Landscaping

A week ago today my big, strapping, muscle bound husband ripped up all the horrible and terrible shrubs out of my front yard.   He hacked, sawed, and dug until those ugly shrubs were ripped up out of the ground, roots and all.   I raked leaves and filled expensive, Houston required, recyclable trash bags with the debris from my husband's work.   Truly, I did not help much but at least I wanted to look like I was trying as he was using all his force to prep my flower beds for spring.   While my flowers beds are still in the transitional phase I know that soon they will be beautiful thanks to my handsome husband.

My friend Liz describes this process perfectly on her blog A Little Peace of Home.   

Remember the post where I talked about wanting to get comfortable being uncomfortable?   Ever since I wrote that post I have been waiting on God to give me huge opportunities to start to grow.   I expected Him to start revealing himself to me in new ways, and that my entire life would start to take shape and be different.  Instead it has been "all quiet on the western front" as I have tried to have quiet times and seek Him.   

It was not until this morning that I realized that my heart needed some "landscaping" of its own to be done by my big, strapping, muscle bound Jesus.   I just gave up this morning and got down on my knees during my quiet time.   G laid next to me and I laid my heart before God and told Him that I was not going to get up until He spoke something to my heart.  

Lately I have felt so distracted by all that I have to do, want to do, and hope to do that I in fact have done no doing at all.   This entire week I have badgered my husband with statements like "I feel worthless", "I need to know more of who I am in Jesus, and " I want to know if I am doing the right thing".

As I laid before Jesus this morning I realized that I have been like the person James talks about in chapter 1 verse 23 & 24 AMP "For if anyone only listens to the Word without obeying it and being a doer of it, he is like a man who looks carefully at his [own] face in a mirror; For he thoughtfully observes himself, and then goes off and promptly forgets what he was like".   

Can you say convicting?  Regarding my worth in Jesus and and here on this earth I have been like "a man of two minds (hesitating, dubious, irresolute) , [he is] unstable and unreliable and uncertain about everything [he thinks, feels, decides]. James 1:8 AMP   As I said in the previous blog post since I graduated college I have been caught between living life comfortably and uncomfortably.   I have been like "one who wavers (hesitates, doubting) like the billowing surge out at sea that is blown hither and thither and tossed by the wind".James 1:6b AMP.  I have heard God speak to me about who I am in Him and what He has planned for me to do, but in doubt I have just listened and have done nothing.

I repented this morning.  I asked God to change my thinking.   I told Him that His ways are above my ways, that His thoughts are above my thoughts, and the His will is above my will.   

"In simple humility, let our Gardner, God, landscape you with the Word, making a salvation-garden of your life." James 1:21b MSG

God also convicted me about not trusting Him about our future.   This shows how comfortable I have gotten because my entire life has been based on me having supernatural faith in God regarding anything I have ever done or received.  My faith had nothing to do with me being supernatural, but it had everything to do with the fact that I have always believed that God's way was the only way I could ever do anything.   I laid my desire to secure my future before God and decided to trust Him for today and tomorrow.   I believe as you grow up you think it is the responsible thing to do to worry about the future and try to scratch out some form of security for yourself.   While planning is always wise, worrying is definitely not.   

"And who of you by worrying and being anxious can add one unit of measure (cubit) to his stature or to the span of his life? And why should you be anxious about clothes? Consider the lilies of the field and learn thoroughly how they grow; they neither toil nor spin.  Yes I tell you, even Solomon in all his magnificence was not arrayed like one of these.  But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and green and tomorrow is tossed into the furnace, will He not much more surely clothe you, O you of little faith?  Therefore do no worry and be anxious saying What are we going to eat? or, What are we going to have to drink? or, What are we going to have to wear? For the heathen wish for and crave and diligently seek all these things, and your heavenly Father know well that you need them all.  But seek first of all His kingdom and His righteousness (His way of doing things and being right), and then all these things taken together will be given you besides.  So do not worry or be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will have worries and anxieties of its own.  Sufficient for each day is its own trouble."  Matt 6:27-34 AMP

I share these things with you this morning because I am so guilty of letting God landscape me, and then after He has planted me with a beautiful garden of flowers then sharing with you how the process went.  Instead today I have invited you into the process.   Like my own front yard I am in the transitional phase, not yet planted just uprooted and bare.   

My prayer for myself this morning is this:

"But whoever catches a glimpse of the revealed counsel of God-the free life! -even out of the corner of his eye, and sticks with it, is no distracted scatterbrain but a man or woman of action.  That person will find delight and affirmation in the action."  James 1:25 MSG

[ AMP = The Amplified Bible.  MSG = The Message Bible ]