Planning Your Spiritual Life

Jesus's parable of the wheat and weeds invites us to take an honest look at what is growing in our own hearts. Just as weeds in a garden choke out healthy plants, vices like lust, anger, resentment, and greed quietly strangle the spiritual growth God desires for us. Left unchecked, these weeds can produce devastating consequences, both personally and in the world around us. The antidote is not passive hope but intentional action. Every follower of Christ needs a clear vision and a concrete plan, often called a rule of life, for living as a faithful disciple. Without that plan, it is far too easy to drift. Jesus wants to uproot what does not belong in our hearts, but He needs our cooperation to do it. 

Transcript

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My brothers and sisters in the Lord, for those of you who like to garden or love to garden, for those of you who have spouses who tell you you like to garden, you know that one of the biggest enemies of a gardener are the weeds. The weeds, my dear friends, because the weeds not only make the garden aesthetically unpleasing, but the weeds also choke the good plants, the beautiful plants, of needed nutrients, soil, water, sunlight. And before you know it, the entire garden can be overcome by the weeds. Given the parable that Jesus tells to the disciples and to the crowd about the wheat and the weeds, I think a wonderful question for our reflection this morning is this. What about the weeds? What about the weeds? What are you and I doing, my dear friends, in our own lives in order to counteract the weeds? In order to dispose of the weeds, in order to annihilate the weeds. Because you see, my dear friends, all of us have the weeds that grow in our hearts. The weeds that come, my dear friends, because of our fallen human nature. The weeds that exist because human evil is still rampant in the world in which we live. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, and all the way until the end of the world when Jesus comes again in glory. So what are we doing about the weeds? Several years ago, I had the opportunity to go to Dacau. If you've ever been to Dachau or any of the former Nazi concentration camps, you know that it is a very powerful experience. When you go to Dachau in Germany, there is a monument there to all the thousands upon thousands of Jewish people who were murdered by the Nazis. There's also there areas in which they've built exhibits and then preserved exhibits so that people can still see the concentration camps, so they can still see the extermination ovens where the mass graves were, as well as piles of articles of clothing that were taken from people before they were sent to their death. And you when you walk through the main gates of Dakal, there is a sign that's posted above the gateway. That sign is written in German, English, Russian, and French. And the words on the sign say this: never again. Never again. People often ask, why haven't places like Dachal been totally decimated from the face of the earth? Well, they remain, my dear friends, as a reminder of what human evil can do, of what the weeds in our lives can do. Never again should we allow such tragedy and travesty to happen on the face of the earth. The weeds, my dear friends. What are the weeds in your heart this day that need to be plucked out? What are the weeds that are growing? But you see, my brothers and sisters, the Lord desires our heart to be like a beautiful garden. And all of the virtues and graces He desires to pour into us, He wants us to cultivate that in our heart so that our beautiful garden bears beautiful flowers. It bears good fruit for the kingdom. But then the weeds come in, the weeds of our own vices, the weeds of lust, the weeds of anger, the weeds of resentment, the weeds of unforgiveness, the weeds of greed, and the litany could go on and on. The things in our life, the bad habits, the vices that we just don't want to give up, that are choking the beautiful plants that God wants to plant in our heart. What are we doing about the weeds? And in order to exterminate the weeds, in order to eliminate the weeds from our lives, my dear friends, we have to understand one important thing in the beginning, and that is this. How do weeds grow? How do weeds grow? Now you know in your garden, weeds grow without any effort from your part. No one goes to their garden and says, you know, I would like to plant some weeds. They just happen, they're always there. Jesus says in the gospel, the enemy has done this. Part of our fallen human nature. The weeds are there, my dear friends. It takes no labor on our own part. But the question is, what do we do with those weeds? Because sometimes rather than cultivating the good fruits, we're actually cultivating the weeds. We're feeding into the vices. And one of the prevailing philosophies of the modern world that is often one of the biggest weeds that we face is that philosophy that basically says, do whatever makes you happy. My friends, that is one of the biggest weeds that exist in our modern world. Do whatever makes you happy. Nowhere in the gospel does Jesus say, do whatever makes you happy. Because the Lord knows that in order to love, there's going to have to be sacrifice. There's going to have to be self-denial. There's going to have to be restraint. There's going to have to be pain. And I don't know about you, my dear friends, but on a normal day, I don't like pain. I don't like sacrifice. But in order to love, it doesn't matter what you like. It matters how do we get to the end goal? Because love is an act of the will. Do whatever makes you happy, my dear friends, is a false philosophy that leads us down the pathway of the wide road that eventually leads to destruction rather than the narrow road that leads to life. How are we cultivating that garden? Weeds do not take any labor, my dear friends. They don't take a whole lot of effort. They're there. And they're going to grow and they're going to prosper unless you and I, my dear friends, take decisive action to uproot the weeds. So first we have to realize and understand how weeds grow. The second thing we have to do, my dear friends, is we have to have a plan. We have to have a vision. What is the vision for your garden? What is the vision or your plan for your spiritual life? Because some of us, my dear friends, we have better plans for our physical homes than we do for our spiritual homes. If you were redoing your landscaping, most people would not just go out there with a shovel and just start digging anywhere. You have a plan. You mark it out, you decide what plant you want to have. You make sure you have an irrigation system. You have some forethought, you have some planning, you have a vision of what you are trying to create. Well, in the same way, my dear friends, what about the garden of our spiritual life? How often do we take time to envision what it means to be a disciple, as Jesus calls us to? And how many times do we put a plan into place to walk the path of discipleship? To be able to follow the Beatitudes, the two great commandments of love, to be able to understand Jesus' teaching about forgiveness and about the proclamation of the kingdom and of the gospel. Do we have a plan, my dear friends? In religious life, it's often called a rule of life. But that's not just meant for those in religious life. Everybody in this church should have a rule of life. You should have a plan. A rule of life which says, in order for me to live as a faithful follower and disciple of the Lord Jesus, this is part of my rule of life for myself, for my marriage, for my family. These are the non-negotiables about being a Christian and a disciple of the Lord Jesus. It's the plan I'm gonna follow because without the rule of life, my dear friends, it's easy to fall off the path and into the gutter. Do we envision, my dear friends, do we have a plan? There was a coach who was speaking to a group of young men, and he said to them, You can achieve whatever you desire to achieve with the help of God. You can achieve whatever you desire to achieve with the help of God. After the little speech, one of the young men went to the coach and said, Coach, I want to be the fastest man in the world. And the coach said, You can achieve that with the help of God. That is a beautiful dream, that is a beautiful vision. But then he went on to say, But let me remind you the importance of a vision, of a plan. Sometimes it can be like the clouds and be so far off that they float away. He said, if you want that vision to become a reality, you have to build a ladder to that cloud. You have to build a ladder to that dream. That's the rule of life. You have to build a ladder to what it means to be that disciple of the Lord Jesus. And so this young man, he did it. He trained and he built his rule of life. And eventually in 1936, the young man by the name of Jesse Owens won the Olympics and the record for the fastest man on earth. But you've got to have a plan. Because without the plan, my dear friends, the weeds are gonna grow. And after you have a plan, you have to ask yourself: Is this a plan, my dear friends, that leads to the beauty of eternal life? Is this a plan that leads to the beeftific vision? Is this a plan that leads to the heart of Jesus? You may have may have heard the uh little story about the king and the jester. Once upon a time there was a king, and there was a jester who came in and entertained the king, and the king was so pleased with the jester that the king said to the jester, I have a gift for you. And so he gave the jester, jester a wand, and he said, I give you this wand, and I want you to give this wand one day to a man who is a greater fool than you are. And so the jester took the wand, and many years passed, and the king was on his deathbed. The jester went into the king's chamber, and the king said to the jester, I'm going on a long journey. And the jester asked the king, Where are you going? He says, I have no idea where I'm going. And the jester asked him, How long are you going? He said, I'm going forever for all eternity. Then the jester asked, What plans have you made? How have you prepared your life? And the king said, I've done nothing. The jester went back to his room, brought the wand, and gave it back to the king. And he said to the king, Now I have found a man that is more foolish than myself. My brothers and sisters, if we do not have a plan, if we do not have that vision of what it means to be the disciple, then the weeds are gonna take over. And the beautiful blossoms of God are never going to be able to protrude through into our lives. And with that plan, my dear friends, with that vision of discipleship, with that plan, that rule of life, the third part is commitment. You and I have to be committed. We know, my dear friends, that in a garden, in a physical garden, it takes a lot of work for it to look beautiful. The same thing is true about our spiritual life. We must be committed disciples, we must be committed men and women, committed each and every day to do whatever God calls us to do for his glory and for our salvation and sanctification. And so, my dear friends, I go back to my original question. What about the weeds? What are you and I doing about the weeds in our lives? If this was a school mass, I would have brought a prop. But I didn't bring a prop today, so you just have to imagine my prop would be a weed whacker. The Lord Jesus wants to come with a divine weed whacker into your hearts. But he needs your cooperation to begin to uproot that which is not of him. The weeds that are choking out the beautiful blossoms of the Lord. My dear friends, what about the weeds? Amen.