Manure Stinks, but it Sure Brings a Good Harvest!

This morning I spent time in my garden, with help from my handsome older son, digging compost and manure into the soil in preparation for planting veggies.  I've been anticipating planting and harvest, so it was gratifying to shape and prep the beds, then watering the newly tilled soil.  Doing this will give me a better yield, nicer veggies for my fam to eat.  But you know, manure stinks.  When I purchased the bags of it, it filled my van with an....odor.  When I watered the garden today, it stunk. 

Sometimes it is exactly the stink that happens in our day, week, year, that is the foundational enriching amendment our lives are needing to kickstart a new, bountiful, beautiful harvest that we've been longing for. 

So, even if things around you are stinking, praise God!  Let Him work in your heart and use the stink to bring the needed change in the soil of your life.  It may not be pleasant or comfortable - we may even think we prefer to remain hard, dry, cracked and infertile - but deep down I believe we all yearn for better.

Here's to a new season, a fresh beginning, the hope of harvest.  I believe it's in you!

Sickness Has Nothing On Me!

I want you to know I've won.  To be more accurate, Christ has won and I am happily joined together with Him in victory!

The Bible says Christ paid the ultimate and final price to redeem us from sickness and death, that by His stripes I am healed, and that the very Spirit of God that raised Christ from the dead lives in ME.  I believe this and confess it over my life continually.  There has been countless times this past year when others have been sick, I have felt it try to latch on me, and I have simply refused to get sick, choosing to stand in faith that I am healed. 

Why am I sharing this?  Because I am in bed with the flu.  Why?  What happened to my faith?  Let me tell you something - sickness HAS NOT WON in my life.  CHRIST HAS WON.  The number of battles we face with the brokenness and decay of humanity can't be counted, and also true that the battles I've had victory in are too numerous to forget.  I REMEMBER them.  When one skirmish seems lost, I don't focus on this.  I don't believe I have lost any ground.  I don't rehearse that "I am sick".  I continue to declare my victory in Christ.  Nothing can take that from me.  Even when my last breath is drawn on this earth, I will continue to live in Christ, and one day, one glorious day, my body will be resurrected to life forever in perfect health with Him.

So right now, I'm going to take the rest my body needs, and I'm going to rejoice in the good things God has got going on.  And you?  The same victory is yours if you'll believe.  :)