The other day I needed a Word. I capitalize it because it is
His Word, but also because I needed a Really Big Word. I was feeling very weak
and tired, physically and emotionally. It was one of the times when I thought the word, “Help!”
before opening the Bible, because that was all I had the strength for. When I opened my Bible, the first
thing I saw was the title of a passage, “The Fig Tree Withered,” that begins
the section Mark 11:12-14. My first thought was to wonder if I was feeling withered as I was because in some way I deserved it. But that is not how God works. He doesn't condemn us, even when we have been doing things that aren't the best things for us. There are words of condemnation in scripture, and there are people who try to say that those words are their right to say to others who they feel are not walking in the ways of God, but God is very clear with us that we are not to judge others. Before I was born again, I lived a life that was so far away from Him, and others were condemning me for it, but He never did. He just reached out His hand and gave me a new way to walk and has helped me all along the way ever since. After I started my journey with Him, after He had shown me His love and His mercy, then He showed me those passages and I saw how deeply in the muck and mire of sin I had been living. But He never condemned me for it, He just helped me learn to walk in a new way.
I know the passage from Mark 11 well, and had just heard a sermon
on it a few weeks ago, so after I got past the thought that God was condeming me with the words about the withered fig tree, I thought that the sermon I'd heard was what He wanted to remind me
of. It was in a way, but there was more that He wanted to tell me, something
much more personal to me. As I read through that passage and continued on to
verse 20, there is another title there, “The Lesson of the Withered Fig Tree.”
In the earlier passage, Jesus sees a fig tree that is not bearing any fruit,
but even though it is not the season for that tree to be bearing fruit, He
curses it so that it withers and can’t bear fruit ever again. When He and His
disciples pass by the tree again, Peter comments that it is withered, and Jesus
says, “Have faith in God.” He then goes on to talk about faith that can move a
mountain, praying with belief that God hears our prayers and receiving the
answer to those prayers because of that belief, and forgiving others as we are
forgiven by God. For someone else, that might not seem a logical answer to a question,
but for me that day, that was exactly what I needed to hear.
God speaks to each of us in the way that we can best
understand Him, and if we are listening and spending time in conversation with
Him on a regular basis, the messages will be developed over time with a
richness that only a close friend who is really in tune with us can bring to our
lives. He knows us better than any friend, better than anyone else we could
ever know. He knows our weaknesses and our strengths, He knows what we love and
what excites us, and yes, He knows where we fail and where we have potholes of
sin, and He still speaks to us with love and care in every area, not finding
fault with us in the way a criticizing voice would find fault, but helping us
to work through the faults and mistakes and sin and come to a deeper place of
understanding of how to overcome them. I don’t know how He does this. It
is one of the miracles of God. Before I was born again I was such an angry
person! People would say that to me sometimes, and it would just get me
angrier. I’d think to myself, “Who are they to judge me? They're the ones
who are making me so angry!” But somehow over the years since God reached into
my life and pulled me out of the mud I was living in, I have lost most of the
anger. I still have my moments, and I’ll tell Him, “I am so angry! Help!” but
even those times don’t last as long as they did – maybe a day at most now, and
that would have to be because of something really big. Often it passes in
minutes or even seconds, or doesn’t even develop into anger. I'll just see what is
happening and can laugh about it. I have no idea how He has done this, because
I know what was inside of me and the way I felt before, and the way things and
people affected me before. Things are just not the same any more, and I don’t
know how He did it. He certainly never said, “Jannie, you’re so full of anger!”
He didn’t judge me or condemn me or tell me I was wrong, He just loved me and showed me His love, and gently helped
me learn there was a better way to live.
When I read the passage from Mark 11 the other day, the
message was one that He has been developing for a while now. I'd heard the sermon on it several weeks ago, but He had also been giving me that
passage for more than a year along with other passages about having faith
without any doubt. He talks at other times about faith the size of a mustard
seed – a tiny bit of faith, but faith that is pure faith, and because there is
no doubt, even that tiny bit of faith has power. He has also been speaking to
me about my name. I was looking for something online one night, and I saw a
definition of my name. I had often looked for one before but had not found much
if anything at all, but there it was all of a sudden, in the middle of my
search for something completely different. The name Jannie comes from the
Hebrew name, Jana, and means God is Gracious. After the online definition, a
college professor had written a note to the website that the name Janah in Arabic
means fruit harvest, and the name Jannah means paradise. I saw a whole story in
that – it doesn’t mean that I am gracious, but that if I answer the
calling on my life, through me, the wonder of God’s graciousness can be shared
with others. Scripture speaks many times about bearing fruit and harvests, and
there it is in my name. And of course paradise is what we are looking forward
to in heaven, and we can have that on earth if we can learn to live God’s way
here and now.
The message from the passage from Mark 11 is about a fruit tree
that is not bearing fruit and so it withers. The answer Jesus gives about how
to bear fruit and live is to have faith in God, pray with belief that God is
hearing you, and forgive others as you have been forgiven. The day that I was
reading that passage, that was exactly what I needed to hear. He was telling me
to have faith in Him – not that I needed to have faith in myself or in anyone
else, but in Him. He was telling me that I could know that through that faith
I could know that He has heard my prayers, and that the people and situations I
was feeling anger and hurt toward needed to be released with the same love and forgiveness
and mercy that He shows me every day. It’s an equation that puts us always on
the receiving side of His love and blessing. Whatever we give to others will
come back to us. It doesn’t matter what they do toward us, it matters what we
do towards them. He will take care of the trees that are not bearing fruit, the
people who hurt us and the things they try to do to block His love and
blessings. As long as we can remember to have faith in Him, to believe He hears
us, and to forgive others – notice the word forgive has the word give in it
– if we can give our forgiveness to others and remember that He is faithful no matter what other people are doing,
our little bit of faith, that tiny mustard seed, can grow into a mighty tree.
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
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