Like a lot of people, I have a small vegetable garden. I went out today to add banana peel tea to my tomatoes (look that up if you're into gardening), checked on my bell peppers and spinach, and found that it was time for my baby carrots to be harvested. I lovingly dug each of them from the dirt and gave them an initial rinse with the garden hose.
When I brought them in, I began the more detailed work of cleaning and getting them ready for use. I was standing at my sink, cool water running over my hands and I felt Adonai stir in my spirit, letting me know that I have gone through the same process as these lovely baby carrots. When I feel that kind of check in my spirit, I stop and pay attention. I try hard to not brush off anything that the Spirit is trying to teach me, no matter how mundane, because my heart's desire is to draw ever closer to Him. To walk and live as He wants me to, and if I ignore even the smallest of parables, I'm going to miss out on something great that He wants to teach me.
We are like these carrots. He is the gardener. He sees the seeds that have been sown into our lives, watches them as they are watered and when ready for harvest He digs us up out of the dirt as we cry out to our Savior. He cradles us gently even though we have dirt clinging to us, roots that still want to go back into the ground of our life before Him, and He smiles over us, dirt and all. He washes us in the blood of Yeshua and brings us into His light, out of darkness. It is then that He begins trimming the things that cling to us away. Like the tops of the carrots and the tips with those dangling roots. When the Holy Spirit starts trimming away things in our lives, a lot of times it isn't pleasant. Sometimes it downright hurts. But as He cuts away things that are not good for us so that we can walk closer with Him, it changes the way we look on the inside and out. He then continues to wash us in that cool water from the wells of Yeshua, the wells of living water and more of the dirt that was clinging to us washes away, transforming us even more. We look brighter, we walk different, we talk different, we live different. But even then, there are areas on those carrots that the dirt is deep in the wrinkles and crevasses and not amount of water alone can remove it. It is then we break out the vegetable scrub brush and tackle those hard to reach places. Have you ever felt the Holy Spirit take a scrub bush to the hidden areas of your heart? Have you ever gone through an intense scrubbing to get an old, sinful habit out of your life? I have, and I can tell you from experience, it isn't fun when you're going through it. I remember as a child getting downright filthy and my mother scrubbing me down. It felt like she was going to scrub my skin right off, but when she was done, I was clean and felt better for being so. The same is when we let the Holy Spirit take that scrub brush to us, we work out our own salvation and get rid of what is holding us back from walking in the fullness of our calling.
After I got done cleaning the carrots, I looked at them thinking about how I was going to use them. I felt in my spirit, "Just like these carrots, when you are scrubbed clean and prepped, you are ready to feed others." Now, I am not saying that God only uses us if we are perfect, because if that were the case He wouldn't use any of us. What I am saying is that we should be striving every day to be more like Yeshua, to love as He loved, to teach as He taught, to seek our Abba Father in all things the way He did. When the Spirit of the Living God checks your spirit and says, "I need to take the scrub brush or pruning shears to this thing that is clinging to you, keeping you from the fullness of your calling", we need to pay attention and no matter how much it hurts, we need to go through that process.
Sometimes it is a refiner's fire, sometimes it is pruning shears, sometimes it is a scrub brush, but they are all for our good, because He is doing an ever continual work in us so that we can feed others, so that we can shine our light for others, and tell them the beauty and wonder of Yeshua and the price He paid for us. His name literally means salvation in Hebrew. He is mighty to save and continue His good work in you so that you can work in His garden, for the fields are ripe for harvest!
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