The Garden of Their Hearts

I’ve often thought of raising children like planting a garden. 

Your children are the plants. They can grow up strong, healthy and bear fruit, or weeds can spring up, take over, and warp or even kill the plants. 

You tend the garden as the parent. The weeds that pop up are their sinful urges and desires. 

There are no shortcuts in this job of yours. There is no way around the hard work. Either you prune the plants, protect the young shoots and pull the weeds out by the roots, or you do not. Both decisions will result in something. There is no neutral option here. If you do not do your job, you cannot expect a good garden and healthy plants. 

If you tend your garden as it needs to be tended, you will have to endure much. You will have to tend your garden constantly- day and night. Rain, sleet, blistering sun, hail, lightening, pests and predators will all threaten to destroy your garden unless you do what is necessary to protect it. Your garden needs you, as it cannot take care of itself. 

Your garden is especially susceptible to all these threats when the plants are young and have not grown strong yet with their own deep roots to hold them fast in the earth. 

Even after you protect your garden from outside threats, you will still have a worthless garden if you do not pull the weeds out, and it is easier to do that the quicker you address a brand-new weed. 

What I mean is, if you wait awhile until the weed has grown tall and the roots have dug deep into the earth and are holding the plant fast, and the ground has hardened around it, then you will likely not get the root out at all. You might have lost your chance to pull the weed out by yourself and need outside help of something like a shovel or spade to help you. 

This is all true about your children as well. Your children’s sinful behaviors need to be addressed immediately to root out growth of their sinful desires. I am not talking about creating perfect children here. That is impossible. I am talking about creating in your children the understanding that we always address sin when it rises in our hearts (repentance and forgiveness).

Ignoring it does not make the sin go away, it only allows it to grow. And grow it will, with roots going deeper and deeper into their hearts. Even as you pull the weeds, you know new ones will always be poking their heads up, and yet you don’t get discouraged because of that. You know that is just part of life. The same is true of your children. Sin will always be poking its head up but you have to keep addressing it every single time. Just as you would a beloved garden. 

I’ve been told before by well-meaning people, how “lucky” I am to have well behaved children. Luck. Absurd. It’s as absurd as a person looking at two fields side by side: one in shambles and the other well-tended, and that person claiming that the farmer of the tended field sure is lucky his happened to be that way. 

It isn’t luck. It is just hard work. Now to be sure, it is only able to be done because of God’s mercy and strength, and any result we get from our work is because He Himself made the result occur. But even this is true in the analogy. You can tend your garden but only God can make it bear fruit.

However, just because God enables the plants to bear fruit it doesn’t mean that we sit inside our house and look out at our garden going “Well, God will take care of it for me, I don’t need to go out there and pull the weeds or tend my garden.” That would be foolish. And so is assuming you can do nothing to raise your children in a God-fearing manner. It is hard, long-suffering work. But it is a work that bears much fruit, and the fruit will be used by God to encourage you in this job you’ve been given. The fruit IS the encouragement. I’ve been encouraged many times this way and I thank God for it each time. 

I read a verse recently that struck me. St. Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 2:19-20 “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy.”

St. Paul says that the people he has taught God’s Word to will be his joy, crown, and glory when the Lord Jesus makes His appearing on the last day. This means that for us, our children whom we have brought up in the Lord Jesus will be our joy and crowns and glory. What an amazing thought to spur us onward in Him who delights to give us the strength we need in this journey to raise up these children in Him!