A Transformed Life - Becoming a "Garden of Joy"
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VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Journey into Trust: Day by Day. My name is Dawn Hill, and you've come to the right place if you want to be encouraged, find hope, and discover biblical principles to build your life on.
Also, if you're someone looking for a mentor, or mentor-mom, or just somebody to encourage you along the way in your spiritual growth, someone who cares — I'd love to be that for you. So, just keep tuning in.
I'd like to let you know that the format of many of my future videos will include me sharing a principle or foundational verse or two from the Bible, talking about it, and then sharing a piece from my book, Journey Into Trust. I'll then give a takeaway and circle back to that principle.
I'm trying to keep things nice and simple, yet I truly hope what I share will touch your heart deeply. I hope you'll apply God's Word and these principles to your life and see what He does for you because He is a great God.
So, let's get started. This first one I want to share is called Garden of Joy. The biblical principle that goes along with it comes from a time in Jesus' life when a lawyer came and questioned Him about the greatest commandment. The lawyer was sent to trap Jesus in His words, but of course, Jesus was so wise — and is so wise — that He answered perfectly.
His answer, found in Matthew 22:37–40, says:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments rest the whole Law and the Prophets.”
So, before you can love your neighbor, you've got to love God and receive His love. This piece I'm going to share is really about keeping God first — the benefits, the beauty of having Him first in your life, and the transformation that can come when you do that.
When you tell Him you want Him to be the one leading, to be the boss, and you want to move out of the way, amazing things happen. After I share Garden of Joy, I'll direct you back to my website, which you can see in my little picture here. I'll also share my email if you'd like to send me your goals, comments about future videos, or prayer requests. I'd really welcome that feedback.
So here we go: Journey Into Trust. Thanks so much!
We have a plant named Joy. She's a fiddle-leaf fig, and she's happy. We water her weekly. Her foliage is a deep, dark green. Her top leaves are long, broad, and larger than any of the leaves lower down on her sturdy stems. She greets each day from our corner garden in the dining room, basking in the light that flows through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Her thriving brings beauty to our home. She reminds me of the last phrase in Jeremiah 31:12, which promises: "Their lives shall be like a watered garden, and they will never languish again."
My grandmother's favorite hymn was In the Garden. Its chorus still rings in my memory:
"I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses, and He walks with me, and He talks with me, and He tells me I am His own."
It speaks of Jesus, the Son of God. He's the one who can make any garden visit sweeter. His Father is the Vinedresser — the Gardener. He specializes in making the gardens of our lives more peaceful, lovely, refreshing, vibrant, and fruitful than we can imagine.
But what if our life is nothing like a garden? What if it's more like a bog or a desert? Isaiah 51 promises the Lord's comfort to Zion:
"He will comfort all her waste places."
These words trickled like water into my waste places long ago. The promise that He would take my soul's wilderness, my dry scrubland, my tangled, thorny mess of a life under His care was a hope I held on to dearly.
It was there, in those barren strips of my life — which I tried to hide or hide from — that the Lord's comfort seeped in most deeply and did the most astonishing good.
It is there, in that sin-ravaged heart-land, where the hurts from sins against us lie matted and dense, where the shame and guilt of sins we’ve committed fester, seemingly irremovable. It’s where the world's oppressive, sickening addiction to sin makes the spiritual air so stale that we gasp for a clean breath.
Yet, if we ask—if we cry out to Him—these are the very places where Jesus, the Balm of Gilead, the Healer, pours in His comfort, His love, His instruction, His understanding grace, and His gentle rebuke. He brings order gradually into our inner chaos, light into the heart of our jungle, and a roadway out to the fresh, pure air of His Holy Spirit.
I don’t pretend to know how He works His wonders, but I do know He is more than able to accomplish this otherwise impossible work. Gradually, as we commune with Him in faith, taking in His Word, repenting, and obeying His voice, He transforms the landscapes of our innermost being—our minds, our emotions, our motivations, our desires, our very nature—into something beautiful.
What God promises to do for Israel in Isaiah 51:3, He longs to do for us as well:
"The Lord will comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places. And her wilderness He will make like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord."
When the Lord comforts our waste places, in time, we become alive, abundant, flourishing, and green—an oasis with shade trees, flowers, and running water, Living Water. We become a welcoming, tended place, no longer an overgrown, unkempt mass of twisted ways and dangerous dead ends as we once were.
My Japanese friend, Tomo, put it so succinctly. She shared with me the truth Jesus was speaking to set her free:
"When Jesus is at the center of my life, everything good grows. But when anything else is at the center, everything dies."
I can still hear her gentle, joyful voice. Yes, everything good shrivels up when we live for anything but Jesus. But when we bask in His presence daily and heed His counsel, we become that watered garden and languish no more.
Joy is in her sunny spot today. She’s watered, planted, and content. Even fiddle-leaf figs don’t like to be moved around willy-nilly. After all, she’s happiest when the sun pours in on her during the afternoon hours, like it is right now. She’s found the secret to flourishing as her Creator intended.
God walked in the garden in the cool of the day long ago. Jesus made a way on the cross for us to walk with Him once again. Do you hear His footsteps as He draws near to you? Do you hear Him calling your name? He will clothe you with robes of righteousness—spotless, pure, and perfectly fitted to you—so far beyond what Joy’s most beautiful fig leaves could ever give.
I hope you enjoyed that. The real takeaway of this piece is transformation, and that transformation is always possible with Jesus. He can take the most unruly heartland of a mess and turn it into a beautiful garden of joy.
Philippians 1:6 promises this:
"For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus."
God promises to keep working out the good work He began in us throughout our whole lives until Jesus returns. And as 1 John 3:2 says, “When we see Him face to face, we will become like Him.”
Don’t be discouraged when growth is slow to break through and be seen. Keep praying and keep getting to know God through His Word and Bible study. I encourage you to find a small group Bible study.
It’s there where I have always found the most growth. I’ve had women surround me, care for me, and pray for me. I've been able to do the same for them.
If you're a guy, find a guy's Bible study — a group where you can be honest and real and have that accountability. But don't, don't just try to do this all on your own. Having Christian friends or a small group, where maybe you don't even know people well, but you know they love Jesus and they're wanting to help you grow and learn how to study God's Word, that's the place to be.
So, find a good church, a good Bible study, and know that God will be with you, helping you grow. That's what He wants for you.
If this video has touched your heart in some way, please like it and check out my website at www.thehopefulbuttercup.com to find out more. There are other pieces there that you can read. My blog is there, along with direct links to Amazon for my books and eBooks, which are all very accessible.
Also, I'd love it if you'd leave a comment. But, if you'd like to leave me a more private comment, please go ahead and email me at [email protected].
Remember to check the description down below, where I'll have the scriptures that I've shared copied there.
Lastly, I just want to leave you with Tomo's words: when Jesus is at the center of your life, everything grows. So, take a minute and let Jesus know that you really want Him to be the center of your life. You want to get off that throne and let Him take the throne of your life. You want Him to be leading, guiding, and first in your life.
Thanks for watching, and I hope you'll come back soon!
To watch my video, please click on the link below.
A Transformed Life - Becoming a "Garden of Joy" when you put God first
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