The Root, the Whole Root, and Nothing but the Root.
I am up at 4 am every morning. I do my morning exercises and I have my personal prayer and worship time. Then it is time to go to the garden at 6 am. Beating the heat is the most important thing this summer. Working in the garden that early in the morning gives you time to think, talk to the Lord, and pray.
Every morning there is something to do in the garden, but the one constant thing is pulling weeds. There are always weeds to pull. Weed pulling is an ongoing affair. Tuesday morning while weeding the collard greens I noticed that I could not remove some of the weeds because they were all wrapped around the collard greens. If I tried to remove the weeds it would pull the greens with it.
Now you know there is truly a religious application to this. In Matthew 13:30 it states; Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.
The picture Jesus is painting here is, in the world, we have wheat and weeds, people who are good, and who walk in the Lord represents the wheat. He goes on to say that the weeds are the sons of the evil one, that is, everything that causes sin and all who do evil. The weeds are everything in this world that fights against the well-being of that wheat, including the weeds because they have rejected God’s free forgiveness. Jesus’ point is that the “bad” plants didn’t come from him, so who sows these seeds? It is the devil.
Satan has been God’s rival nearly from the beginning. Created perfectly like the other angels, Satan quickly found himself unsatisfied with his position and gathered up a crew of angels and rebelled. Of course, rebellion against the almighty God is not a particularly wise thing to do and Satan lost not only the battle but his position as well.
But I as I thought about the weeds and the vegetables I saw a different picture. I saw Gods people and their everyday struggles against sin. The weeds represent sin in our lives, and the vegetables are us, the people. We pray pleading to God to pull the weeds from us. And when God comes to pull those weeds from around us we give him the top part of the weed. And within a few days or weeks that sin we thought we had the victory over is back and the weeds are taller than they were before. We ask ourselves why, the answer is simple we did not give the root with it. Which means we have to get to the root of the problem.
No one decides to commit a major sin overnight. It starts small and when you find that you don’t get caught over the multiple times of committing this sin, your confidence grows and you let the clutches of sin grip you entirely.
So it is with all kinds of problems or blessings in our life. Everything begins with a seed. In Genesis 8: 22; we see the Word of God mentions that “as long as the earth remains there will be seed time and harvest.”
If your problem has roots then it is evident that it began with a seed. While you are waiting to deal with the seed, maybe in the meanwhile you are watering it with your continual thoughts, words and actions. Begin by identifying the seed. What is the source of your problem? And then destroy the seed that the enemy has sown.
The problem is that every time an issue takes root, it looks so small that you want to take the small risk believing that the consequence will be little. But what you then ignore is that seed which grows and so does the consequences.
Interestingly, the Bible says, “Do not let your anger set in, before night” Why? Because, it is in that night that the seed germinates and in that time of silence, is when the roots go deeper. And the more the roots grow deeper, the harder it becomes to deal with the issue.
1 Timothy 4:2; talks about, “having conscience seared with a hot iron.” When your skin is burnt with hot iron, the cells die and cease to have any sort of feelings in that area. Sin takes over and you no longer feel guilty about it.
Sin has power to take you captive unless you decide to take it captive. You have access to the power of God just ask Him to take it. You make it active when you with God identify the stronghold and deal with it. Show no mercy to sin. Block the source of sin every day.
Rise up every morning and ask God to cleanse you and surrender every area of your life into the hands of God. If you are ready to deal with the source and begin to flee from it then the power of God will be your strength.
From issues of any kind, find out what the source of your issue is. If it is words then it must be the source of your thoughts… and if it is thoughts, what has caused you to think them? Is it a person, a blog or a movie? Find the root and dig it out. Give no foothold to the enemy.
After you have dealt with seeds the enemy has sown, now enrich your heart and mind with the seeds of God. Refresh yourself in the company of godly, humble and loving God seekers. Enjoy and consume the Word of God. Soak in that Word of God in prayer. Let the seeds of God take root and sprout.
The next time you pray and ask God to take the weeds of sin away, give Him the whole root!
