THIS SUMMER HAS BEEN AN INTENSE TIME OF WORK, PLAY, AND STUDY.

And because I’ve been off, I thought I would share what’s been on my mind with you.

Thanks to the church board, I started it off with a five-week sabbatical where I spent two weeks in Sanibel with my family fishing, boating, sunbathing, and eating! I’ll admit it. We love seafood, and while on the island, we enjoyed some of the best.  Blackened group sandwiches are one of my favorites!

After we came home, I spent the remainder of my time re-landscaping my backyard. Part of the work included building a stone retaining wall that stretched around two sides of our pool. I laid over a hundred pavers, 80 sacks of paver base, and close to 300 stones. It was a lot of work, but I felt I made real progress. 

I must confess I learned a lot about life from digging into my backyard. So I thought to share some of the insights from my time “toiling under the sun.”

One of those garden lessons was the work it takes to pull out troublesome roots growing for years.

Removing old roots is part of the development process. They tend to choke the ground, making it more difficult for new plants to grow and prosper.

As I toiled to remove these old roots, some four inches thick and ten or eleven feet long, I realized that the issues we face in life are similar to these roots. Many of us have deeply rooted hurts, habits, or hang-ups that have disrupted our lives for years and do not even realize it. If the soil of our lives is left untouched, it can go on for decades. 

In truth, all of us have these unwanted roots growing, sometimes unnoticed.

We can not live in this world and not be affected by its negative patterns in some way. That’s life this side of Christ’s return.

We also have deeply held beliefs, preferences, and opinions that define what we think, feel, and understand. Some of those we formed through lifelong experiences, while others we inherited from family and society. Exposing these roots and even removing some of them is challenging and sometimes painful, just like the pain I endured pulling up the roots in my garden.

But for progress to be made in growing and maintaining a healthy life, like a garden, we must locate and remove these pesky roots. Why? Because these roots choke the soil and rob the ground of precious nutrients intended for new growth.

The same is true in the Christian life. Sin sows deeps roots into our lives, and removing them is sometimes very hard.  Apart from the Holy Spirit, we can never do it on our own.  In fact, that is part of the job description of the Holy Spirit.  

Let’s take a look at a few passages of scripture to see this principle.

Old Testament prophets sometimes used garden imagery to describe God’s gardening work in the life of his people. Consider these illustrations in Isaiah.

As the earth produces growth

And as a garden enables what is sown to spring up

the Lord will cause righteousness 

And praise to spring up before all the nations. Is. 61:11

The Lord will always lead you, 

satisfy you in a parched land, 

and strengthen your bones. 

You will be like a watered garden 

and like a spring whose water never runs dry. Isaiah 58:11

According to Isaiah, the Lord God is the cause of all growth in our lives, the proverbial Gardener of our souls.

He nurtures and takes care of us by exposing, pulling, and removing those deep veins that do not belong in our lives. Thus, He frees the soil from tangled webs of patterns that choke our growth and keep them stagnant.

Interestingly God is not only the cause of our growth but also the sustainer.

He perpetually nourishes our souls through His word and Spirit, filling us with His grace.

In Florida, it’s hard for us to imagine arid, dry land because we’re surrounded by water. But in ancient Israel, water was a precious resource. To have a well-watered garden required intense labor. A watered garden was a sweet image of growth, abundance, and prosperity. 

Through the cross of Christ, that labor has been done. The active work of the Holy Spirit lavishes us with grace and continues to work out his plan in our lives. He cultivates the garden of our soul through convicting, teaching, praying, and encouraging us.

Likewise, Jesus explains the work of God’s Spirit in our lives as pruning. In John 15:1-2, Jesus describes the Father as the Gardener (vinedresser), cutting away the barren branches to allow the fruit of God’s grace in our lives.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. Every branch in me that does not produce fruit he removes, and he prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit. John 15:1–2 (CSB)

Like my backyard, the Lord has intentions for all of us. He is working out a spiritual garden in and for our lives.

What is true for our lives individually, I believe, is also true for us corporately.

Indeed, God’s pruning shears have been at work in Redeemer — exposing, cutting, and removing unwanted roots that have choked the soil of our ministry. In many ways, the global pandemic did this very thing — cutting away those things that had grown up in the church that were choking the work.

At the same time, He’s planted budding new ministries that have been cultivated in the lives of His people.

As we move forward in the coming year, let us be open to the work of God in the garden of our souls seeking to enjoy and reap the fruit of His harvest.