A couple of months ago I planted some bulbs in my front garden, daffodils and irises, and recently they started to flower. “So what?” I hear you ask. Well… for some people gardens and flowers are everyday occurrences not worthy of any fanfare, but for me having flowers in my garden is a monumental occasion.
You see, we have been renovating our house and until very recently had not had a front garden. I had kept these bulbs in pots on my front deck for many years, waiting for the time I could plant them; the daffodils had flowered in their pot once…. the iris had never flowered at all and both were quite stagnant in their growth. I had persisted in keeping them alive in an environment where obviously they could never flourish but it wasn’t until I put them in the garden where they belonged that they began to become what they were always created to be. They blossomed. They grew and they thrived because they were where they were meant to be and they were in a healthy environment which enabled them to bloom.
It is the same with us. I was in my early forties when I was taken out of my ‘pot’ and planted in a garden where I could blossom and flourish. Someone had put me in a figurative pot when I was a little girl and I had been kept in my pot by various situations, people and circumstances for most of my life. I had been ruled by other people’s opinions and actions towards me and I believed I was unworthy of anything else, until one day God reached down from Heaven and literally uprooted me. He showed me very clearly that staying in my pot was keeping me from being the person He created, and wanted, me to be. And, just like re-potting a pot plant… it was messy. I had to deal with things and acknowledge things about myself that I didn’t particularly like. And I had to ‘unlearn’ so many things that I had believed all my life about love, sex, relationships… and my identity.
Our Heavenly Father is so faithful and merciful. He never lets us stay in our pots but will gently (or not so gently in my case!) bring us to completion in Him. Philippians 1:6 And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. When we give our lives to Jesus, the work begins in our life but we also need to be willing to take the journey of refining and healing so that the work can be completed. It’s not easy, and like my re-potting, it can be messy.
The process of refining is not supposed to be easy, but it is worth it. The caterpillar has to go through a process of metamorphosis before it turns into a butterfly and if it doesn’t go through the process fully, it won’t be able to fly because its wings aren’t strong enough. The butterfly needs to struggle a bit before it can fully become all it was created to be but it goes through the process because that is exactly what it was created to do.
Are you struggling? Are you wondering why you’re here? Do you feel like you can never be used because you’re too much of a mess? Well, wonder no more. You are here because you have a loving creator God who put you here for this exact time and place. He loves you and desires for you to become everything He created you to be. If you’re not sure, just ask Him. If you need to go through the refining fire, let it happen… I can guarantee you that you will come out the other side better than when you went in.
1 Peter 1:6-7 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.
