This is the last in my series on this….

Today I am looking at busy or cluttered soil. This may not just be ground that is overgrown with weeds; it may also be ground that has TOO MANY GOOD THINGS trying to grow at once.

In my life, clutter happens very easily. Unless you know me very well, you will not know that I am naturally extremely untidy. When I am cooking, I forget to put things away as I go. My kitchen ends up looking like the inside of a skip and then I have a mammoth task in undoing it all and making right. Jon despairs through a hearty laugh and a ‘whisk it all into the bin’ policy…

A close friend and I joke that we are ‘transformational tidiers!’ We let things get really rather terrible, before applying the elbow grease needed to make everything clean again.

But clutter comes into our lives in other ways.
1. Things we have borrowed but are not ours and have yet to be returned.
2. Things people have left by mistake.
3. Things we need to throw out but haven’t yet had time to.
4. Things we can’t bear to throw out because they remind us of something precious.
5. Things other people bring to our homes, that they like, but we don’t.

My house is crammed with such things!
Our lives can be too.
Perhaps you have ‘borrowed’ someone else’s ministry and forgotten to give it back? Maybe someone once suggested you for the prayer team, or the creche and you keep doing it but really feel God leading you somewhere else… Imagine who you are stopping from serving because of your cluttered life?

Cluttered soil is dangerous because it’s so subtle. Perhaps, like me, you need to do some soil analysis and weed out anything that’s hindering your spiritual growth. It could be that even your greatest successes at the moment are overshadowing the new things God is raising up.

Weeding can be tedious, but only then can you see what is growing and what needs to be cut back or rooted out.

Father, as we seek to serve You in these days, make us wise to the things we need in our soil. Help us to be on the look-out for the things which distract us and clutter up the surfaces of our lives. Teach us the difference between things we are growing and things YOU are growing in us. Help us to be totally ruthless if we find something that is the enemy of your good purposes in us.