How Is Your Garden Growing?

Unlike other parts of the country, the last couple of weeks around here have been rather dry.  This week that has all changed, and we are getting daily showers of rain.  Sometimes we get more than a shower, and get a downpour instead.  As a result, grass and flowers and other growing things are refreshed, growing, and bearing fruit.

The Bible, in the book of Isaiah, compares our lives to a garden.

"And the LORD will continually guide you, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and give strength to your bones; and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of waters whose waters do not fail."  (Isaiah 58:11 NASB, emphasis mine)

Just like your flower garden or your vegetable garden, the garden of your life needs to be nurtured and nourished.  It needs food and water in order to grow and bear fruit. 

Where do our life gardens get this kind of nourishment?  In his devotional book Into His Presence, Dr. Charles Stanley gives us some answers to this question.

• We need the conviction and instruction of the Holy Spirit to guide us into the ways of God.
• We need an unceasing concentration on the Word of God.
• We must be committed to a life of prayer
• We must have the courage to act on what God, through His Spirit, is teaching us.  Truth must never be left on the table.

By cultivating these disciplines, our lives become a reflection of Christ in us.  In this way, we are able to "let [our lives] so shine before men that they may see our good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven."  (Matthew 5:16)

By cultivating these disciplines into our lives, our spiritual gardens will be nourished and fruitful.

How is your garden growing?

"You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain."  (John 15:16 NASB)


For additional study on this topic, How Does Your Garden Grow? by Susan Feaster is available at amazon.com in paperback and for Kindle.