Thorns and Briars

     I love walking in the outdoors, enjoying the natural creations of God. There are so many beautiful plants to behold. Every where I travel around the world, I discover new plants that I have never seen before. One of my favorite places to visit is the Wilhelma Botanical Gardens in Germany, which contain over 6000 species and varieties of plants! I love most of the plant species, however, there is one group that I do not like to run into; it’s the thorns and briers.

     Thorns and briars have been around since the time of Genesis. Because of Adam’s sin, God said that Adam would have to eat of the ground. Genesis 3 also tells us that God cursed the ground and said that it would bring forth “thorns and thistles”. Adam had to deal with them in his time and we are still fighting against them today!

     I recall my dad telling me a story about the briers. He had just received a brand new hunting jacket and was out in the woods deer hunting. He was walking through a really thick area and had snagged his new jacket on a brier. He was carefully working to free his jacket, without damaging it, when he heard a grunt behind him. He turned around just in time to see mother hog charging at him. Knowing the ferocity of a mother hog with little ones, he quickly found a tree to climb, leaving portions of his new jacket on the briar!

     It is almost impossible to get rid of the briars. They spring up all over my backyard. I cut them back to the ground and they keep coming back. I have noticed something unique about the briars. They go through a change sometimes during their early life. When the briars first start growing, they appear to be like many other types of “friendly” vines. The young briars are soft and pliable. Their “stickers” are soft and bend easily. If one didn’t know better they might be tempted to just let the briar vine grow. The young briar is not a threat to anyone, but sometimes during its life it goes through a transformation. The briars stem and stickers become very hard and will snag any clothes that come close to them or scratch any bare skin that touches it, and dead briers becomes even more brittle and painful!

     There are things that Satan brings into our spiritual lives that are similar to the thorns and briars. At first these things seem innocuous and insignificant. We usually notice them in our lives but don’t bother to address them, because they are so small; but as time goes on they can transform into something very dangerous to our spiritual lives. Sometimes these are temptations that we think we can control, but they grow until they are controlling us and cause us to sin. Other times they are just small deceptive things we say, that over time cause us to tell multiple lies.

     In my early career I had a friend at work that started to get involved with a girl, just to “help her out”. I warned him that he should only help from a distance, but he would not listen to me. In the end she became an enormous problem that he could not get rid of. When he finally forced her to move out of his apartment, she returned to throw rocks through his windows and almost got him fired from him job by her hundreds of phone calls to his company. He thought that he could keep the situation under control, but it ended up controlling him!

     So the next time you hear that inner voice telling you that you should not do something, obey God’s voice, do what is right, and you will not be entangled by the thorns and briars of Satan!

No More Weeds!

     We have had rain for the past several days. Weeds are sprouting up everywhere in my back yard, although only a few of my flowers and plant are starting to grow. It doesn’t seem fair that the unattended, uncared for, and disliked weeds will grow in almost anyplace while I struggle to get my plants to grow in my fertilized and well watered soil. I guess God takes better care of the weeds that I do my flowers and plants!

  


PokeSally starting
to grow in my
flowerbed

   







PokeSally is three feet tall
after four weeks! Note the
dormant sago palm in
background!

    
     This morning there was a lull in the precipitation so I decided to go out in the woods and start my “spring trail cleaning”! Because of the consistent rain we received this spring season, I was dreading to go out on the trails. From all the weeds that I had pulled up in my yard, I expected the trails to be almost completely overgrown with weeds. Most of the trails are only 2-3 years old. Every spring I spend several weeks cutting and pulling up weeds, until they finally give up trying to grow on my trails! Today I was pleasantly surprised to see that the trails were almost completely free of weeds! There were a lot of leaves to be raked and the occasional tree limbs that needed trimming, but almost no weeds! I looked around and there were weeds growing everywhere, except on my trails! I decided that I had finally conquered the weeds for good! I guess that after 2-3 years of human and wildlife traffic, the dirt trails had become too packed to allow the weeds to grow. Victory at last! Now, if I could just figure out how to stop the leaves from falling on my trails and how to prevent the tree limbs from growing on my trails!

As I was raking the trails this morning I started thinking about the blog I wrote on “Grooming the Trails” (October 7, 2009), where I compared the trail grooming to talking care of our spiritual lives. Just as I got victory over the weeds and started working on the other things that clutter the trails, we as Christians should be maturing and making progress in our spiritual lives. When we first start out as a Christian there are a lot of little things that we have to address. New Christians sometimes catch themselves using some of their old foul language or dishonest habits, however, after some maturing the new Christian should achieve “victory” over these old habits. If you are not making progress in your Christian life, I recommend that you reexamine your commit to Christ. As a Christian we will never totally get rid of these temptations, but with God’s help it is possible for us to live a Godly and peaceful life! Have a great day!

Where is the Sun?

        The weathermen forecasted cloudy skies for today and they were correct. I woke up this morning, before daylight, and went out on the back deck to observe another sun rise. Daylight was slow in coming, and when it finally came it revealed a heavily overcast sky! I knew the sun was rising above the horizon but could not see it. I could see the light generated by the sun and I could feel the warming effects of the sun, even thought it was not visible. It is hard to fathom the power of the sun. Our morning temperatures can be in the 40’s but the sun can warm up all of Texas to the 80’s in just a couple of hours! That’s a lot of power!

          Our sun is an interesting and fascinating creation! Ancient cultures worshiped the sun as a God. In Greek mythology the sun was personified as the God Helios, who drove the chariot of the sun across the sky each day.  In the third century BC the Greeks started the theory that the sun was the center of our solar system. By the 1600’s astronomers were able to accurately calculate the distance to the sun and were using a prism to break up the suns rays into many colors. Today scientists have calculated that the amount of the sun’s energy shining on the earth in one hour could supply all the earth’s energy needs for an entire year! Hopefully, some day, we will be able to more fully harness the sun’s energy.

     There are a lot of similarities between the “sun” in the sky and Jesus, the “Son” of God. None of us today have every seen Jesus. There are people that find it hard to believe in a God they have never seen or touched. I am so happy that I live in an environment where I am able to see and feel the affects of my God. I have personally witnessed healings and the supernatural moving of the Holy Spirit. Just as we can believe in the sun that we cannot see, because we feel that affects of the sun; so we also believe in the Son of God because we see and feel his moving in our lives.  If you are not living in an environment where you feel God, I recommend that you visit a “spirit filled” church where you will feel God!

It Never Rains in the Amazon Jungle

    One of my life’s goals was to visit to the Amazon Jungle. I have watched many National Geographic TV specials on the Amazon and wanted to witness its beauty first hand. About ten years ago I decide to take my dream trip to the Amazon. I first started looking for jungle lodges in Brazil. I wanted to find the most remote and biodiverse region available.   I settled on a lodge in Peru that was 90 miles from the nearest city by boat, and that nearest city could only be accessed by air.  I stayed at the Tahuayo Lodge that is adjacent to the 800,000 acre Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo Communal Reserve. 

The area was an absolute paradise for nature lovers. The reserve supports 14 species of primates and over 500 species of birds!  It was truly amazing to experience the jungle first hand. I learned so many things that you could never learn from just watching a TV show on the jungle. The primary rain forest trees were almost one hundred feet in height, or as tall as a 10 story building! Only a small amount of light was able to filter through the trees and down to the ground. 

Because of the low light, my photography was limited to several hours before and after the noon time, when the sun was almost directly overhead.  It was not uncommon to hear a group of monkeys coming toward you, hear them directly overhead, and then hear them moving off into the distance, without ever catching a glimpse of them. The thick jungle forest also acted like a great insulator. With Peru located near the equator the days at the lodge were in the mid 90’s but entering the forest was just like walking into an air conditioned room. The temperature under the jungle canopy was 10-15 degrees cooler than in the open areas exposed to the sun! I had the most amazing jungle experience when it started to rain. I was in one of the thick jungle areas. I started to feel a light mist falling through the jungle canopy. After walking for half an hour we arrive at an open area, with no trees overhead, and was shocked to see that it was raining heavily! There was no rain reaching the jungle floor because it was being almost totally absorbed by the jungle canopy!  I was told that the “jungle mist” would continue for several days after a hard rain. 

     Just as the thick jungle canopy provides protection from the heavy rain, so does living in the “kingdom of God” provide a shield for us. In several New Testament scriptures Jesus admonishes us to “seek ye first the kingdom of God”. In the “Lords Prayer” where Jesus gives us an example on how to pray, the first request we are to make is “thy kingdom come”. In Romans 14:17, Paul provides a description for the “kingdom of God”. Paul says: “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost”. In plain English, Paul is saying that the “kingdom of God” is not about getting to eat what we want or do the things we want, but that the “kingdom of God” is about having a peace and joy on our heart!   So, even thought we might not have all the physical things we want in life, and we may be going through tribulations, we can still have the peace and joy that is promised to those who are in his kingdom!

Spring is Here!

     Spring time is my favorite time of the year! It’s warming up quickly here in central Texas. Just two weeks ago the lows were in the 40’s and we were using the heater to warm our house. I always look forward to this time of the year, when we don’t need to run the heater or the air conditioner. This year the weather is heating up quickly and we turned on the air conditioner just a week after turning off the heater!

     I know that spring is here because I found three rat snakes while cleaning out the flower beds in my front yard!  I also got a visit from my son’s pet lizard. He had the lizard for over a year and then let it loose in our front yard.  As I was cleaning the flower bed I looked up and saw the lizard walking up to me. It stood there looking at me as if waiting to be fed. After a few minutes it scampered off into the bushes.

     Fortunately I am between jobs and I am able to spend most of my free time working in my back yard. I have already made several trips to the nursery, buying new plants and flowers. I have raked up over a dozen garbage cans full of leaves and debris. I have put out fertilizer in all my flower beds and started my water sprinklers running again.  I get such enjoyment out of cultivating and watching the plants grow. It is so awesome to see such beautiful creations come from such little seeds and ugly bulbs. I make the rounds in my garden almost every day, grooming and checking on my plants, and looking to see which seeds have sprouted and which old plants are starting to put out new buds.

    As I was making the “rounds” today, checking on my plants, I thought of how God watches over us in a similar manner. I know that God is continually working in people’s lives, trying to convince them to live for him. I believe that God also makes the “rounds” checking on the people that he is dealing with to see if they are responding to him. Luke 15:7 tells us that “joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth”.  If you’re not living for God today, I challenge you to give your life to him and create joy in heaven!

LINKS: spring time,God’s creation,