Every time I pull in or out of my driveway, I glance at my front garden bed. It was a mess when Joel and I moved into this house, but after one laborious morning, we tidied it all up, fixed the brick work, and added some bright and cheerful geraniums; it does look really happy and welcoming. …But as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, our property has a very bad case of bindweed. It’s everywhere.
I was thinking about this as I pulled out of my driveway this week. I need to do some weeding in the front to deal with the creeping vines of bindweed so they don’t choke out my cheerful geraniums. As I added that to the mental ‘to do’ list, I realized I begrudged that task because it felt so futile. No matter how often I pull it out, it comes back. No matter how many Saturday afternoons I kneel beside the garden bed and dig out as much root as I can of it, it keeps coming back.
Do you ever feel like it’s futile to try to fix messes in friendships and correct behaviours in your children and try to get over obstacles in your marriage that just seem insurmountable? Does it ever feel just futile to even keep obeying when it doesn’t make a difference?
I do. Some days I just think, why even bother trying? I think this is why writers of the New Testament spend a significant amount of time encouraging us to endure, persist, and to be patient.
Colossians 1:9-11 is helpful and instructive when we feel this way. This is the part of Paul’s letter where he’s telling the church at Colosse what he’s praying for them. He says he is
…asking that [they] may be filled with the knowledge of [God’s] will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy…
Paul is asking God that the Colossians grow in their understanding of God’s will so that they can obey in a way that is pleasing to God. Then he clarifies by explaining this means fruit in every good work. The obedience he’s praying for here is the kind that is pleasing, fruitful, increasing, and joyful. And if you’re like me, sometimes you think that this doesn’t really describe your obedience. …Obedience seems futile sometimes.
I think the key for this kind of fruitfulness is in the little phrase “according to his glorious might”. It’s in the strength of the Lord Christ that we obey, not ours. And if it’s in Jesus’ strength, any fruit is His business, not ours. It’s His invested strength and so the profit made, fruit, is His too. It means that the call to endure can be a call to patience with joy, not futility, because the actual fruit of our obedience is up to God.
Practically, it means when you find the feelings of futility welling up and you wonder whether you should even try, take it to the cross in that moment. Confess your weakness and ask Christ to give you His strength. When it feels like things won’t ever change, turn your eyes to the God whose unchanging nature provides great hope and courage and strength. Ask Him to give you what you lack, let the obedience in His strength be the goal, and then leave the fruit up to Him.
And, instead of moving the task of weeding the garden to the bottom of the list, this week I will attack it with great delight and thankfulness to have yet another opportunity to need Jesus. How gracious He is to remind us of our lack so that it can be a chance to make Himself known to us again!
What you’ll find here is a collection of musings, thoughts, writings, and ramblings about things I’m reading, watching, and thinking about. It’s my goal to inspire, encourage, and instruct my fellow sisters in their walk with Jesus and their understanding of the Word.
- Erika Recommends: Best Books of 2021 - December 15, 2021
- Slow-Going in the Fast Lane - October 14, 2021
- A Taste You Can Feel In Your Cheeks - September 29, 2021
