Week Four Blog for the Rooted Bible Study. Learn more about Rooted here.
“And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
Galatians 6:9
Satan doesn’t want us to work in our garden. He doesn’t want us to make the choice to choose Jesus amidst distractions, hurts, and sorrows. He tries to derail us in every way he can. However, like we learned last week, if our root system is Jesus Christ, we will flourish and grow. We can’t sit back and do nothing though. We have work to do to take care of our Garden. If you are like me, the word work makes you start to panic a little. I always wonder well where is the line? I know I am supposed to work for Jesus, but I also know I am supposed to let Him work in me. When I don’t know where the line is, I tend to go overboard and try to work hard in my own strength.
Last week we discussed a bit about intentionality. Intentionality is the beautiful middle ground between:
- working out of our strength
- doing nothing and becoming apathetic.
In general, if we don’t intentionally do things, naturally we glide through life. It doesn’t take work to fill up our day and wonder why we couldn’t find genuine time for the Word. It doesn’t take work to binge on Netflix, eat a whole pint of ice cream, let our marriages turn into a relationship that is more business than personal, or turn a blind eye on kids misbehaving because it feels like to much work to correct…again. No, these things happen naturally. It takes intentional work to:
- carve out time to sit down in the Word and not worry about life
- get off the couch and pick up a non fiction book to learn from
- hit the road on a run instead of eat all the ice cream
- plan date nights, bring fun back into a marriage, and keep the flame alive despite the demands of life
- ask God for strength to correct the children…again…then focus on living and modeling to them from our own life what we view as important.
All these things and more take intentional work. Even after we find the healthy line, work is still work– It can get tiring after awhile. It doesn’t matter if our work it intentional or striving, we will feel tired from either. However, the difference is that Jesus gives us strength to keep pressing forward in intentional work. We will have an endurance with intentional work. The striving work will always leave us burned out. Most likely, it will always leave us sitting in a pile of guilt as well. In the end, the intentional work is our work for Jesus Christ and it is is the most rewarding work we can ever do.
Now that we have a better understanding of the work we are call too let’s look at some weeds that can crop up in our life. Weeds are natural, they grow even in the worst of environments. They don’t need any care and they thrive whether they are cared for or not. However a beautiful garden takes WORK. The weeds need weeded, plants need watered and fertilized, and new seeds need planted. On top of that if we are new to garden tending, we probably need someone to teach us how to do it. The point being, gardening takes alot of work if we want a nice one. Weeds can present themselves in a number of ways. They are distractions that keep us from tending to the good plants:
- Negative thinking
- Worry
- Apathy
- Busy Schedules
- Technology
- To-Do Lists
Some of these are bad and completely need uprooted. However, things like technology, busy schedules, and to-do lists are not things that need to be completely uprooted. Instead they need to be monitored because they can become distractions if we let them. We need to continue to focus our eyes on the work God has laid out for us and by Jesus strength say NO to distractions.
As well as intentionally working at uprooting weeds, we need to sow seeds of righteousness (Hosea 10:12). Whatever we want to reap, we must sow those seeds. We can’t expect to reap peace when we are sowing seeds of worry. We can’t expect to reap contentment if we are sowing seeds of jealousy. What we sow we will reap. What are we allowing to grow beside our plant rooted in Jesus? As we learned earlier the natural man is geared toward rebellion. When we feel our natural tendencies creep up on us, we have a choice. We can choose to let the natural state have free reign, or we can choose to step back and ask Jesus for help to do the things we don’t know how to do. When we choose to ask Jesus to teach us, He will. He will teach us how to sow the seeds we are called to sow in the way He wants us to. When choose Him as our guide instead of our natural bent, we can step into the Spirit instead of sowing seeds of selfishness.
Will we always do this perfectly? No. Will we always instantly choose Jesus? No. We are on a journey. It is a learning journey that may not look the way we think it should, but it will be worth it. If we keep working for God we will reap rewards because we won’t faint. We are sustained by Jesus Christ. He will work in our life in incredible ways if we yield to Him.
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