Mark 4:7  Some fell in the weeds; as it came up, it was strangled among the weeds and nothing came of it.

It’s amazing how many weeds have flowers.  I’m not talking about the ones that you see along roads or out in fields.  I’m talking about the ones that come up in your gardens along with the flowers that have been planted.  How often do we see that our gardens are loaded with both?  My problem is telling which is which.

Some flowers are easy to identify: roses, iris, tulips and daffodils.  Likewise dandelions are weeds.  Even though a field of blooming dandelions might be pretty, that beauty ceases to exist when they are in our yards and gardens.  The problem is all the other stuff that is coming up in the garden.

I have never been a gardener so when I look at the garden my thoughts are to get someone who knows this stuff and have them identify the flowers and the weeds.  When I look closely though, it’s apparent that some of the flower-bearing ‘growth’ is rapidly filling the garden and choking other plants out.  It’s almost like this ‘growth’ wants me to be distracted by its pretty little flowers while it takes over and chokes out the ‘opposition’ – the true flowers that are intended to grow.

Welcome to the spiritual garden of our lives where we have growing ‘cultural’ weeds and kingdom flowers – and each of us is responsible for what is found there.  The problem is that far too many who call themselves Christian have their spiritual gardens (read lives) filled with pretty little ‘flowers’ that are all weeds; and these weeds are choking out and obliterating the kingdom life that belongs there.

Jesus warned us about this in the Parable of the Sower from which today’s verse comes.  We must not underestimate the power of these ‘weeds’ in our lives when we allow them to become established instead of pulling them out.  Here is Jesus’ warning as given in The Message:

“The seed cast in the weeds represents the ones who hear the kingdom news but are overwhelmed with worries about all the things they have to do and all the things they want to get. The stress strangles what they heard, and nothing comes of it.”                   (Mark 4:17-18)

Pray that the Lord will help us identify the ‘weeds’ in our lives; and that He will enable us to see where we have allowed ourselves to become deceived into thinking they are genuine flowers that belong there.  The Holy Spirit will then enable us to effectively “weed” the garden of our life.