Weeds and Sin

Take a look at those weeds! That is insane! I cannot believe how many there are in this pile!

I was weeding in our front yard today - something I have not done since I was little - and God showed me an amazing picture of how these weeds are like sin.

When I started weeding, I did not realize how many weeds there were. It was to the point that you could not tell the difference between what was a weed and what was the actually plant. I began pulling the weeds off of the first plant and when I was finished, I was amazed. The plant with the weed looked huge and full. The leaves of the weed were

actually very nice, they didn't look like weeds. For someone who had not seen the plant before they would probably never know that the weeds were absolutely covering this plant. This showed me this first picture of sin. We don't always see sin the way we should. Sometimes we let things into our lives that create strongholds and before we know it we can't tell what is us and what is the weed anymore.

The second picture of sin I saw was that when we try to get rid of this sin, the weeds, in our lives sometimes we treat the symptom not the real issue at the heart level. As I was pulling these weeds, I had to dig in deep to make sure I got to the roots. Some of them, I just treated the symptom, because I only pulled the leaf or stem off. Those weeds will grow back again soon - I know it! But there were others that I PULLED! One or two that I pulled as hard as possible and got all of them up, those will not come back so quickly because I got to the roots. In our lives we have to deal with the real issue when we are convicted of sin. It

is all about our relationship with God. Is our heart focused on Him and seeking after Him?

The third thing I saw was a picture of how God reveals to us that there is sin in our lives and constantly conforms us into His image. After I got the majority of the weeds pulled and moved away from the bushes, I looked back again and realized taht there were still more weeds to pull! This is how it is in our lives. God continues to reveal areas of our lives that do not look like Him so that we are changed and conformed into His image.

Lastly , just as a visual picture of all this information I have to post these two pictures. One is of the bushes with the weeds, and the other is the bushes after the weeds were pulled! Amazing the difference! An encouragement to me to allow God to continue to point out the things in my life

that don't look like Him and use that to conform me to His image!