Mowing the Lawn 7/18/13

Good Morning,

Starting today with a large, very large cup of Door County Peanut Butter Crunch Coffee.
www.doorcountycoffee.com 

Well summer is here and the spring has disappeared. We have reduced mowing the grass to once a week now instead of twice. The only difference now is that the chore usually needs to be done after work on a hot evening. So it is not as nice of a chore as it was a month ago. But the results are needed.

We do enjoy our yard. We are truly blessed by our Heavenly Father to have been able to use it for about 25 years now. I remember when our house was first built. Our yard was clay, rocks and dust that first year. Then it started. Some sweat equity, apple trees, grass, bushes flowers, lilacs, blue spruce, maple and white birch trees have all matured. Yet the yard still requires maintenance and work.

Friends, we are all like that. Rocks and clay that God can take and make useful to others for His Kingdom. God is never finished with us until He calls us home. He started on us from the beginning and will see it through to completion. And from time to time He has to prune us, just as we prune our trees for health and better fruit. God wants to prune us through His personal relationship with each of us. He knows what is best and desires us to feed on His word, grow through prayer and obedience. I have attached some Bible verses to help walk you through my thoughts.

Philippians 1:3-6  He will complete what He has started in you.
³ I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, ⁴ always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy, ⁵ for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, ⁶ being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;


John 15  (NKJV) From time to time we need pruning

The True Vine

15 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine dresser. ² Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away;^[a] and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. ³ You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. ⁴ Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.

⁵ “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. ⁶ If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. ⁷ If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will^[b] ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. ⁸ By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.


Deuteronomy 8:3 (NKJV) We are fed through His word.

³ So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9 God requires us to be obedient.
“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
God loves you and if you haven't heard it from someone today that you are loved. I love you too.

Marty