Article by Dr. Les Hollon, Pastor, Trinity Baptist Church

We all have weeds growing in our gardens.  We all have problems stirring in our circumstances. If we waited for our lives to be problem free before we relaxed - we would never relax.

Right now the immunization systems of our bodies are fighting off some threat.  Right now our minds are praying thru some worry.  Right now God’s Spirit is empowering our spirits to let go of some temptation.  These challenges are common to everyone and are part of what it means to be alive in our world.

God wants us thoroughly to trust Him so we will follow His lead through each challenge.  We are then granted the practical wisdom and spiritual power to be courageously successful.  With the Lord’s shepherding, we can know how to enter and dwell in the Kingdom land.

The Kingdom is where we can laugh, love, play, and work under the King’s loving care and authority.  Though we are obviously not now living in heaven, we are taught by Jesus through what we call “The Lord’s Prayer” to pray & work for “The Kingdom to come by God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Remembering this prevents us from setting ourselves up for disappointment caused by thinking that if we are living for God, then nothing bad will happen to us. Instead, Jesus’ model prayer goes on teaching us - to be aware & thankful for daily bread; to forgive people as they trespass on our life and to seek forgiveness when we go trespassing to get what we want; to beware of evil by being aware of temptation.  Jesus then crescendos the prayer with Kingdom language, “for Yours is the Kingdom and power and glory forever.”

Knowing God’s steady goodness steadies us in an unsteady world.  Knowing the permanency of His Kingdom renews our resiliency to life’s momentary hardships.  This application is underscored by Jesus’ parable of the weeds.  A good man and his men planted a field with good seed to produce a good harvest for good purposes. But a neighbor became envious and greedy.  With his soul poisoned by evil, he chose to poison his neighbor’s good field.  Unwilling to do the good work to make his own field good, he sowed the chaos of weedy seeds into the good seeded soil of his neighbor.  The evil seed, called darnel, was particularly dangerous because it attached itself to the roots of the plants which grew from the good seed.  Consequently if the good workers labored to rid the field of the weeds, the good crops would also be destroyed – which was the result desired by the offending neighbor.

What to do? But to be purposively patient until harvest time, then the weeds could and would be separated from the wheat.  Then the evil design would be defeated and the evil act destroyed. 

Remember that “God is good all the time and all the time God is good.”

Even when our times are not all good … Our lives have a mixture of good and bad living alongside each other.  Weed out what you can now by stopping bad habits.  Be purposively patient for the right harvest moments to arrive by preparing yourself to weed out the more complicated stuff.

Trust God for discernment and act decisively with faith when His moment for action arrives.  Do not make matters worse by sowing bad seed as retaliation against an offender.  Let God deal with him or her.  Who knows, God may even use you to help make that bad person into a good person.  For the Kingdom of God is perfectly established in heaven, and is present on earth whenever and wherever the will of God is applied.

Pastor Les

“I have to learn that the aim in life is God’s, not mine. God is using me from His great personal standpoint, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him, and never say — Lord, this gives me such heart-ache…. He simply asks me to have implicit faith in Himself and in His goodness.”
-Oswald Chambers

“It’s one thing to affirm that God is free to do as God wills in this world.  The real crunch comes in allowing God the freedom and trust to act in one’s own life.”
-John Indermark

This article was written by Les Hollon, Pastor of Trinity Baptist Church.  For more information about how God works in your life, or to contact Dr. Hollon, click over to Trinity Baptist Church.

If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or Digg. Thanks!