From the title you can guess that this article will liken caring for our lives of faith to caring for a plant. But honestly–physical gardening? Hate it. No joke, it’s #2 on my list of things I hate to do. For those of you who, like me, can think of ten more exciting things to do than to watch grass grow, you might be flooded with images of pulling up never-ending weeds in the hot summer sun. Or lugging around a heavy bottle to give the plants water. Mom nagging you to cover them with a bucket at night.
Taking care of plants is hard work; they don’t cry out for water or complain about the heat like a child would. So if you forget about them for a week, you might come back to find them shriveled and hopeless. The “everything I touch dies” people may hope to hear that rearing a spiritual plant is much easier than the physical one. But it’s not as easy as we might hope.
How Are Our Lives of Faith Like Growing a Plant?
From the time we decide to follow God, we’ve begun the process of growing into a mature believer. At the beginning, we lack knowledge, faith, and discipline. But as we continue in our lives of faith, as these things grow, we’ll bear the fruit of change and a more godly life.
Just like how a physical plant begins with a seed hidden in the soil and eventually grows to become a strong tree with fruit in its branches. Our lives of faith are also like that. Let’s see further where this logic can be found in the Bible. And let’s ask ourselves that question: How is my spirit doing?
The Seed
It all starts from the seed. A small shell packed with life inside. According to the Bible, the seed refers to the word of God (Luke 8:11). If you read in Psalms 1, you see that a person who meditates on the word day and night is called a blessed tree that stands beside streams of water and bears much fruit.
Therefore, our spirits can become like this tree as a result of the seed. So when people joke that you’ll start growing a watermelon in your stomach if you eat a watermelon seed, I guess they weren’t too far off.
The metaphor doesn’t stop here. If seed is the word of God, and we are the plant, then what is the sunlight and water that the plant needs? And what does it mean to prune a spiritual tree?
The Nutrients
Sun and water are the resources that give life. So spiritually speaking, who or what gives us life? Who cares about our spirits, working to nourish them into a healthy state? Our minds should of course jump to God. According to Psalms 84:11, God is our sun. And the light He shines? His Word that gives us life.
Water is also likened to God’s Word. Think of rain, falling from the heavens and bringing life to all kinds of living things. In Deuteronomy 32:2, rain that falls upon plants is the teaching, or word, of God. So we see that to grow in our lives of faith, it’s absolutely necessary to have the word of God in us. The seed-like word that makes us God’s child. Sunlight to light up the dark corners and bring understanding. Water-like word to cleanse and refresh.
The Care
What about pruning? Have you ever seen someone prune a bush or tree? You need a significant amount of force to cut off a branch, sometimes requiring electronic tools or something very, very sharp. I’m sure none of us are excited by the thought of being cut. It is, after all, painful. But it’s necessary.
An apple tree, left to itself, becomes overgrown and the fruit it produces is no good. For us too, we must be pruned to be a fruitful tree. Even when it hurts, or we don’t know how we’ll ever go on without that branch.
He cuts off every branch that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.
John 15:2
If you look up any article or video about how to produce a fruitful, luscious plant, you’ll learn that you actually have to prune it back in order to help it grow more. For us, what are the kinds of things we must cut off in order to keep growing healthily?
Think about what stops you from receiving the word of God. It’s different for all of us. Maybe we are holding onto a grudge, we struggle to forgive. Maybe we are too lazy to go deep into His word. Or perhaps every time we open the Bible, we are overwhelmed by how much we don’t understand. It’s these things that God, out of love, wishes to remove from us.
Tears for a Plant
I once bought a sunflower-growing kit for a kindergarten science class I was teaching. It included a little white plastic pot, some soil, and tiny seeds. I brought it to my classroom and we watered it every day, waiting patiently for that first bit of green to poke out.
Their eyes were bright when the first seed sprouted but mine were brighter. Me, the person who hates gardening with a passion–really out of character, right? But maybe because I had learned the importance of spiritual plants, I grew to love this sunflower.
After the semester ended, I took it back home with me and put it out on the fire escape, since my room had little natural sunlight. I checked my baby every day under the amused stares of the old men who stood out there to smoke. And then?
Life happened and I got busy. Autumn moved in and the next time I went out there and it was a dried, brown, sad thing. Seeing it there, neglected and in disarray, made me tear up.
How Is Your Spirit Doing?
I wonder, if we had a visual representation of our plant, our spirit, what would we see? Would we see a healthy plant, overflowing with good fruit, the best home on the market for birds? Or would we see something small, struggling, thirsting for water? Choked by weeds? Have we hidden it in a corner and forgotten about it, or have we cultivated nutrient-filled soil to lay our roots? Would we cry if we saw a visual representation of ourselves?
Of course, it doesn’t work this way, so this begs the question: have we been sensitive enough to the needs of our spirits? If it’s crying out, but we don’t have the ears to hear it–what then? Do you know the status of your own spirit?
So I challenge you: Try to listen to your spirit more. Ask yourself honestly, what does my spirit look like? And what can I do to help it flourish? God, our Gardener, has everything we need to grow. We just need to ask Him for help.
Written by Samantha
If you would like to read more about how to live a healthy life of faith, then check out these posts!
Spirit or Flesh – Which is More Important?
Good and Bad Fruit in the Bible: Which One Are You Eating?
Does Questioning My Faith Make Me a Bad Christian?
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