Salvaging Seeds

I went to a night of praise last night. It had been a hard, stressful week. As I sat there and soaked in the words being sung, saying He is a good good Father, it resonated deep within me for all the things the songs said were true, the truest things I know and yet I felt detached at first. It was a battle to quiet my mind and to concentrate, to give into the truths and let go of any lies. I felt convicted, God has done so much to show me His faithfulness and yet I continually stress and doubt and give in to anxiousness  which can easily lead to me leading the way instead of a confident faith in Him, His Word and His promises. I'm not one to say I get visions, but occasionally I do feel God gives me little visuals that help me understand my struggle. As the praise continued I raised my hands in faith, offering Him the praise He is due, regardless of my feelings. I thought of the passages in Scripture that describe a mustard-seed sized faith. So much of my struggle right now is sorting the good and bad seed. In thinking on those verses, I pictured a damaged seed.  I thought of the words by Dale Fincher, founder of solution.org-a site devoted to spiritual abuse. "Twisted doctrines produce twisted seeds of spiritual abuse."

In Matthew 17:20 Jesus said "Because of the littleness of your faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, "move from here to there" and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you." I wonder how damaged seeds play out in that scenario? Probably not well. I did a quick search of "damaged seeds" and skimmed through it to find some instructions on salvaging damaged seeds. I'm no farmer but several things stood out to me - "the first thing you must do is determine how valuable the damaged seeds are."  The steps are fairly straight-forward:

Step 1:  Remove the seed pods and as much chaff as you can.
Step 2:  Lay the seeds out on the drying screen.
Step 3:  Blot the seeds with paper towels if they're really wet. (more drying)
Step 4:  Put a fan on them to further dry them out.
Step 5:  Last step. If germination is already taking place, you have two choices: 1.) Plant the seeds          
              2.)  toss them!

Could it be that I am in the salvaging the seed process and if so, what step am I on?

The boys and I worked on pulling weeds in our backyard today and earlier in the week. It's a sweat-breaking job because not only have many weeds overtaken our yard, lots of tree saplings have as well and they are hard to tear out. It felt so good when I was able to win over the stubborn, thick roots and get it pulled out. A lot of the cleaning up required disposing of the chaff, the dry dusty mess. It seems so representative of sorting truth from lies. Some lies are subtle and can even be used in a way that twists the truth and context of scripture.

As I continued to worship and dig into to the truth of His promises I was confronted with one of my hindrances, a fear of hoping. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life." That has been a bittersweet word for me for a very long time, feeling deferred. It's dark and painful, but that mustard-seed size faith again is in the process of being salvaged. Am I on Step 1 or 5? I guess I will know when germination takes place. Only God, the Master-Gardner sorts the good and bad seeds that have been planted along my life path. I know I am removing as much chaff as I can, soaking in the Truth, allowing it to untwist what was twisted and distorted. Lots of drying, it doesn't sound pleasant, but necessary. So necessary it requires three steps. I can trust Him, He is Worthy of my praise and my obedience. He is leading me into all Truth. I left the evening receiving the exhortation to walk in confident trust. He wants truth in the most inward parts and I'm yielding to the process.