Gospel With JD GreearSample

Substitute Gospels

One year I found a new hobby: gardening. Maybe the reason I’m intrigued is that the process runs counter to our fast-paced culture. Gardening is a slow process that demands patience. If you want to eat a homegrown cucumber in July, you have
to plant it in May. 

Parallels to our spiritual lives abound. The care put into planting seeds is remarkably similar to the care needed for a new Christian. Constantly pulling weeds to keep plants from being choked is just like the battle we face against sin. If the plant is healthy, it grows fruit. If not, no amount of trimming or encouragement will produce a single piece.

I recently thought of another analogy. I’d been so consumed with making sure my plants were reaching the next stage of growth that I ignored the most profound connection to our spiritual lives that gardening offers: the importance of water. I can do everything right by preparing the soil, weeding, and pruning, but if the plants don’t get water, they’ll die. Water is their source of life. At every stage of their development, they’re entirely dependent on water. Nothing else will do. 

You and I so often long to get to the next stage in our spiritual development that we forget the one thing we need to survive: the gospel. The gospel isn’t a stage we pass through; it’s an ongoing need in our lives. No matter how mature we think we are, without the gospel we wither. If God is the soil of our growth, the gospel is our living water.  We never grow by going beyond the gospel; we grow by going deeper into the gospel.