My Garden

I love having my garden close to my house. I can take a quick look at it everyday I’m home and see how it is growing. It is amazing how fast the plants have grown and how healthy they look. Planting good seeds into good soil filled with good food and nutrients and giving both […]

I love having my garden close to my house. I can take a quick look at it everyday I’m home and see how it is growing. It is amazing how fast the plants have grown and how healthy they look. Planting good seeds into good soil filled with good food and nutrients and giving both plenty of water has made for a beautiful garden.

 

My garden reminds me, this is the way God would have me to be.

 

Am I the good soil that willingly receives the seed, the word of God? Do I let that seed penetrate my mind and my heart? Do I read it? Do I think of it continually? Do I allow it to guide me, teach me, correct me and shape me?

 

If I am striving to receive the word of God, how deep do I allow it to grow in my heart? Do I just keep it on the surface or do I allow it to go deep into my soul and control my being? Do I struggle to find and dig out the deeper meanings of the word and seek to find all of its treasures? Do I search it to find the heart and mind of God?

 

Am I the good soil that maintains focus on the word and will of God? Or, do I have so many other duties and desires that I find myself being pulled away from the things of God and having less and less time to be involved in them?

 

I anxiously wait the fruit of my garden. The blooms and tiny immature fruit are already visible. My Lord looks at me in the same way. Is he finding the fruit He longs for? Is He seeing the image and likeness of Himself? Is He seeing the life devoted to Him? Is He seeing one who has been with Jesus and strives to abide in Him?

 

Faith On a Shelf

I have this hat that my dad brought back to me from a business trip to Atlanta when I was 9 or 10 years old. You can see that I’ve worn it a lot. In fact, I wore it to just about everywhere I went during the summer when I was a kid. Church camps, grandparents’ house,...

“Jesus Loves Me”

After being led in this song by two of our young men Sunday night, I was reminded of a quotation from Karl Barth. On April 23, 1962, Karl Barth (the renown 20th Century Swiss-German, neo-orthodox theologian) spoke at Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of the University...

That’s Not a Candle

Several years ago, there was story shared about a woman from Connecticut whose power had gone out during a storm. She left her house to go to a local hardware store to purchase some flashlights, but the store was closed. She returned home and found what she thought...

The Post-Christian Problem

I attended the New Day Conference in Murfreesboro, Tennessee at the end of last week with a small group from Riverchase. It was a good conference and I left encouraged about the opportunities we have to fulfill the call of Christ to make disciples. On Friday evening,...

Josiah’s Reform

In the thirty-one years of his rule, King Josiah proved to be a faithful man of God and a great king of Judah. He served God from the beginning as a young king and grew into a greater understanding of God’s will and a determination to follow that will. He made a...

You Are What You Eat

You Are What You Eat You’ve heard the phrase, “You are what you eat.” Simply defined, it means that you should eat healthy if you want to be healthy. This phrase can trace its roots back to the early 1800’s. It came from the 1826 work The Physiology of Taste, in which...

It Is Well

Above the piano in our house is a large wood sign with the phrase, “it is well with my soul” on it. Kimberly and I purchased it during a season of our life together where we were not completely sure what the future had in store for our little family. Since then, the...

Do Over

  I messed up on recording my recent radio programs. The sound quality was so bad Mark could not run them on the air. So, I deleted them and recorded them again.   I sure wish I could do that in real life with all the other mistakes I make. Just delete them...

Don’t Believe Your Preacher

Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. (2 John 1:9 ESV) Here is the test. The “teaching of Christ” is, of course, the very word of God. So, if your...

Balloons Belong in Church

I would like to share with you an excerpt from a poem written by Ann Weems. The beginning of it describes a four-year-old child that brought with her a balloon to church one Sunday. When her Sunday school teacher saw the balloon, she mockingly said to the girl, “We...