He who tills his land will have plenty of food,

But he who follows empty pursuits will have poverty in plenty.

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.

Colossians 3:5-8

Do you ever have your day planned just perfectly, I mean down to the very last minute, and you are feeling good because you can anticipate checking everything off your “to do” list? Do you ever have days that get completely turned upside down, and that strategically well-planned day turns into something completely off the grid and looks nothing like you spent so much time planning it to be?

Me too, and Saturday was that kind of day for me.

Greg is out of town, so that meant I had the opportunity to be selfish and plan my waking hours to fit my own “to do’’ list. I got to be on “my own agenda” for the day and I was going to pack my day with everything I wanted to accomplish.

I spent about 45 minutes Friday evening planning every last detail of all the things I was going to strategically execute on Saturday. I went to bed, set my alarm to be sure to wake up in the time that aligned with my schedule of tasks, closed my eyes, and felt quite proud of how I was going to get all the things I deemed important, done tomorrow.

(Hint…there’s a key word, a pronoun to be exact, that is used heavily in everything I just spoke of above, and usually when we think in that manner, God is going to derail us, especially when we try to put Him in a box.)

I woke up early Saturday morning as scheduled and planned to begin my writing for today’s Jump Start and blog, but, as I was “talking” to God, asking Him/(really)telling Him my schedule, and how He needed to inspire me right now so I could get started writing, my mind was blank. Not a thing was coming to me, even as I scrolled through a list of topics I had jotted down throughout the week on my phone. I read all the phrases from songs that inspired me, things I read in scripture, podcasts I had listened to, but I had nothing!

“If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.” ~ Woody Allen

Friends, I do believe, in this moment, God was laughing, and as I explain to you how my day went as opposed to how it was planned, you too will believe as I, that God was laughing.

So, instead of making my coffee and heading back to my desk as usual, I felt compelled to just sit at the kitchen table. I sensed I was being lead down a completely different path, surmising quickly, that the strategically crafted plans I had made for my day were about to be completely unraveled.

Remember what I said earlier? There’s a key word, a pronoun to be exact, that is used heavily in everything I just spoke of above, and usually when we think in that manner, God is going to derail us, especially when we try to put Him in a box. Well, that key word/pronoun was “I.”

How dare I put God in a box and decide when He is or isn’t going to “inspire” me?

How dare I fill my day and make plans in which I was going to seek and need His guidance, and not even consider Him in the planning of my entire day?

How dare I tell Him to get on my schedule?

But God, in His loving, patient, and faithful fashion let me know that He was most definitely not on my schedule. He had another way of inspiring me this particular day and it looked nothing like I envisioned. He was derailing all my plans for the day.

I was not going to be inspired early in order to fit my schedule. No, I was on His schedule, and He had other plans for inspiring me, and they were not going to be as fun or relaxing, but as I realized later, they were much more fruitful and rewarding, and I received His message for me to share this week quite clearly.

“Whatever God is urging you to clear away cannot begin to be compared to what He ultimately wants to bring you.”~ Beth Moore

So, here were my plans:

Get up early

Write Blog & Jump Start

Go to the Gym-Cardio & weights

Come home sit outside in the sun for a while and just relax

Take a nice long shower

Go through my closets, purge & organize things

Get a manicure & pedicure

Grab an early dinner somewhere

Come home have a glass of wine & watch a movie

Here were God’s plans:

You are going to be inspired through a day of yardwork. Your inspiration is going to come from getting down in the dirt, tilling the soil of your garden and flower beds, and digging up weeds.

Wait! What??

See what I mean? God was clearly laughing at my plans! He knew how I was really going to spend my day and it was not getting my nails done, although they desperately need it now!

BUT, in spite of my hesitation and bad attitude, I genuinely felt God leading me to get outside and clear our garden beds that we haven’t touched yet this year, to pull the weeds, to turn the soil, and to work the soil in preparation for our planting.

So, I put on my work clothes and headed outside with my shovels, hand trowels, pruning shears, and other gardening tools.

As I pulled weed after weed, God spoke to my heart about the connection between weeds in our gardens, and the weeds in our lives, and as I worked in the soil He spoke to my heart about the importance of tilling the soil for our garden as well as the soil of our hearts.

Our hearts are much like the soil in a garden. As the garden’s soil needs to be turned, and tilled, and nurtured so a healthy crop can grow, the same is true with the soil of our hearts. In order to grow the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control we need to pay attention to and nurture the soil of our hearts.

When I was weeding, there was one particular weed that ran so deep I had to use a full-sized shovel and all my body weight to unearth its root ball and everything branching off of it. As I struggled to remove it and I had to dig deeper and deeper, I started to realize how much this particular root represents just how deep our sin can be rooted.

It made me realize just how far that sin can spread its roots and take hold of our lives. Sins like using God’s name in vein, lying, gossip, overeating, overspending, addiction, sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, idolatry, and so on, start out harmless, and small so we easily excuse them or ignore them.

photo by Arun Geetha Viswanathan @arungeethaviswanathan

However, in time, weeds multiply and they grow. Before you know it your entire flower bed or garden is being choked out by the weeds. The exact same thing happens in our lives as well. Like a weed in our garden, so is a weed in the soil of our hearts. It can grow deeper and deeper, stronger, and stronger with roots that can, in time, overtake our hearts and minds.

This is why it’s important to know God’s word. To spend time in His word. Just as I used tools for weeding, the Bible is a useful tool for the weeding of our hearts and minds, and correction from God resembles a skilled gardener.

Just as a gardener would pull the weeds out of their garden to make room for the seeds they planted to receive the nourishment necessary to flourish into the plant they are supposed to be, God also wants to pull the weeds from our lives because He desires for us to walk in the abundant life He’s prepared for us.

“..because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.” Proverbs 3:12

Opening our hearts to scripture is incredibly powerful when it comes to convicting us to pull out those weeds that are choking out what God has for us, and it will create space in the soil of our hearts for God to then nourish the seeds He has planted.

Obviously, my Saturday plans went nothing as I had planned, but allowing God to direct my day made all the difference in how my day turned out. I had some weeding that needed to happen, and as I spent several hours that day in the quiet, no music, no phone, no social media, and just listening, the soil of my heart was nourished just through being with Him, all day, in His creation.

Something to consider: Is there an area in your life you need to weed? What is the condition of your heart soil? Are you open and willing to let the Ultimate gardener, the one who created all things, till the soil of your heart, and weed what’s choking out the good things He has for you?

tilling and weeding