Dandelions

        I have battled two weeds most of my life. They are crabgrass and dandelions. I guess some would consider a dandelion to be a flower but to me they are weeds and I have waged a war with the dandelion for years. When we came to our present home, I invested in a lawn service that provided fertilizer and week killers every month. Soon, my yard was free from dandelions. After I retired again, this would be my second time of retiring, I found that the expense of the lawn doctor was not in my budget so did not renew with them after about 8 years of dandelion killer. Then, it happened. One of those little parachute seeds came into my yard and planted itself and soon, little yellow flowers began to appear here and there. No one else in my area had invested in the lawn doctor and so they had an abundance of little yellow flowers that made their way into my pristine yard which is of course, now infected with a host of yellow flowers....again. Galatians 5:9 says, “ A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.”

        There are a number of things that can invade our lives and when you lump them together you find that you can call them by their real name which is “sin.” You have heard the advertisement for Ivory soap which was 99.44/1-00 pure. It is that .56 that is impure and which becomes the first seed in an otherwise pure object. Soon, it can become more impure than it is pure. Sometimes, we feel well pleased with ourselves that our lives are going along well and so just a little “sin” won't make a lot of difference and so we give in to it. Once one is added, it is quite easy to add the second and third and so on until the whole lump, so to speak, is more sinful than righteous. It can be easily seen in our doctrine especially in the churches around us. Eve was tempted to doubt God and we are no different. We begin to doubt God even to the point that He is doing anything about our situation and that of the world in genera. We begin to doubt His Word and to discount the narratives about the flood, the Tower of Babel, Adam and Even, the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ and even the validity of the Scriptures themselves. Soon, we are disregarding what God said in the first place as being real and for our time and then the sin that we wanted to avoid overshadows us so greatly that we missed what was happening. It crept in like a thief in the night and permeated our lives to the point that we didn't notice that we are now more in darkness than in light. We often mention that we need to have “revival” America or that we need to have revival in our church. Well, revival often needs to begin in the life of the individual who is saying that we need to have revival. In other words, revival is going to start right in the life of the person who sees a need for revival in our nation or especially in our churches and in our own lives. As one church put it, we need to always have “Scripture and Prayer to conform us to the image of Christ.” We probably all need to be spending more time in the Word of God and especially in our communication with Him. We seem to be content spending only the .56% of our time with God and then letting our lives be filled with the 99.44% with sin. It should be going the other way. What will your life be like? Will it reflect more dandelions, which is saying, “sin?” We need to not give up on our battle with the weeds in our lives. God has given us Christian armor to use in the fight so put it on and get on with the fight. Praise God that He has provided all that we need for victory in the Lord Jesus Christ.