Weeding the Garden of the Heart

You know, as gardeners tell us, it's not if weeds will sprout up, it's how and where and are we preparing for it, and what are we doing to get rid of them when they do sprout up. You know, this is part of spiritual growth. Right? Getting closer to God. Getting closer to the Son of God. Getting closer to that bright light that is Jesus starts to reflect more things the closer you get. Right? Have you ever noticed that? The closer you get to a mirror, the more you see the imperfections.

From this passage, we are responsible to search our own heart and ask God to weed out the gardens of our heart. Reveal and remove areas of prejudices or things or sins in our life. And we need to do that. We need to be active. We need to be seeking God's word, reading it regularly, putting it in our brain, doing bible studies, praying together, seeking after God's kingdom, serving in the church, doing these things together so that we can become better followers of Jesus Christ.

Number one, the root of prejudice is pride. So be on guard. My bible says pride cometh before a fall. If you ever think you can't sin or do a certain thing, watch out. Watch out. The devil is at the door like a roaring lion ready to devour you. Never think that you're above anything. Be totally reliant on Jesus.

God said, the voice spoke to him a second time. Do not call anything impure that God has made clean. In other words, he's saying, don't say that. That's not correct. And what's interesting here, it gives me a little hope. How many times does it say he saw this sheet? Three times. Right? This happened three times. So do you think Peter got it the first time? No. And we don't get it the first time either.

So my challenge for you today is this, ask God to weed your heart garden. Ask for prejudice or sin or anything else in your life that needs to be rooted out and ripped out to become a parent. Then, talk to someone, pray about it. Don't let it go away. Because if you put it away in a closet, you don't tell anyone, you don't get help with this, that's why we all should have some kind of accountability or friendship group, that we have people in our lives that can ask us tough questions.

And maybe it's just a matter of surrender. See the beautiful thing, the song we sang earlier, no matter what it is, sin or otherwise, Jesus paid it all. All you've gotta do is come back to him and repent and watch what he does in your life.

In our own lives, what weeds need to be removed from our heart garden? What weeds are getting rooted in our life that cause us to be either drifting off path from God, maybe having prejudice towards people, or the way we act or respond, or what else God might be showing you right now.

Second, prejudice thrives on tradition. I challenge you that when you think a certain way, a lot of times we are brought up and we even even in the church, even certain denominations you're brought up and you're taught you're taught to teach or live a certain way. And it's not that we shouldn't we should reject all that, but we should always go back to what does God's word say. What does God's word say? Know his word. This will lead you. This has authority in our life. This is what we should be following.

What is Jesus saying here? Jesus is saying essentially, it's the heart. It's the heart. It's the heart. And then he went on to talk more about this and you continue reading the next few verses. But Jesus is basically saying he was the one that was fulfilling the law. Right? He's fulfilling the law. And it's not that all parts of the law go away. It's just that these ceremonial rituals that had to happen prior to Jesus were now going away because he fulfilled that mission.

But the reality is God is at work in all of us. And if we let things get away from ourselves, just like weeds, they can choke out even the strongest growth in people's lives. And you think about the parable of the soils that Jesus talked about. You cast a seed along the path and some of it grew strongly initially, but the weeds grew up and choked it out. And I dare say we all deal with weeds in our own heart garden, if we're being honest.

If if this has brought up something for you, don't don't leave. Don't don't let it go by the wayside. God might be showing you something, preparing you for something, driving you somewhere that you don't know yet, but he he knows.

He could be using that very issue, that very thing to be a a a footstool for ministry later in life. You know, people that go through certain things are much better able to equip to help people that are going through those things later.

we get lulled into the fact of thinking that once we're saved, it's like the work is done. Jesus is still pulling us closer. He's pulling us closer. He has so much work to do.

and I wanted it to go so much faster. And I look back at it and go now and God was slowing me down, preparing me, getting my heart ready, getting me ready for the next step. Maybe that's happening to you and there's something in your life that God needs to work out to get you ready for the next step in your journey.

This would have made them very prejudiced to the other people around them. And just understand that prejudice is really just this preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience necessary. And a lot of times where it gets really out of control is when you have a preconceived judgment of a group of people just because they're that group of people.

And so we kinda have a little bit of grace here for Peter. He was brought up a Jew. He had rough edges. Remember, ready, fire, aim? He was a hot head at times. But he was one that was definitely seeking Jesus. And it's just a reminder to me that grace abounds in all of us.

that sometimes frustrate us to no ends. When we make the same mistake, even after maybe having a good period of time, it happens to us again. The sin nature never leaves us. Now, we always hope that there evidences in our lives, spiritual fruit, exhibiting growth and hopefully these mistakes are less frequent and our trajectory is in a better direction.

as we think about this, and not only in the context of what we're reading it, but how it also will apply to us. Because the reality is, is Peter was a sinner. We're sinners. And we've got deep rooted issues

The stuff doesn't grow or it doesn't grow as well. It gets stunted and it certainly doesn't get as far as you would want it to get. The same issue I think plagues mankind today. Peter wasn't alone. We experience the same kind of things in our life, in these weeds, and maybe even prejudice that rears its ugly head in our lives.

It seems that Cornelius is not saved. Notice it's he's God fearing. You know, just knowing who God is doesn't save you. Right? Devil, the demons know who God is. In fact, they even have to obey him when he tells them to do stuff, but they're certainly not saved. But it does appear here that his heart is very open.

And I love I love meeting people that are this way because they don't even realize it, but they're seeking a salvation experience. And this has happened. You know, I've witnessed this in life at different times. Unfortunately, most of my encounters with non Christians is not always that way, but it is it is encouraging to see when God is working.

this idea then would have made it really hard for a Jewish person to then say, okay, now the gospel that I believe, even Peter, that I believe, that he believes was now coming to the Jewish people. And in some senses, this sense of pride had convinced many Jews that because they were chosen people, they were superior to the other nations. So this would have made it very difficult for them.

But there there it's always there. Right? You think you get rid of sin. You think you get rid of the mice. If you've had a house in the country for any length of time, you know that you never are really rid of them. You just don't see them as often.

And the third is really that there is things in all of our lives that God needs to work out. And I mentioned last week or the week before, I don't remember. It's been a long week sickness wise but so give me grace on that. But this idea of God basically needing to eradicate sin nature out of our life. Get rid of it.

that you can't take back, but you can go try to mend that fence. I don't know what it is. But I know that our God, the Holy Spirit that led these ragtag group of people through the book of acts that exploded into a following that's all across the world is the same God that serve we serve today.

it would have been a little different. Maybe they would have been a little more hesitant. I don't know. We don't know why God didn't give any more details or why he doesn't in our lives as well. But I think I've got some ideas to maybe help us get there. And you probably can relate to this.