What’s the downside to a flower bouquet? It will wilt & die, because it has been cut off from the root. Don’t cut yourself off from God.

Although I’m certainly no Master Gardener, I have gotten better in recent years about keeping plants alive. (I once killed a cactus, so any improvement is noteworthy!) I have an ivy that has survived for several years, and I’ve even pinched off some of its vines and re-rooted & potted them a few times. The ivy now has a few long, winding vines that I wrap around the pot in a leafy spiral.

Well, I learned something new this week. I noticed that a colleague had a potted ivy on her desk that was full and fluffy, not long and spiraled like mine. I asked her why hers looked so lush, and she said that the trick is to prune it and force the vine to grow upward, rather than outward. To think – all this time, I’ve been so proud of myself for simply keeping a plant alive and healthy, when it could have been even lusher and fuller!

Aren’t our spiritual lives like that, sometimes? We get stuck in a rut and keep on with the same ol’, same ol’ because it seems to be working ok, but we don’t make the effort to prune areas that need to grow. Maybe we don’t have outwardly obvious places that need to be plucked and clipped, like yellow leaves and dead spots, but if we were willing to let the ultimate Master Gardener prune us where he sees fit, then we could become even more impactful for the kingdom.

Romans 11:16-20 takes this idea to a whole new level. Our lives aren’t just pruned and repotted; if the kingdom of God could be described as a tree, then we’ve been completed grafted into it! Our life force is now “… a holy, God-planted, God-tended root. If the primary root of the tree is holy, there’s bound to be some holy fruit. Some of the tree’s branches were pruned and you wild olive shoots were grafted in” (v. 16-17, MSG).

If we are grafted into the Master Gardener’s tree, then we have nothing to fear from a little pruning by his loving hands. He wants our roots to dig deeply into his Word so that we can grow to our fullest capacity! Trust him with the changes he wants to make in your life.

When our favorite team loses, we often blame the refs or ump, but when we drop the ball on God’s plan for our lives, who is there to blame?

What would it look like if Jesus was truly your One & Only? Would priorities in your life need to shift around? Talk to him about it today.

Jealousy is about something we don’t have that we want or something we do have that we want to keep. What are you holding tight to?

Think about someone you are jealous of. Be honest. What is it about them that you envy? Are you willing to give that issue to God?

What does loyalty really mean? How do you live it out in your day-to-day life? How do you live it out in your faith-life?

God is jealous of our affections. Are you a fair weather fan and give up on him when the going gets tough or committed for the long haul?

Have you ever been in love? Multiply those feelings by a quadrillion, and that is a tiny bit closer to how much God desires to know you!

Whenever I travel without the kids, I like to enjoy the peace and quiet buy them t-shirts or notepads (something easy to pack) with the local university or major league team logo. I have never thought much about rivalries; I just figured they were fun and useful souvenirs. However, the first time one of them wore a St. Louis Cardinals t-shirt (that I picked up at a conference there a few years ago) after the last World Series, I was quickly reminded of how devout some rivalries can be!

Rivalries are about competition. When we compete, we expect to perform better than our opponent. We want to win. We want them to lose. We are jealous when they beat us. After all, isn’t second place the first loser?

Team loyalties are just one example; what about other forms of rivalry and envy in our lives? Let’s think about relationship rivalries: There would be no “in” crowd if it weren’t for jealousy. If we truly didn’t care what other people thought of us, then cliques wouldn’t exist. Relationship envy doesn’t end with high school or college, either. Think about the jealously a man feels when his wife or girlfriend attracts too much attention from other guys, or a lady whose man is ogled by other women. Like a toddler staking claim to his possessions, there is a sense of envy that rises up in us and says: “Mine!!”

Would you believe God is even more jealous than that for you? In James 4, the Bible tells us that when we have God’s Spirit inside of us, he longs for us jealously – so much so that he says if we are a friend of the world, then by default, we become enemies of God. You cannot truly love both; you have to pick a side. When we commit our loyalty to God, he wants our whole heart – not just part of it … not all of it but only sometimes … he wants all of it all the time.

He loves you with such a fierce sense of jealousy because he wants to be your One & Only, your Everything. What could the world possibly offer, by comparison?