Background

Over the past year or so, I have occasionally written about my experiences with an invasive garden weed. Not knowing what it is, I have named it froblemacz. I dig, fertilize, and plant each year. I return to find my garden filled with this unknown and unwanted weed. I dig and dig and dig to remove it, but the next year, I find that froblemacz has taken a larger share of the garden than it did the previous year.

There are some spiritual lessons to derive from gardening. Jesus told some parables which focus around planting, caring for, and harvesting from, gardens. Well, farms, but the principle is the same. I'm finding that we don't understand what he said, because our produce comes from the supermarket, not from the yard. Unless you actually get out there, digging in the soil, all the commentaries in world cannot convey to you the meaning of "the farmer sows the word ..." and neither can your pastor's sermons.

Growing a garden will change the way you think about the economy. The global food system pushes for efficiency. This means that deliveries are just-enough, just-in-time. Should there be some kind of "catastrophic event" that affects the transportation and delivery system, people in the affected area could suffer and even starve before sufficient assistance could arrive. The global food system pushes for uniformity, and thus, promotes genetically-modified organisms (GMO) crops over traditional air-polinated crops. With air polination, you are never completely sure whether a particular plant will be tall or short, whether it will produce in July or in August, or whether it will be subject to the ravages of any particular pest or disease. And yet, that variety makes the whole crop more resilient, because any particular pest or disease is likely to affect only a portion of the whole crop. If a GMO variety is susceptible to a particular pest, the entire crop is at risk.

Once you grow your own vegetables, you won't enjoy the hard, flavorless, yellowish-orange things sold as tomatoes in the supermarkets. You won't want the insipid white and brown stuff that burger joints call lettuce, either. You'll enjoy grapes that actually have flavor that is as intense as "your first time". You'll notice that not every tomato tastes the same as its neighbor, but that most of them are still very good. Some plants may be tall, others short. Some will be upright, others spreading. Some will have a few large fruits, others may have larger numbers of smaller fruits. One plant might attract a lot of insects, while its neighbor remains almost bug-free.

These home-grown fruits and vegetables will almost certainly be more nutritious than supermarket produce. And it will taste far better. For its purpose will be to reward you for the work of growing it, not to remain sellable through a long trip to the market.

But without the challenges of planting, de-weeding, and cultivating, your crops, you may never stick around long enough to harvest. Your enjoyment of the harvest is partly based upon the investment of your time and effort into producing it. When you talk to young believers, they frequently have these outsize goals. I'm going to be the President Obama of witnessing, they say. Though they do not yet know it, their words are empty, because they have not yet faced the challenges. It is only after the challenges have repeatedly forced them to cut back on their plans that they wind up focused on the one or two things that they should be doing.

Yes, froblemacz is essential to your spiritual growth. Hardship helps to refine you, by causing the inner temptations that were always there (but unrecognized) to rise to the top, where you can deal with them. It refines your vision by causing you to prioritize your efforts once you see that your broad wish list is unattainable. Without froblemacz, we would be nothing more than spiritual amoebas. So the next time you see weeds in your garden, physical or otherwise, approach the task of removing them with anticipation, for it is in this process that you will discover what you should be growing.

In my continuing battle against an invasive weed that I named froblemacz, I have been spending a little time each week in the garden in the back yard. Today, I walked out into the front yard and found that the flower bed is teeming with froblemacz plants. Since it will soon be time to stick in some annual color and since it is almost time for perennials to come back, I need to get out there and dig out some weeds.

It just brought to mind a key point for believers: often, sin strikes where you least expect it.

You have heard, as have I, about believers who claim they "fell into bed" with someone, as though they played no part in getting into the situation. But now I believe that we often do not have a lot of notice. If you don't make a practice of anticipating and avoiding potential temptations, you can find yourself in trouble without knowing how you got there.

You need to be thinking about all the potentially froblemacz-laced situations in your life. Are you giving that young woman from work a ride home? Maybe you'd be better off getting a group of co-workers together, walking to the bus stop with her, and waiting there with her until she can board the bus. Going to visit your friend who smokes "wacky tobacky"? Maybe you should have him meet you in a public place. Spending too much time on YouTube and Hulu? Maybe you should keep the computer off until after your daily Bible and prayer time.

Many a believer has been taken unaware by some situation he or she did not anticipate and therefore did not prepare for. Now that you have read this, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. Anticipate situations that could inject undesirable activities (thoughts, words, deeds) into your life. Prepare yourself to resist such life incursions, and take evasive action when you can.

Are you in the Victor Valley area of California and looking for a church? I'd like to invite you to visit Lion of Judah Worship Center.

I've been in the garden again today, battling my nemesis, froblemacz. Froblemacz, for those who don't know, is an unknown invasive, clumping weed that first appeared in my garden about two years ago, and has rapidly spread. Its invasive nature choked off most of the crop last year, and I'm hoping that this year's crop isn't likewise affected.

So the thing to do is to go out as often as possible and dig out froblemacz plants, trying to outrun them.

One of the things I'm learning is that froblemacz mirrors the life of a believer. I have some fruits and vegetables that I wish to grow and to eat. Froblemacz comes from who-knows-where and finds moisture and nutrients, so it proliferates to the point that the intended beneficiaries of the moisture and nutrients don't get any benefit at all. If I want to eat the foods I planted, it is necessary that I go out and do battle with froblemacz.

Likewise, in your life and in mine, there are things that are not necessarily bad, but are not helpful. Given enough time and attention, those things will begin to choke out the good and beneficial things. Thus, when we perceive this threat, we must immediately go into total global warfare mode. But what usually happens is that we don't really think about it until the froblemacz threatens the entire crop.

In my garden, I try not to use chemical fertilizers or pesticides. I haven't been dogmatic about it. For instance, while I spread bagged compost around, I typically spray it with once Miracle-Gro® at the beginning of the year. What I haven't done is buy pesticides for use in the battle against froblemacz. I considered pesticides the first year of the garden, when tomato hornworms and whiteflies were abundant and found throughout the garden. Later that year, the birds discovered the garden, and have kept insect losses mostly manageable.

But when we are thinking about invasive plants such as froblemacz (again, I made up the name because I didn't know what kind of plant it is), it might be a good idea to head over to the local hardware store and pick up a fast-acting, short-lived broadleaf herbicide. If you are having trouble keeping up, it is often a matter of limiting yourself to less effective tactics.

Don't misunderstand me. I would still need to dig up froblemacz plants. What a pesticide would get me is the ability to kill the weeds faster than they can regenerate or spread.

Now, let us look at it from a spiritual point of view. Weeds, as always, are the things that we don't want growing in our lives, generally sins which gain control over us as well as inert things which distract us from our necessary spiritual disciplines. There are some which come along and then they are gone, and others which seem to find a home within our lives. Tactics which are effective for one-time invaders are often ineffective when turned against a persistent and invasive foe. As believers, we need to be willing to "cut off your hand if it causes you to sin", meaning that we have to get to the source of the sin and cut deeply to remove it.

There are some doctrines that we have absorbed which may make it more difficult to fight off the invasion. I list here a few:

• Sin is always a sign of demonic interference and not the pursuit of one's inner desires. James tells us that "Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions, And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death." (James 1:14-18, NLT)


• Hardships are a sign that you are harboring sin. Believers should always experience blessing, and never hardship. See, for instance, Job's friends' statements, beginning in the 4^th chapter of Job. We need to understand that we live in a world that is in rebellion against the rule of the Most High (See, for example, the second Psalm). It is only expected that dedicated Christian (and Messianic Jewish) believers will suffer more hardship than those whose lives do not disrupt the flow of the evil one's plans.


• Since salvation is by grace, we don't have to change what we think, do, or say. People who teach otherwise are legalists, replacing grace with works. In fact, James tells us that our faith should show in our works. In other words, if it is really true that you are saved, your thoughts, words, and deeds will change over time.


• Immersing oneself in the world's culture is the only way to communicate the good news message to people in the world. So if we want to win people from the hip hop culture, for example, we have to wear our pants halfway down our posteriors, use the N-word and foul language, and avoid spending a lot of time around those who aren't a part of that culture. In fact, the Bible tells us that believers have to avoid being contaminated by the world. Not that we should be in monasteries or convents, but we should not seek to be like the world. Instead, seek to be like Christ, who never, ever, said or implied that a person's sinful acts were acceptable, even as he accepted the person who had commited the acts.

If you would like your life to be more successful--not in the financial sense, but in the long-term spiritual growth sense--you need to take a look at your spiritual garden and begin to extirpate your own froblemacz.

There have already been calls for a Constitutional amendment (which I agree, we need), as well as a few voices who have had quite frightening reactions. This is our country, and I do not wish to see it descend into Somalia-style fragmentation.

I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them, intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them. Pray this way for kings and all who are in authority so that we can live peaceful and quiet lives marked by godliness and dignity. This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth.... In every place of worship, I want men to pray with holy hands lifted up to God, free from anger and controversy. -- 1 Timothy 2:1-8, NLT

Our nation is under a determined spiritual attack, aided and abetted by an internal apostasy and a descent into dollar-worship centered around helping large corporations (both for-profit and non-profit) to become richer and more powerful. Nine-eleven could have been a positive inflection-point, but instead we see the erosion of individual rights and privacy at the expense of ever more power to corporations. We no longer depend upon God above for guidance in our decisions, but instead we look to "the arm of flesh": lawyers and industry codes of conduct. We no longer depend upon God to amplify our efforts and therefore to grant us success in accomplishing his desires, but instead we depend upon the arm of flesh (government agencies and large, out-of-area corporations [LOOACs]) to make us successful by their own measure.

If this decision means anything, it is that our nation is sick from its head to its feet, and that we must come before God and ask his forbearance (that he not punish us for our wrongdoing) and that his Holy Spirit will cause us to fall on our faces before him and to abandon our own ways.

We have believers offering tacit support to those who would seek to enshrine homosexual marriage in our land. We have believers supporting the slaughter of innocent pre-born babies, simply because their care might inconvenience the mothers. That is not a sign of a tender and obedient heart before God, but of a mind that is so filled with the "Word of the World" that we have absorbed the world's values and priorities. We as believers must get before God and ask him to flush out the world's doctrines and practices. For we can hardly pray for our nation's course to change if we are not willing for our own courses to change.

Listen To Him

"Don't be afraid, Mary," the angel told her, "for you have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!" -- Luke 1:30-33, NLT

I listen to a few differing viewpoints in my quest to learn more of how to know and serve my ruler. One of the bloggers whose writings I read is a Messianic Jewish writer, one who feels that believers should be living more or less under the same laws that the Jews are under. His point is that Jesus said he didn't come to destroy the law, so belief that the law does not apply once we are in Christ is contra-scriptural.

I find that we, as believers, are often willing to create rules for others to follow. I believe we need to listen to him--after all, he's the one who is given the authority of kingship. On the mountain where Jesus was transfigured--transformed into glowing white--and where he stood with Moses and Elijah, Peter wanted to build three churches, but the voice from the cloud said "This is my son whom I love. Listen to him!" Do you see it? It isn't that Moses (the law) or Elijah (the prophets) are not to be respected or even to some degree obeyed, but that Jesus is greater than they, and what he came to do is greater than what they did.

Now, this is not to say that believers should partake of anti-nomialism ("no rules!"). In fact, God says that he's written the law on our hearts--we should instinctively carry out the underlying purposes of the Mosaic law, even where we may not always follow its specific dictates. So what was the purpose of the handwashing rituals, circumcision, and most of the dietary restrictions? I would argue that those are cleanliness and disease-prevention regimes, rather than being purely about figurative cleanliness of the inner man. When I read that up to 40% of Americans don't wash their hands after they use restrooms, I find it disgusting. This kind of behavior should never include believers! But having said this, I think that same passage makes it clear that as Christ-followers, we have no ayatollah making decisions about how we are to live our lives. Instead, we should be getting our instructions from God above through the Holy Spirit who is resident within us.

And that, I feel, is the difference between me and JGH on this issue. I believe that God may speak to an individual, telling him / her to abstain from pork, or to carry out some other portion of the Law of Moses. When this happens, it doesn't make that requirement binding on other Christians, as long as they respond to God's calling for their own lives. At the same time, the rejection of everything Jewish by the Church around the time of Constantine means that we have a number of principles and practices that we follow which are contaminated with remnants of the Roman system (which was itself contaminated with the remnants of the Babylonian, Egyptian, and Persian systems). There are a number of so-called Christian practices relating to holidays, for example, that we really need to examine ourselves about. If we choose not to celebrate Passover, for example, because it is part of the Law, why do we celebrate the resurrection of Christ with rituals from the worship of fertility goddesses?

Now, this blog is carried on a church site among other places, and I want to be clear: I don't speak for the church or the pastor.

I've been in churches for over thirty years. Over time, I've learned to tell how the church's finances are doing by whether the pastor's sermon veers into Malachi chapter 3 during the third week of the month or the fourth. Week three means desperate times for that congregation, while week four is normal "Summer slump" sermonizing.

When you see this pattern, you begin to see that tithe-teaching isn't about training believers to do what is right, but about fund-raising. This, then, calls into question that congregation's spending practices. If all of your income is part of your "outgo", you are subject to stress and fear during the normally-expected income swings, and even more by those swings that are unexpected.

We can call it "California spending syndrome". The State of California seems to make long-term spending commitments to spend based on the largest recent tax revenues. Then, when conditions change, the state government resorts to tax and tuition increases, revenue grabs (such as seizing property tax revenues from local governments), and manipulating their accounting records. This goes on in a never-ending cycle, which must ultimately result in a state bankruptcy.

Churches get into this same pattern. I was visiting a storefront church years ago, and the pastor's sermon was about "things we could do if you guys gave us more money". There was a long list of good things, including an expanded children's church / Sunday school area. I took that as a sign that the congregation was in financial trouble, and sure enough, they soon left their rented building.

If we are prudent about expansion and expenditures, we are less likely to have to resort to revenue-extraction tricks. We needn't tell people that they can do what they wish (with God's blessing) with the remaining 90% of their incomes as long as they give the first 10% to the church. We needn't try and convince them to "give a seed from your need", allowing God to backfill.

Because the truth is (as stated in the comments to the linked article), when you belong to God, so does everything you own. One hundred percent of your income belongs to God, and is subject to his own will as to how and where it is dispensed. If anything, this should cause us to drastically curtail conspicuous consumption and to stop "keeping up with the Joneses". Is that a prudent use of God's money? I think not.

This is not at all saying that you shouldn't be giving to God's work. You should. You should be giving both time and economic goods (in our current economy, that means money) to the church, to other ministries, and to benevolent works (supporting the poor, widows & orphans, and so on). It isn't up to me, or your pastor, or some evangelist you see on television, to decide how much God wants you to give. You need to learn to seek God's will for your own life, and to give accordingly.

Some other things to think about:

• Did Abraham practice tithing before the Law was given? Was there another reason why Abraham tithed to Melchizedek?


• Does tithing mean you are putting God first in your life?


• Should we be putting Abraham and Melchizedek together with Malachi in the doctrine of tithing?

No, I think that we aren't getting it correct. We shouldn't be giving to get. We should be giving because we are thankful for what we've already received. We should recognize that it isn't just the sweat of our brows, but God who gives the ability to earn it. For most of us, we have corporate employers who (1) do not and cannot hear or follow the voice of the Lord and (2) pay based on company policies, not on how productive an employee is. This means that if your pay is $30,000 per year, it is likely to be $30,000 per year whether you tithe or flush the cash down the toilet.

Honestly, I think most of us are missing God's blessing, in part, because we settled for corporate employers instead of allowing God to directly flow his provision into our hands through smaller, owner-managed businesses (OMBs) and other small, locally-owned businesses (SLOBs). In order for God to increase your salary in your corporate job, he has to push the approval through several layers of approvers, each of whom is asking "why is this person requesting more than policy allows?" and any of whom can block the approval process. And we are missing God's blessing because we follow the world system's lead--buying whatever the commercials tell us to get and getting the same credit cards and mortgage refinancings as the non-believers do.

In short, if you really want God to bless you financially, stop buying so much stuff! You will find that cutting your spending will enable you to put more money aside for savings and it will also enable you to give more money to support the work of the ministry. You can give 10%, 20%, or whatever percent you believe God wants you to give, but don't make that amount a doctrine that you expect others to follow. A careful reading of scripture will show you that the people in the Old Testament had no direct contact with God, and so they couldn't be given specific, personalized instructions. On the other hand, we have that direct contact, and we should be listening for those instructions.