Devotion
A Well Tilled Garden
By Cathy Irvin
Staff Writer
CBN.com
-- Ever pictured your home as a well tilled garden? If you think of a home as a garden it can be whatever you put into it, as well as what you take out of it.
Remember the story in Matthew 13 about the wheat and the tares, sometimes known as the sower and the seeds parable? Jesus is the sower and the field is the world. He sows good seeds but the enemy of our souls sows bad seeds.
We can relate to this story and bring it down to our daily life and say we are either sowing daily those good seeds like the wheat or bad seeds like those rotten old weeds in our homes.
However, unlike this story in the bible where both the wheat and tares remain until the harvest we have to get the weeds out now! They are choking the life out of families today.
What are these weeds or tares? They are seeds of contention and strife. We must begin now to till our garden in our home and sow seeds of love and kindness instead of all the hostility and unkind words. We have to get those bad seeds out and sow love, peace and joy in their place.
James 3:16 (Amp) says,
"For wherever there is jealousy (envy) and contention (rivalry and selfish ambition), there will also be confusion (unrest, disharmony, rebellion) and all sorts of evil and vile practices."
I heard an interview on the radio about disciplining unruly children and how oftentimes the cause of these children’s behavior problems are “learned behavior”. They went on to on to say that 99.9% comes from the home life.
We must be ambassadors of Christ’s love to our family members. We have to be the living epistles because the gospel must be seen by our actions and words. It is first in Jerusalem, (meaning our home) Judah, (our city and community) and then to the uttermost parts of the world.
How can we change and sow the good seeds? God tells us how in His word.
Romans 12:2 (Amp) says,
"Do not be conformed to this world (this age), [fashioned after and adapted to its external, superficial customs], but be transformed (changed) by the [entire] renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His sight for you]."
We can’t take strife and contention to the fields (God’s world) we must take seeds of peace and hope. If we can’t get it together with our own little garden in our home it may be time for us all to do some tilling right where we are planted.
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