Every garden left unattended will naturally grow wild. An overgrown garden, of course, loses its beauty and its owner/gardener is looked upon as incompetent or even useless.
Every believer in Christ is a garden. And every ministry is a garden. The Holy Spirit is the gardener of every true Christian and of every genuine ministry.
In other words, if you truly have been born of God, then the Holy Spirit will manage your life.
So also, any ministry established by God will be managed by the Holy Spirit to ensure that such ministry glorifies Christ Jesus.
Because the Holy Spirit would not be insulted nor be seen as incompetent, He will prune you every now and then. He will continually trim you so that you can retain the beauty of Christ.
So, why does the Holy Spirit trim God’s children? Why would the Divine Gardener be chopping off bit and bits of your ministry? Or shall I say, what are the things the Holy Spirit will be cutting off from your life and from your ministry?
Number one is Self-Importance. By the reason of the fallen nature of mankind, every one of us is vulnerable to the sin of self importance.
That feeling of entitlement – that unChristlike need we feel to get respect or admiration or reputation or recognition from others – that greed for title and position – it is not of the Spirit of Christ! We live in a generation of the self-entitled crowd.
Everybody thinks they deserve this or that, even when they have not honestly laboured to earn the honour or reward concerned. This is the platform of pride – thinking yourself to be what you are not, or esteeming yourself above what you really are.
And so, when a poor folk desires to live like the rich, it is self-importance – it is pride! When a common artisan, for instance, covets the luxurious clothing or cars or houses of the wealthy, that is self importance – it is pride! When an employee covets the social status of his or her employer, that is self importance – it is pride!
When a pastor who is just starting out in ministry desires honour of pastors who have already gone through years of blood and sweat for the gospel, that is self entitlement – it is pride!
When a person who is still living under the proverbial roof of their parents thinks they deserve to be treated to the same freedom as people who are independent of their parents, that is self importance – it is pride!
When an unmarried person wants to enjoy the privileges of marriage, like sexual acts for instance, that is self importance – it is pride!
And when a Christian still thinks he or she can live for fun and pleasure like the people of the world, that is the zenith of self-importance – it is foolish and it is prideful!
The Holy Spirit who is the gardener of your life will certainly not spare the wild branches and weeds of self importance. He will chop them off because they disfigure the image of Christ in you.
Remember Philippians two verses five through seven say, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant”.
Servanthood is one of the beauties of the new life in Christ. A true Christian is a person who has become a servant for the sake the name of Christ. But self-importance never makes anybody serve.
A self-important fellow wants only to be served by others – and that is ugly and disgusting in the sight of the Lord. So, self-importance must go, says the Holy Spirit.
Another thing that the Holy Spirit will be cutting off in your life and ministry is the wild plant of Self-dependence. Every man seeks his own glory.
We all thirst for a cup of “I did it!”We all want to be able to say, “Look at me! See what I have accomplished! See how much I have! See how great I am!” Most people labour so much in order to accomplish so much for the ordinary purpose of securing their own future; as if any human being can secure the future by his own effort.
Does anybody even have tomorrow in his hand? Yet some people study so hard, piling up certificates after certificates simply because they believe that quantity of knowledge is the way to make headway in life.
Another group of people give all their lives to their jobs trusting that the quantity of money they make is the answer. Some trust in the social status of the circle of friends they keep.
They believe their rich friends or their influential acquaintances will save them in the day of trouble. Some trust in marriage. They are so calculating and ambitious in terms of whom they choose to marry believing that their future is in the hand of the spouse they choose.
While some put so much trust in their children; they give all their lives to serve and provide for their children, trusting that their children are the salvation of their future. When any of the foregoing instances is the case in anyone’s life, then God is pushed out of the equation, or He is used as a means to achieving our goals.
But this mindset is not of Christ. The Bible teaches that the man Jesus lived every moment of his earthly life dependent on God and not on himself. He lived for the will of the heavenly Father.
The reason you trust so much in your own efforts is because you have not submitted to God. You still have not thrown away your will for God’s will. You trust in things and not in Christ.
Your intellect or your riches or your position is your god. But Psalm twenty verse seven says, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God”.
The reason you are still focused on acquiring so much earthly things is because you do not remember that God is more than enough.
God said to Gideon in Judges chapter seven verse two, “The people that are with you are too many for Me to give the Midianites into their hands, lest Israel vaunt themselves against Me, saying, Mine hand has saved me”.
So you see, orchestrating your own advancement by trusting in your own wisdom that is in your tiny head amounts to raising yourself against God. God is not pleased with your self-dependence! A self dependent person ignores God.
They never bother to find out what God wants for them in a given situation. They just do whatever they like, and then run to God when things go bad.
If you have truly been born of God, the Holy Spirit will be working in you to trim off the excess fat of your self-dependency.
One of the syndromes visible in a person that is suffering from self-dependence is that they are usually busy doing so many things – so many activities such that there is no time to wait upon God or to just be alone with God.
You can do ministry with the spirit of self-dependence. In that case, you will be the captain of your ministry and not Christ. Martha was self-dependent at some point, choosing to create so much activities for herself rather than sitting at Jesus’ feet to know what the Lord wants from her.
Trust in God! Pursue after Him, says the Spirit of the Lord. Depend upon Christ Jesus, and let Him be your ambition and your goal. Parents, give your children Jesus and not cool gadgets and toys.
Teach them the life of Christ more than western education. Employee, if your work takes up all of your time so that you never have time for God, then that thing in your hand is not a job but a spiritual coffin – throw it away before God throws you away as useless.
Jesus says in Luke chapter nine verses twenty-three through twenty-five, “If any man will follow me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.
For what is a man advantaged, if he gains the whole world, and loses himself, or be cast away?” To depend on yourself rather than on Christ is to lose God; and to lose God is to lose eternal life. A life dependent on God is a life sold to the glory of Jesus Christ. You are determined to follow Christ, come what may.
Another thing the Holy Spirit will be chopping off from your Christian life is your fearfulness. The fear that is common to all is the fear of the unknown. We are usually afraid of what may or may not happen.
Therefore, our fearfulness is essentially nothing but lack of faith in the providence of our good and omnipotent God. Fear is not of God. Scriptures say, “He that believes shall not be afraid”.
And the Spirit of Christ does not make us timid but bold and sound. Fear kills a man before the day of death. The Bible tells that Simon Peter began to drown in the sea when fear entered his heart.
Whenever a divine being appeared in the Scriptures, their first words are usually, “fear not!” Why? Because, fear is not in heaven. Fear is of the devil. Fear is the torment of hell.
First John chapter four verse eighteen says, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: because fear has torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love”.
It therefore goes without saying that if Christ is love, and there is no fear in love, then fear is anti-Christ. To be dominated by fear is to allow yourself to be systemically devoured by a tiny rat from hell until that rat grows into a lion in your life.
Who gave you permission to fear, says the Spirit of the Lord? Do you not know that the Lord of hosts Himself is your captain in this battle?
Do you not know that He has conquered already? Do you not know that all knees in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea bow and tremble at His appearing?
Repent from your fear and set your eyes upon Jesus Christ and stand in the power of His might.
Finally, another thing the Holy Spirit trims off from your life is Complacency or what you might call self-satisfaction. Most believers have the tendency to sit-relaxed in a particular level in their walk with God.
Some never even bother to go beyond the point they were when they first accepted Christ.
Their passion or love for Christ is not increasing. Their zeal for the things of God is hardly existent! There is no evidence of progress in their spiritual life but that hardly concerns them.
They are just satisfied with singing nice Christian songs and dancing in the congregational services. Yet that hymn writer says, “I’m pressing on the upward way, new heights I’m gaining every day. Still praying as I onward bound, Lord plant my feet on higher ground”.
That sacred yearning for progress in Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will certainly chop off the wild grasses of complacency in you to keep you from being conceited.
He would not allow you to be contented with spiritual mediocrity. He would move you to keep longing for more until you are filled with Christ and until you are completely immersed in the precious blood of the Lamb.
The Holy Spirit will keep the fire of Christ falling upon you until all the impurities of your soul are consumed.
The Lord hates mediocrity in the lives of His people. Spiritual complacency is the camouflage of lukewarmness.
The Lord said to the Christians of Laodicea, “Because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue you out of My mouth”.
But how did the Laodicean church become lukewarm? It was because they had become complacent and conceited.
Because they were financially and materially prosperous, the Laodicean Christians were ignorant of their spiritual poverty.
They thought they had everything, but in the eyes of the Lord they were wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.
Like the Laodicean Christians, many believers today have forgotten the teaching of Christ which says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.
To be poor in spirit is to realise your need for God. If your life is actively being managed by the Holy Spirit, then you will constantly see your vanity and you will stir yourself to lay hold on God!
Blessed are those that cry out unto the Lord for salvation from their emptiness and from their carnality. The Holy Spirit wants you to come up to the top of Sinai and fellowship with God, just like Moses.
The Holy Spirit wants you to go beyond the outer courts and even beyond the holy place of the tabernacle and to step into the holy of holies, and there make a covenant with Christ with your spirit, soul and body.
The Christian race has no room for those who just want to sit-by idling away. As Christ Himself said, “the kingdom of heaven does not come by observation”.
The kingdom of God is not for speculators but for participators! The glories of eternity are for those who are ready to lay down their neck and to sweat and bleed for Christ.
And the Holy Spirit motivates and mobilises you for this purpose – to live or die for Christ. In any case, to be a lukewarm Christian is to make yourself dinner for the lions of hell.
As the Spirit of God spoke through the mouth of that hymn writer who wrote, “Christian, seek not yet repose! Hear your guardian angel say: you are in the midst of foes. Watch and pray! Principalities and powers wait for your unguarded hour – watch and pray! Put your heavenly amour on.
Wear it every night and day. Ambushed lies the evil one – watch and pray! Hear above all, hear your Lord! Hide within your heart His word – watch and pray! Watch as if on that alone hung the issues of the day.
Pray that help may be sent down – watch and pray!
Oh the great tragedy that befell the church when we decided to replace hymns with the lifeless songs of the so-called Christian artistes who have no clue as to the knowledge and power of God present in the gospel of Christ Jesus! Now pray with me:
1. As I begin to pray now, every altar of self-worship and pride in my heart, collapse and evaporate by fire, in the name of Jesus Christ!
2. Spirit of absolute faith in Christ, fall upon my life in the name of Jesus Christ!
3. Every demon of fear and anxiety operating in my life and in my family, be arrested and imprisoned in the name of Jesus Christ!
4. From every arrow of lukewarmness that has hit me, I recover by the blood of Jesus Christ in the name of Jesus!
5. Every spell of prayerlessness working against my spirit from any domain of darkness, from the graveyard or from the desert or from the forest or from the waters or from a tree or from the skies or from under the ground or from the neighbourhood I live in, hear the word of the Lord: your time is up! Expire and die in the name of Jesus Christ!
6. Holy Ghost, as I begin to pray now, lift me into the higher grounds of faith in the name of Jesus Christ!
