When the Weed Keeps Coming Back

Anyone who has kept a garden knows there are two kinds of weeds. Some pull up clean. You grip them at the base, give a gentle tug, and the whole root comes with them. You toss them in the bucket and never think about them again. Then there are the others. Dandelions with taproots that snap off an inch below the surface. Bindweed that seems to grow from a hidden network you can never quite reach. You pull them on Monday and they are back by Friday.

That's been our experience. A few years ago my wife asked me to build a garden. And her plans were ambitious. I used a bunch of old deck boards (because we'd replaced our deck just before that), built a big arch out of horse paneling for vines to crawl, lined the paths between with weed mat topped by rock.

The thing is, we got in over our head. We'd made such a large garden that we didn't get the highest quality soil. We got several truck loads of general "top soil." Well, that soil came with sneaky little stowaways. The seeds of weeds.

We started pulling them at first. But it took a long time to do the job. And a few days later they were back. We just didn't have the time that day to do it. So more popped up. Before we knew it, our entire garden was overwhelmed. So much so that this year we just despaired of it entirely and didn't even bother planting in it. Even the paths that I thought I'd protected with weed mat and several inches of rock were overtaken. And now our entire garden sits as a giant eyesore beside our house.

The spiritual life is like that garden. There are sins that, once the light of God exposes them, we can repent of, turn from, and be done with. The tug is painful but brief, and the root comes out whole. But there are other sins that hold on. They have a habitual or addictive quality. We confess them, we mean it with everything in us, and then a week later we find ourselves kneeling in the same place, saying the same words.

And if left alone too long, if not pulled immediately, we're tempted to despair. Because it becomes overwhelming.

I have dealt with many of both kinds. And it is the second kind that tempts us, especially if we are seriously seeking God, toward something far more dangerous than the sin itself: discouragement.

Perhaps I should be distressed by this. Many would say so. But I am not distressed. Because when it comes to soil of my soul, I am not its gardener. I have a gardener with much more patience than I have. And when I turn to the pages of Scripture, I find in this admittedly frustrating experience a sign not to despair, but of love.

"My child, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, or lose heart when you are punished by him; for the Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts." (Hebrews 12:5-6)

The author of Hebrews is quoting Proverbs:

"My child, do not despise the LORD’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the LORD reproves the one he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights." (Proverbs 3:11-12)

And the risen Christ says the same thing to the lukewarm church at Laodicea:

"I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent." (Revelation 3:19)

Three witnesses. Spread across Scripture. They all say the same thing: discipline is not the sign of God’s rejection, it does not mean He has given up on you. It is the signature of His love.

And given how many struggles against my own persistent wretchedness I have endured across my forty-six years, well, I must be immensely loved.

Far more than my wife and I love our backyard garden.

The Greek word in both Hebrews and Revelation is paideuō, from paideia. It was a word used to describe the formation of a child. It describes not a one-time lesson at a schoolhouse, but patient work of raising a son or daughter into maturity.

This is not courtroom language. It's not even schoolhouse language. It's household language.

A judge sentences a stranger. A father trains a child.

A teacher assigns a grade to a single exam. A wise parent, when seeing the report card, sees not failure, but areas where the child needs to grow.

The Proverbs text again: the Lord reproves “as a father the son in whom he delights.” The word for delight, ratsah, means to take pleasure in, to be well pleased with.

God does not correct the children he tolerates. He corrects the children he enjoys.

If you're going through a struggle like that, if God hasn't answered your repeated prayer to just "remove" the struggle, it does not mean He is not listening. It means He is taking greater delight in you than you ever realized.

As a homeschooling family, when one of my boys is struggling with a subject, they ask us to just "remove" it from their curriculum. "I'm never going to use this stupid math, anyway!" Well, we do not remove it, despite the many pleas. We make them sit down again, the very next day, and work through it.

It would do my boys no good if I just sat down and solved the problems for them. They need to do the work of confronting the arithmetic for themselves. I'm still there. I can help them along, give them the resources they need to do it. But I cannot just do their homework for them.

So consider what this means for the stubborn sin, the one with the taproots that break off in the soil, and keep coming back. Its persistence is not evidence that God has given up on you. If anything, the ongoing struggle, the fact that you keep noticing it, keep grieving it, keep bringing it back to him, is evidence that he has not stopped working.

Because if a parent was not there telling my kids to face their math problem again, well, they'd never face it again. They'd despair of it and go play video games instead. And, in fact, that's sometimes how the devil works. "Just give in to your failure, embrace it. This is just who you are." The frustration leaves the sinner who gives up, because he stops fighting it. And that's the whole of the devil's agenda.

A soul God had abandoned would not feel the ache. Numbness, not struggle, is the sign of a heart left to itself.

Here is where we must be honest about the enemy’s strategy. The devil knows that the serious Christian will not give up with a single failure. He does not afflict us just a few massive things we can quickly, even if painfully, overcome.

He has a cheaper tactic. He repeats the same, subtle, temptations over and over. He presses into our weakness. And then he whispers about it. You’ve confessed this a hundred times. You’re not really changing. Someone who truly loved God wouldn’t still be here.

From distress, he tempts us to despair. And despair is what leads us to stop going back to God. It is the death of faith. The death of the soul.

Saint Paul knew this battle well. And we should not be surprised. Because God clearly loved Paul, and had big plans for him: "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do." (Romans 7:19)

This is the apostle, the man who saw the risen Christ, describing his own divided heart. And yet the same Paul writes that while He'd prayed multiple times that God would remove this thorn in his flesh (much like my child who asks me to give him less math homework) God's answer to his prayer was clear: "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Corinthians 12:9)

He did not pretend the weakness wasn't there. He didn't try to cover it up, ignore it, and let it grow to the point that it was overwhelming. He struggled with it. And God let that very struggle become the soil where grace did its work.

This is how the enemy is disarmed. When the struggle he used to tempt us to despair does the exact opposite.

He meant the recurring sin to drive us away from God in shame. Instead, it drives us toward God in dependence. He meant it to make us proud of our own strength or despairing at its absence. Instead, it teaches us to lean our whole weight on mercy.

Every time you get up after a fall and return to the Father, the devil’s weapon is turned in his own hand. He wanted to sow seeds of distance; instead a flower of intimacy grew in its place. He wanted to lead you to frustration, to "hiding" your faults away; instead, you prayed. You brought it into the light.

"Now, discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12:11)

Don't overlook the word later.

The fruit is not immediate. The gardener who keeps pulling the bindweed is, in fact, slowly exhausting the root, even when it does not look like it. God is doing something in the repetition itself, humbling us, purifying our motives, teaching us that holiness was never going to be our own achievement anyway.

So what do we do with this?

First, when the old sin resurfaces, refuse the second sin of discouragement. Name the whisper for what it is. Then go to God immediately, without waiting to feel worthy. "If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9)

He is faithful. Your feelings are not the measure of your worth.

Second, practice thanking God in the struggle, not for the sin but for what He's doing through the struggle. Many children, after they grow up, are grateful for the discipline they received as children. But some children, though they are rare, recognize it even as it's happening. Have that kind of foresight. Recognize that what you're going through is a part of how God is forming you into the beautiful person He had in mind when He created you.

Third, keep pulling the weed. Do the ordinary work: avoid occasions of sin that have led you to fail before (this is a part of growth). Be gentle with yourself, but be ruthless with your environment. Ask for help, build the small habits of prayer that strengthen the will. Do not confuse trust in grace with passivity.

And finally, remember whose garden this is. You are not the gardener of your soul, frantically trying to get it in shape for the time of harvest. You are the soil. The weeds might seem to drain you of all sustenance, of all nutrients, but the gardener will provide, He will enrich you with the nutrients you need so that the crop He intends to plant in your soul will bear fruit. It is patient work. But patience is a fruit of the Spirit, of God Himself. Where our patience lacks, His abounds.

You are child working alongside a Father who delights in you, and who is far more patient with the taproots than you are.

 

God Bless,

Judah