Growing Takes Work

As Nicky and I were driving along in the car yesterday, she suddenly announced, “It’s time to plant garlic!” You might think that is slightly odd but for context, we have a little veggie patch in the backyard that has been fallow since early summer and we have a garlic on our kitchen bench that has sprouted. Tim Pickles, our favourite gardener, had sent an email and in his Plant this Now section was garlic and truth be told, I got a bit excited.

Growing garlic is a long process but like any of the bulb veggies, very rewarding. They have a white or purple flower that blooms and as it begins to wilt (some 8 months later) it will be ready to pull out of the ground for a summer lunch of garlic prawns. 

So here I am, excited to plant garlic—but then it dawned on me. I need to change into my gardening clothes, get the tools out, pull the weeds out of the garden, turn over the soil, add fertiliser, turn over the soil, water it in, turn the soil over, carefully unclove the garlic, read up on planting distancing, work out where the most sun is, plant the cloves, carefully water them, build my cage to keep the dog out of the patch, then work out how often they need watering and fertilising, then ensure that happens for the next 8 months, while watching for bugs and patiently waiting. Sometime around Christmas, I will get to eat my garlic prawns! As all this dawned on me, I flitted away the afternoon and the garlic is still on the bench.  

Growing plants takes work. Growing your faith is no different.

If you want to grow as a Christian this year it’s going to take work. It’s going to take planning, persistence, perseverance and patience. It’s going to mean taking as many opportunities as you get to keep coming under God’s Word—reading it, discussing it, understanding it, applying it to your life. It’s going to mean becoming increasingly prayerful and constantly calling on God to mould and change you to be more like Jesus. It’s going to take you looking for opportunities to love and serve others with the gifts Jesus has given you. It is going to mean offering yourself as a living sacrifice to God and taking up your cross and following Jesus. It’s going to mean not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing but gathering together with others to correct, rebuke and encourage each other. We easily flit away our time on anything and everything but our Christian growth. 

Paul prays in many of his letters that people may grow as believers. Ephesians 3 is a great example:

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:17–19)

Wouldn’t it be great to get to Christmas and not only have garlic prawns, but to look back and see this work of God in yourself and others? It takes work, but God works through his Word to grow and change us into the likeness of his Son. We don’t need to do everything at once but we do need to keep working and seeking after God.  

So, what needs to change this week so you might get to Christmas and see afresh God’s great growing work in you?