🌿Breathe Truth🌿
The Lord says, “Then I will heal you of your faithlessness; My love will know no bounds, for my anger will be gone forever. I will be to Israel like a refreshing dew. Israel will bloom like the lily.” —Hosea 14:4-5
🌿Believe Truth🌿
Nearby here in Carlsbad where we are staying in California are some strawberry fields. For a fee, you can go right down into the aisles and aisles of strawberry fields in the dirt and grime and fill up a pint or bucket. The strawberries you pick end up being more expensive than the ones in your local grocery store. So what you are really purchasing is the experience itself. The experience of plucking the strawberries, eating them off the bush, and taking your pint home as a souvenir.
This year, we came a few months earlier than we normally do. So the strawberries have not grown far long enough yet to be picked from the fields.
🍃🍃🍃
Strawberries, like people, need certain conditions to grow. A healthy location, access to water, sufficient sunlight, adequate temperatures, hospitable soil, and enough time.
Sometimes we grow in very cooperative soil that helps us develop and mature. But sometimes we choose soil that is inhospitable to spiritual growth and we find ourselves in hostile dirt. The Prodigal Son found himself in this averse and bellicose situation.
🍃🍃🍃
The conditions that the world offers for spiritual growth are ungodly and self-destructive. The Lost Son found this the hard way.
“The younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money on wild living.
About the same time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land,and he began to starve.” —Luke 15:13-14
🍃🍃🍃
The Lost Son picked a location far away from home that offered more excitement and temptation that appealed to his fleshly desires. Famine swept over his new home and there was no more water. Darkness prevailed his life and shut out the sun. The soil of wild living finally costed him his inheritance.
Location: distant land
Water access: famine
Sunlight sufficiency: darkness
Soil: wild living
🍃🍃🍃
God gives us the choice of what kind of environment we want to thrive and bloom. A worldly environment cannot offer godly conditions for growth. Don’t make the same mistakes as the Lost Son. You will yield the harvest based on the environment you choose: the environment determines the conditions.
Godly conditions produce a godly crop. Choose an environment with conditions that will enable you to harvest and bloom for the long term and to glorify God. Eternal consequences are at stake here.
🍃🍃🍃
God healed the Lost Son from his faithlessness. He can do the same for all of us.
Choose godly soil, environment, and conditions. Choose the forever option. Choose to plant, bloom, and harvest the Real Truth.