has a Senior Kindergarten buddy, who has been assigned with the task to help Maggie navigate the big world of JK.

What a wonderful idea to have a buddy who is just a little further ahead who can help you avoid the pitfalls that inevitably come when entering the unknown.

Maggie has now become good friends with her SK buddy, who is “kind and very helpful”.

Don’t we all need an SK buddy??  Someone who has been through what we are about to go through?  Someone “kind and very helpful”?

For those of us in the church we can often find an SK buddy in a Life Group, someone who is like minded and who may be going through or has gone through something that we are experiencing.

And of course, as we discovering each Sunday in our series entitled Been there, done that….Jesus has also gone through much of what we are experiencing as well.  Heartache, temptation, betrayal (the list goes on), Jesus know, and Jesus understands.

Maggie assures me that having a SK buddy is “really good”.

Find yourself a SK buddy!

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“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” John 15:12-15 ESV

It is well...with my soul

At the end of the service a few weeks ago, we together sang a song called, It is Well.

We sang the line, “It is well with my soul” over and over again, and as I was singing, I was thinking that this is probably on one of the most difficult things we are called to do as followers of Jesus.

Sure, it is well with my soul if life is going well. If I am at the top of my game, yes!, it is well with my soul.  But what if life is not going well, what if I am not doing well… is it still well with my soul?

In his book Seasons of Sorrow: The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God, Tim Challis shares his personal pain over the death of his son and frames it in sound theology.

I was moved by his Manifesto, the profession of his faith that as a father he will accept his son's death as God's will and that God's providence will and does give them the strength to live into the future.

It is so powerful, and so challenging I have adapted it as my own.

I have included Challis’ manifest here, however you will notice that I have taken out the personal bits about his son. Perhaps it can give you ideas or words, as it has me, that you can adopt as your own as we attempt to be faithful in even the most difficult of circumstances.  And may it be well with your soul.

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By faith I will accept ________ as God’s will, and by faith accept that God’s will is always good. By faith I will be at peace with Providence, and by faith at peace with its every decree.

By faith I will praise God in the taking as I did in the giving, and by faith receive from his hand this sorrow as I have so many joys. I will grieve but not grumble, mourn but not murmur, weep but not whine.

Though I will be scarred by______, I will not be defined by it. Though it will always be part of my story, it will never become my identity.

I will be forever thankful that God gave me ____and never resentful that I lost them.

My joy in having loved _____ will be greater than my grief in having lost them.

I will not waver in my faith, nor abandon my hope, nor revoke my love. I will not charge God with wrong.

I will receive this trial as a responsibility to steward, not a punishment to endure. I will look for God’s smile in it rather than his frown, listen for his words of blessing rather than his voice of rebuke.

This sorrow will not make me angry or bitter, nor cause me to act out in rebellion or indignation.

Rather, it will make me kinder and gentler, more patient and loving, more compassionate and sympathetic.

It will loose my heart from the things of earth and fix it on the things of heaven. The loss of ____will make me more like God’s Son, my sorrow like the Man of Sorrows.

I will continue to love God and trust him, continue to pursue God and enjoy him, continue to worship God and boast of his many mercies.

I will look with longing to the day of Christ’s return and with expectation to the day of resurrection. I will remain steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.

I will forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead, always pressing on toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. I will lay aside every weight and sin that clings so closely and run with endurance the race that is set before me, looking always to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of my faith. I will remain faithful until I have fought the good fight and finished the race and kept the faith. I will die as I have lived—a follower of Jesus Christ. Then, by grace, I will go to be with Jesus, and go to be with ____.

This is my manifesto. 1

1. Adapted from Tim Challis.  Season’s of Sorrow: The Pain of loss and Comfort of God. Zondervan, September 2022.