I sometimes go through periods when I’m hyper aware of myself and my interactions with other peoole. When I have these moments,it’s often exhausting and my emotions run raw. I have to be very careful with how I carry these moments because it’s easy to slide from self awareness to self condemning.
I know that the battle we fight isn’t against flesh and blood. I also know that the battlefield isn’t physical but it’s definitely in the mind. If I give one incorrect thought room to take root in my mind, it can become something that takes root in my heart. A couple of years ago, I spoke at a small ladies event at our church and spoke on a verse in Proverbs that warns that as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. I love to use illustrations as the Lord speaks to me often with a visual as well. Morning glories are what came to mind. From the outside, morning glories are pretty, they bloom in the sunlight, they spread out across landscapes easily. Upon closer inspection, one will realize these are weeds. They’re a vine type plant, they intertwine themselves through healthy, growing plants and wrap themselves over and over very tightly in a suffocating fashion. They take over. What they appear at first glance is not what is actually happening underneath.
This is true of our thoughts that don’t uphold the Word of God and his calling in our lives. We sometimes entertain a series of thoughts about ourselves that the enemy places to cause dissension or distract us away from what God is doing or wanting to do.My struggle comes with my own worthiness or qualification across a span of different things. This is something the Lord has been dealing with in me and working to remove by the root.
There are morning glories in my own spiritual garden that have choked the life from things I should have protected and nurtured and allowed God to water and grow. The beauty is that God is a master gardener. He knows just how to remove the things that need pruning and being new life to things that need reviving.
God has brought me to a place where I’m learning things about myself and has brought attention to parts of me that need refinement. My friend Dena says “dig up the root, destroy the fruit.” I’m learning the origin places of some things that are rooted within myself so that I can allow God to heal those parts and move past them. It’s a constant action of casting down the thoughts I know do not align with what God says and actively refuting them daily, sometimes multiple times a day. Does this always happen? Nope, sometimes I fail or take longer than I should to recognize but I’m learning and I’m willing to continue learning and that’s an excellent starting point.
Just Between Me & Jesus 