Treat life like a "Rose Garden"

5/18/2019

     Earlier this month I heard a Sunday School Teacher make the statement that life is not a ‘Rose Garden.’ If you believe this, find a gardener and talk to them about how easy it is to have a good looking garden. Below are my thoughts on having a garden or Christian life.
     A Christian’s life is like a rose/flower garden. If you want a beautiful garden/life you have to work at it. Not just once or every few years or months or weeks or days. It is a task that takes work every day and I am not talking about two or three minutes. 
     There is feeding to be done (prayer and Bible reading) if you don’t feed a living plant or animal or person it/they will die. 
     There is watering to be done (praying till the tears flow). Water is the substance that keeps life; remember you can go without food longer than you can go without water. When you pray till the tears flow you reach the place where God is talking to you as you talk to Him. 
     There is pruning to be done (removing the dead and diseased/sinful areas of our life). You ask any gardener and they will tell you that you have to prune sometimes and sometimes you have to completely remove things be they friends, family members, favorite activities, your church, your study group, your family’s events or to put it very simply any and all things that come before God. And as the thought of pruning is painful so will this process be for each one of us. Sometimes the pruning process actually makes the plant look bad for a season then the beauty comes out. This means we have to stop doing things that God does not want us to do (talking, walking, how we dress even where we go, what we watch and what we listen to). Even to the point of removing things that are healthy (God knows what you need to be doing and where you need to be in your life at every point of your life. 
     There is training to be done (study the Word of God – don’t wait till you are in church to hear the teacher/preacher, do it at home, on break time, while waiting for your appointments). Then and only after the work is done can you look and see the results of your labor, but only for a moment or two then you see where more work needs to be done. Something that just doesn’t look or feel right could be God wanting you to make some changes in that area. 
     Do not look at other lives and see them having an easier time than you are having. They may have just come from a time of heavy labor or they may be about to start their period of heavy labor (the Bible calls them tribulations and tests and trials). And if you spend time looking at other lives you might fall behind in your own life’s work. 
     Our job as a Christian is to follow God’s plan for our lives and if we do there will not be another one like it, in the past or present or future. We are unique and our garden/life will be unique as well.

Thank you for reading and my prayers for you is that God blesses you more and more as you draw closer and closer to Him.

 C.I. Wilson