We once lived in a mobile home park. Now you must understand, a mobile home park is a place where most everyone has enough time on their hands to be sure you're doing all you should be doing and "watch" you doing it.
One of the things that are evidently important to “seasoned-citizens” is your yard; you are regularly visited by people you don’t know, whose only interest is what you have or haven’t done to your yard.
At first, this seems picayune and a slightly irritating; but, as the Lord is fond of doing, this can provide you with an opportunity to reach out to these wonderfully nosy people. Not only that, but it can teach you something else: don't plant and ignore.
Plants need constant care. They must be constantly fed, watered (strangely they get very thirsty), nourished, protected, and pruned. But no matter how hard we work, some plants just don’t respond to what we do for them. We have to get beyond them.
The Lord never had it in mind that His disciples should be planted, then forgotten.
He challenged Peter to care for and protect His sheep [John 21:15]. The writer of the book of Hebrews says the mature disciple eats solid food [5:14].
Jesus said, “It is written, ‘MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ONLY, BUT ON EVERY WORD WHICH PROCEEDS FROM THE MOUTH OF GOD’” [Matthew 4:4]. Jesus said to the woman at the well,“Everyone who drinks of this water shall thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water which I shall give to him shall never thirst; but the water which I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”Jesus taught that His Father would prune fruit-bearing disciples, but that who were fruitless would be taken up and thrown out [John 15:2].John 4:13-14
My experiences with plants have taught me well … I‘m now watering, feeding, protecting, nourishing, and pruning all my nosy neighbors for the glory of God.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
EVANGELISM: The greatest danger to the Bride is her health!
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