Weeds

I could write about a hundred different topics tonight, but this is the one that is the most clear for now.

I have been reading some in the book The Life You've Always Wanted by John Ortberg.  It is a basic discussion of spiritual discplines in the life of the believer as an avenue of God's strength.  If you're anything like me, you hear the word discipline and get a headache.  All the screeching voices of legalism and the inevitable wounds that follow that religious trap raise the din in my thoughts.  That sound screams to me to run the opposite direction.  You know, something to the tune of, "Get out now!"  It's hard for the person wounded by religion to see the good in the original, untwisted discipline.

As I was reading some of that, something that I say to the kids at work fairly frequently popped in my head again.  God has been gracious to me in helping me to break down spiritual concepts to kids that just don't get more complex or abstract ideas.  Imagery becomes everything.

A lot of those kids really struggle when they finally start to accept that they need to change certain behaviors, and more importantly ways of thinking.  So they start to do what we tell them is necessary for success in life and try to change their behaviors, but they are usually still very skeptical.  They want to be recognized for the decision that they have made, but have yet to put much behind it.  They expect their reputations to change overnight.  The frustration that follows when this ridiculous and predictable outcome expectancy does not come true is blinding to the person in the middle of it.  "I did what I was supposed to.  Why don't I feel better now?  I'm just confused."

Here's where my grand knowledge of horticulture comes in.  Weeds.  They suck.  They grow up fast, can be incredibly hard to pull up without damaging nearby desirable growth and can be incredibly hard to tell apart from that growth at times.  I begin to tell them that their past life is a bed full of weeds.  They have just now begun to pull weeds and plant good things.  They can not expect to pull up a life time of weeds in one sitting and it will take months/years for the new things that have been planted to grow and mature.  In short, you spent a lot of time sowing to your flesh.  It's going to take some time to get it gone and sow to the spirit so you can reap some spiritual things instead.  Your reputation will not change overnight.  Neither will your feelings instantly align with how you think they should be.  Right choices always bring right emotions, but not always right away.

So it is for me with disciplines of the spirit.  Undisciplined areas are overgrown and sometimes I think I should  just do a controlled burn.  I don't think that would form the image of Christ in me though, which is the desired outcome.  He didn't take the easy way out, and He doesn't leave that as an option for His children.  The fact that I see this season of work as "bad" is indeed an indicator of my spiritual lack of maturity and understanding.  Anything that forms Christ in us and purifies us is the greatest goal to seek after.  So why do I whine so much when He gives me what I have prayed for so many times?

I really identified with a section in the above mentioned book where the author starts talking about peak and trough seasons in our relationship with God.  I mostly see the peak times as the good times and feel somehow less holy or worthy when a trough season comes around.  I think my feelings deceive me though.  I can't really say it better than C.S.Lewis, so I think I will just end with a quote:

But He never allows this state of affairs to last long.  Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives.  He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs--to carry out from the will alone duties that lost all relish.  It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature that He wants it to be.