Sunday, August 4, 2013

Planting Seeds For The Tree Of Life

Someone I know was complaining about the music for West Side Story recently, saying how much they hated it. I happen to like it a lot, but people are entitled to their own tastes. What bothered me about hearing them saying how much they hated it is that they used to love it, maybe even more than I do. I didn’t want to get into it with them at the time so I just let them go on and talk about how much they hated it, but last night I started singing one of the songs, it just came into my head, and I remembered that conversation and it started me thinking about why it is that there are things that we love deeply, things that mean so much to us, and then all of a sudden, or maybe it’s not all of a sudden for us but it seems that way to other people, all of a sudden it becomes something that we hate.

I’ve had that experience recently with someone I know who used to be my friend and then all of a sudden, but again maybe it wasn’t all of a sudden, this person started to hate me. In looking back over the time that we were friends I would never have thought this would happen, but I do see places where there were seeds of jealousy that this person allowed to take root, not just for me but for things that other people have too. The enemy can do that easily if we’re not careful. In 1 Peter 5:8, Peter tells us, “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” If we’re not alert, we can fall into his traps easily.
Disappointment is one of the most dangerous emotions. It seems very minor when you think of all of the other more violent and passionate emotions, but it’s the very seeming slightness of it that makes it all the more powerful. We don’t notice what it can do to us, until the damage is done. Proverbs 13:12 tells us, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.” That’s an interesting image when you think of how important the heart is to God. David was known as “a man after God’s own heart,” (1 Samuel 13:13-14) scripture after scripture tells us that “God sees the heart,” (1 Samuel 16:7) that “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,” (Luke 6:45) that we must cleanse our hearts (James 4:8), that God cleanses our hearts if we bring them to Him (Deuteronomy 10:16), that God’s word is written on our hearts (Hebrews 8:10). But there is also the side that, “the heart is deceitful above all things,” (Jeremiah 17:9) and if you think of a sick heart, it is a heart that needs healing, a heart that has grown cold to God and does not have His life blood in it.

The person who was talking to me about hating West Side Story has been very disappointed in life. I love the music for it, but the story always made me sad, and I don’t like sad stories. But the music when it’s full of love is to me some of the most life-filled and beautiful and joyful there is. But perhaps for the person who used to love it, the fact that life has brought with it some of the very sadness of that story is what has made it now something to hate. When disappointment came, the dreams were deferred and the heart became sick.
At the time that I was born again, there was a woman who was doing Santeria against me. Because I didn’t know then that God doesn’t want us to consult with spiritists, I spoke to a psychic healer. She told me a lot of things that were going on, and one thing she said comes back to me now. When we spoke about the woman who was doing Santeria, the psychic healer said, “She’s a very disappointed woman.” She then went on to say that was why she had started practicing witchcraft. That it was a friend of hers who was doing it, and that she was paying her lots of money for it, all because she hoped to get what she wanted from life by doing it. But of course those things are just another form of bondage, and you might get something you want at first because those powers want to draw you into their net, but as soon as they’ve got you, they stop working for you and you are enslaved to them, and you have to do more and more just to stay afloat. The psychic healer described that woman as having cobwebs inside of her because she had stopped living her life in any kind of healthy way. She was full of darkness and all because she had been disappointed and had allowed the disappointment to take over her life.

The person who has started hating me has also been disappointed. And it’s not because I have not been disappointed or because my life is easy that this person hates me, it is because of their own disappointment and bitterness. There was a seed of jealousy that was allowed to take root, and it wasn’t just jealousy about me, it was for things that other people have too, things that this person does not have and despairs of ever having.
The opposite of disappointment is gratitude. When we find ourselves sinking into the sick at heart feeling, the antidote is to remember all those things we have to be thankful for. But that isn’t easy, and more often than not we sink into the feeling of not having what we want, the feeling that what God has withheld from us is in some way a curse over our lives that makes us bitter and angry. And when we see someone else being blessed with the very thing that we have so desperately wanted, our hearts can become sick with envy. We begin to covet what that other person has because it is what we have wanted, and once we start to covet, we’re falling into the sin of breaking a commandment of God. And once one commandment is broken, we can easily fall prey to breaking another. Maybe we’ll lie now, or steal to try to get what we want. And then we’ll break another commandment after that and then another until we’re so far away from God that we don’t know how to get back.

Sometimes the dreams that are deferred are being held back because we need time to grow into them. Sometimes it is because God has something better for us. It may be for any number of reasons, but whatever the reason, we need to draw closer to God at those times instead of turning away and trying to do things our way. 1 Peter 5:5-6 tells us, “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” If we find ourselves in a place where we don’t want to be, where we feel we are lacking our heart’s desire and our dreams seem so far away that we can’t believe we will ever see them, that is the place where we must give our cares and woes and anxiety to God. If we do not do that, the bitterness in our hearts will take root and grow so strong that nothing else will be able to grow there.
There are times in each of our lives when those things that once gave us joy, those things that we hoped for and thought were certain to be ours will change into something else, will not come to pass, will become a source of sorrow. But God promises us that He will turn our mourning into dancing and our sorrow into joy. (Psalm 30:11) He promises us that those who reap in tears will sow in joy. (Psalm 126:5) He promises us that those who wait on the Lord will never be disappointed. (Isaiah 49:23) He promises us that if we trust in Him He will do what He has promised. (Isaiah 38:7) And 1 Peter 5:10 tells us, “And the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast.”

Proverbs 13:12 ends with, “but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life.” Psalm 37:4 tells us, “Take delight in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” When we feel the feeling of disappointment creeping into our hearts, if we can take the time instead to focus on God’s goodness and take delight in Him, He will give us the desires of our hearts, our dreams will be fulfilled and the life blood will flow back into us and allow the tree of life to take root in a way that will block out all other weeds that would try to choke it. When we feel the seeds of doubt and despair creeping in, we need to remind ourselves of His promises and remove those seeds that are not life giving before they are allowed to take root. There will be times that we feel we are too weak to remove those seeds ourselves, but God is a Master Gardener, and He can do what we cannot when we reach out to Him and ask for His help.
Blessings,

Jannie Susan

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