As I gazed upon my garden one day last summer, I was dismayed to see that approximately half of the plants I had the previous year had disappeared. Since it is a perennial garden, the plants should not only return each year, but should be doubling in size and volume annually. Instead, each year I seem to end up replacing numerous plants because they are being eaten by pests (primarily moles and chipmunks) that have built their homes in tunnels under my gardens, where they survive the winter by eating what I have worked hard to grow. Apparently my garden is the best pest diner in town.
As I lamented my losses, the Lord quickly began to speak to me about the Garden of my life - my spiritual garden - my inner life where He should be able to come and find much fruit both to satisfy Himself and to bring His friends to eat and drink. The Scriptures speak to us of tending our own vineyards. “I am dark, but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon. Do not look upon me, because I am dark, because the sun has tanned me. My mother's sons were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept.” - Song of Songs 1:5. We can help others, but not at the expense of neglecting our own garden.
We also read in Solomon’s beautiful love song that our inner spiritual life is to be a locked place, a place for intimacy with God, “A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed” - Song of Songs 4:12.
It also speaks to us about embracing difficult times so that the fragrance of our garden will draw the Lord to the pleasant fruit within us, creating intimacy between the Lord and us. “Awake, O north wind, and come, O south! Blow upon my garden, that its spices may flow out. Let my Beloved come to His garden and eat its pleasant fruits.” - Song of Songs 4:16. If our lives are to bear the fragrance of Christ, then we must be willing to not only submit to the cold, north winds and the hot south winds that blow on our lives. We must, like the Shulamite Bride, actually call for them to blow on us, all for the purpose of summoning deeper fellowship with God and the fulfillment of His purposes, “Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life.”- 2 Cor 2:14-16.
My spiritual garden is also to be a place where the Lord can come and eat and drink and then bring His friends to eat and drink their fill. “I have come to my garden, My sister, My spouse, I have eaten My honeycomb with My honey; I have drunk My wine with My milk. Eat, O friends! Drink, yes drink deeply, O beloved ones.”- Song of Songs 5:1. The Lord showed me that, like my physical flower garden, my spiritual garden had pests that were eating away at the fruit in my inner life, leaving me with less for Him to enjoy and less to offer His friends (the Saints).
The terrible irony of the pests that were destroying my garden was that I had always thought they were so cute. I went out of my way to feed the chipmunks, and even attempted to lure them closer to me with seeds or peanuts in order to befriend them. Likewise, there were pests in my own life that I thought were harmless, even cute. I had been “feeding” them, and they had made a home for themselves - had grown and reproduced - and were causing great harm in my life.
I’ve learned, after many years of gardening, that constant care is needed in order to maintain a fruitful and productive garden. Feeding and watering are vital, but so are weeding, mulching, pruning, and deadheading. Likewise, this life in Christ needs constant care of the same nature, i.e., watering, feeding, weeding, pruning, etc. In either garden, the weeds will eventually take over if not tended to; the fruit will cease to grow if not fed; the life will wilt away if not watered. The spiritual applications of gardening go on and on, but the first order of business when reclaiming losses is pest control. Why bother feeding your garden of you’re just going to let your garden’s enemy eat the fruit of your labors?
Here are a few gardening tips, which have served me well in both my natural and spiritual gardens. You will find the spiritual applications in parentheses:
1. PEST CONTROL – Though I have tried every commercial remedy the world has to offer (that one speaks for itself), I still have pests eating my plants. My daughter, Jocelyn, told me that she was able to rid her garden of pests by taking down the bird feeders, as the pests were attracted by the dropped bird seeds. Now, this is a problem for me, because I love to watch the birds and have numerous feeders in my gardens. This past-time seems harmless and gives me a great deal of pleasure, though I know it has little or no lasting, spiritual value. So, what do I sacrifice? Should I give up bird watching to have life growing in my garden, or give up the fruit of the garden to watch the birds? (What are you watching for pleasure that may be robbing your spiritual garden of its fruit?).
2. FEEDING – Soil quickly becomes depleted of nutrients, and must be replenished on a regular basis. Shock foods, such as Miracle Grow (Retreats and Conferences) will produce immediate results, but usually not lasting ones. The best fertilizers are the ones that are made from dead things (Dying to self daily).
3. WATERING – The owner of our local nursery told me years ago that perennial gardens must be watered every day (daily time in the Word and prayer). Timing is everything, as watering at night causes mildewing on plants, and watering at mid-day causes scorching. The optimal time for watering gardens is early in the morning (In the Psalms alone, there are 18 references to David meeting with God in the morning).
4. WEEDING – Never, never, never try to weed a garden when the soil is dry and hard, or the weeds will break off at the surface and come back twice as big. Always saturate your garden with water before weeding and the pesky things will slide right out of the soil. (Never try to weed another person’s spiritual garden. Your job is to saturate their soil with the love of God and let Him do the weeding. Saturating does mean speaking the truth in love, but you can’t rid their lives of sin).
5. MULCHING – Protecting your garden with a covering of properly treated bark mulch (Wow- more dead stuff – imagine that!) will keep moisture in and will greatly reduce the weeds in your garden. (Mulching is one of our greatest privileges in the lives of others, for, “love covers a multitude of sins”. Are we willing to die to be mulch?).
Seven years ago, desperate circumstances drove our family to desperate spiritual measures. We became ruthless with the “pests” in our spiritual gardens, and our ruthlessness led to tremendous spiritual growth. It has been my experience that we tend to slack off when the weeds are not so apparent; we ease up when the pests appear to be under control. I don’t like that about myself, but it’s true nonetheless. As for me and my house, I think it’s time to get ruthless once again.
What about you, Beloved? How does your garden grow? It is time to re-examine our spiritual gardens to see what “pests” have crept back in, or which ones have been there all along - under the surface, undetected by the human eye. Search us and try us, Oh Lord; help us recover what we have lost to the cankerworms – EVERY LOSS!
“THE SECRET GARDEN”
From: “Hinds Feet on High Places”
“Many a quiet, ordinary and hidden life, unknown to the world, is a veritable garden in which the Master’s best and finest fruit has come to such perfection that the garden is a place of delight where the Master Himself walks and rejoices.
Many of the Master’s servants have indeed won great, visible victories and are rightly loved and reverenced by other men, but always, their greatest victories are the ones won in the Secret Garden.”
“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows seed; the mountains shall drip with sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. I will bring back the captives of My people Israel; they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them. They shall plant vineyards and drink wine from them, they shall make gardens and eat fruit from them.” Amos 9:13-14
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