A weighty project is cleaning out my flowerbeds! I have, twice now, made very poor decisions for what I sowed. Certainly, I have made many more than two, but this is concerning flowerbeds. One of my four big flowerbeds is a double-sided bed, covering a part of the front fence and continuing behind the fence. Whatever grows and multiplies in the front will end up in the back and vice versa. In the six years we have lived in this house, twice I was forced to totally reconstruct that double flowerbed. You see, twice I have planted something that I have regretted terribly. Both times it totally consumed my bed to the point where I could not enjoy the other flowers.

What is keeping you from enjoying something God may be intending you to focus on instead?

These two plants have been lovely BUT both became a burden.

“…let us also lay aside every encumbrance…” (NASB) “…let us strip off every weight that slows us down…” (NLT)

Hebrews 12:1

I will never forget the first time I heard my husband preach from this passage and how he described the encumbrance or weight. He ran cross country as a youth and before a race you would naturally get warmed up in your sweats but when it was time for the race to start, you stripped off everything that would slow you down and ran in shorts.  

As I thought about my flowerbeds and how those plants in and of themselves are not bad, especially planted in a field where they can grow wild, I am reminded of how many things I allow myself to get attached to or become weighted down by. Maybe I take on too much responsibility, or maybe it is putting too much time into my yard, or allowing a food item to become too important in my life that I think I cannot live without it.

What is keeping you from enjoying something God may be intending you to focus on instead?

As I finished up my Six-Week Retreat: Refocusing and Refueling by mostly eating a plant-based diet and looking more intently into passages of Scripture, the Lord has brought me back to this passage in Hebrews 12 more than any other. It assuredly is what I am trying to do each time I participate in a fast, especially from dairy and sugar. I continue to struggle in this area and will never arrive until I reach heaven, but I pray that my heart will more and more seek to please my heavenly Father and lay aside every hindrance. There is so much left to be done before the Lord returns and I want to be His soldier, His representative, His Light!

I desire others to see Christ in me! I want to lay aside what holds me back from being His LIGHT, His Instrument! As I desired to also magnify my prayer life through this retreat, the Lord stepped in and gave me a reason to stay in diligent prayer. A granddaughter who lives quite a distance away was hospitalized with pneumonia. My heart ached so bad, but I turned it into fervent prayer on her behalf. And her return home healthy is the greatest blessing realized through this time of retreat in several different areas. I am truly praising God for what He continues to allow me to participate in.  

What is keeping you from enjoying something God may be intending you to focus on instead?

I began this Retreat with the following quote, and I share it now at the end:

“The whole purpose of God in redemption is to make us holy and to restore us to the image of God. To accomplish this, He disengages us from earthly ambitions and draws us away from the cheap and unworthy prizes that worldly men set their hearts upon.” 

A.W. Tozer