When stuff comes up …

I did some digging this weekend. I wish I could say it was the kind in the garden, the fun and recreational kind where you sink your hands into some soil and get those good seeds planted, full of hope, in eager anticipation of salsas and salads come late July. I’ll get to that too, Lord willing, as faithful May is finally bringing us the sun. (Hooray!)

But this weekend I did the inward kind of digging. The soul-searching, heart-rending, truth-seeking kind of digging, the kind you have to do when stuff comes up.

I was speaking at a retreat, on my beloved topic of Flourish. This has been my longest running retreat—for five years straight I’ve been teaching this material, and I finally rewrote my notes because they were so worn and marked up with margin scribbles and underlines and highlights that I could barely read what they said. Plus, I needed the process of re-writing them, to let the good work go deep into my own heart once again. The result will be, Lord willing, an ebook. I’d love to give you an expanded version of these materials in an ebook form so you could go through the process on your own. Pray for me, that I can carve away time to make this happen?

So, sometimes stuff comes up. When you’re gardening, hopefully you have some tender shoots pop up—your zucchini and sugar peas and the feathery tops of carrots. But usually, you get some other stuff too. Yes? Some weeds. And it’s true in our spiritual life too, some weeds come up, the bad stuff, the stuff we don’t want around, and it can be disheartening. But let me tell you what’s more disheartening, when something comes up, and you take it to the Lord, and He responds with …

“It’s deeper than you think.”

Awesome. The physical version of this is when you go to pluck out a weed and discover it’s anchored down so deep you can’t even dislodge it. You tug and tug and all you end up doing is maybe tearing off a few of the leaves, just surface stuff, and the nasty root system is still completely in tact.

*sigh*

So what do we do? What do we do when staring down a gargantuan weed we can’t quickly yank out?

We dig it out. And it can be disheartening but we’ll do it if we care enough about the state of our souls, about the purity of our lives, about the quality of our worship. If we care enough about Christ. See, certainly we can get entirely too caught up self-tinkering and miss out on the bigger picture of loving and serving the world. We can get so self-absorbed that we miss out on the mission of God. Let’s not do that. But it is equally important that we don’t get so caught up in the mission, the ministry, the going and doing and serving and giving, that we neglect the health of our hearts.

Last week at church, when we prayed over our worship time, I saw a picture of a red heart, and God was cutting off the dirty, darkened, slimy edges.

Sometimes God needs to cut off the corrupted parts, so our worship can be pure again, so our hearts can be clean, so our minds can be made-over entirely for Him.

Let’s not neglect that part.

Because it is SO easy to throw ourselves headlong into outward things without addressing the dark places. Our first ministry is to the Lord. Only as our worship is sanctified, made holy, made pure, will our ministry, our outpouring be that as well.

Of course I would never want to discourage someone from loving the poor, loving the church, loving evangelism or giving or serving or mission. But these must always and only be an overflow of our first love: Him. He is our first love. Our first mission. Our first ministry.

We’re only fit for outward ministry, as God does a deep inward ministry in our hearts. Paul said it like this:

A large house contains not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay. Some indeed are for honorable use, but others are for common use. So if anyone cleanses himself of what is unfit, he will be a vessel for honor: sanctified, useful to the Master, and prepared for every good work. (2 Tim. 2:20-21)

With all that is in me, I want to be useful to the Master. I think you probably do too. 

And so, when something comes up, that weed that won’t budge, we dig down deep into the truth and love of God, and ask Him to uproot anything that doesn’t please Him. What belief, attitude, habit, mindset, desire, thought-pattern … what seed has taken root and slowly grown, unseen, until it suddenly surprises you and rears its ugly head. Yes, it can feel discouraging to see it, but take heart, friend, the good news is: God’s allowed it to grow up past the surface, to be seen, so that He can root it out forever. You’re not alone in the process. He’s guiding and providing. He’s pulling for us, and it’s worth the effort to dig. The heart that’s free will flourish.

{For whatever digging you must do this week…it’s worth it. Happy May Day & thanks for reading.}