Are You Watering Your Weeds?

 
            I recently read about a grandmother watering her freshly planted vegetable garden while her young granddaughter watered the flowers. Suddenly, her grandchild said to her, “Don’t water the weeds, Nana.”

            That got me thinking about weeds. Actually, I’ve been thinking about weeds quite a bit lately because my front lawn is full of crab grass and bit by bit, I’ve been pulling it out. Some of those roots go deep and I have to pull them out with two hands. It’s a lot of work.

            In my research, I learned the following about weeds.

1. A weed is a plant that grows unwantedly, and is very often prolific and persistent
2. Weeds compete with crop plants for space, nutrients, and light and can reduce the harvest by as much as 40 to 60 percent
3. Although weeds resemble plants, they do not bear fruit
4. Some weeds can be parasites, feeding either partially or totally, on plants
5. Weeds increase labour costs and interfere with agricultural operations

          In short, weeds are nasty things. The weeds in my lawn also got me thinking about the weeds
which can invade our lives, like selfishness, jealousy, lying, greed, envy, anger, and pride. In this blog post, there are three types of weeds I want to talk about in more depth.
  
        The first is the weed of spiritual laziness. Proverbs 24:30-31 NKJV says, “I went by the field of the lazy man, and by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding; And there it was, all overgrown with thorns; its surface was covered with nettles, its stone wall was broken down.”

         One of Satan’s strategies is to make us lazy about reading the Word of God. He’ll put thoughts in our minds, like, “you read your Bible yesterday, you don’t need to read it today.” That type of thinking wouldn’t work with physical food – and it doesn’t work with our spiritual food either. We need a daily intake of God’s Word. Without it, we starve spiritually.

        Unbelief is another deadly weed. When the seed of the Word of God is sown into our hearts (see Luke 8), the weed of unbelief can grow up and render it null and void. “But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless, and its curse is imminent. In the end it will be burned” (Hebrews 6:8 BSB).

      The above verse shows the condition of the soil is important. Is it producing weeds or good fruit? What is the quality of the soil in our hearts? Are we keeping it moist with prayer and the washing of the water of the Word? “...For he (Jesus) died for us, sacrificing himself to make us holy and pure, cleansing us through the showering of the pure water of the Word of God” (Ephesians 5:25-25 TPT). Is our heart soil holy, pure, and cleansed, ready to receive the Word, or full of weeds ready to choke it out?

    The third weed I want to mention is fear and worry. This weed grows quickly and devours everything in its way. It must be dealt with as soon as it appears and yanked out by its roots. How do we eradicate it? With the words of our mouth. “Your words are so powerful, that they will kill or give life, and the talkative person will reap the consequences” (Proverbs 18:21 TPT).

     When the weeds of fear and worry raise their ugly heads, the solution is not to speak the problem, which will cause them to proliferate, but to speak the Word of God. If the fear is about finances, God has promised to supply all our need (Philippians 4:19), if it is about our health, He heals all our diseases (Psalm 103:3), and when it is about our children, He has promised that all our offspring will be taught of the Lord (Isaiah 54:13).

    Because weeds choke out the harvest, we must be diligent in rooting them out of our lives. If we want a harvest of the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, the weeds must be gone. 

     So, like the granddaughter told her grandmother, “don’t water the weeds.” Instead, treat them like the enemy they are, and get rid of them.