I was determined to get rid of those thistles! Two years ago thistles that grew as high as a man had spread into our garden from the field beside us. You see, thistles send their roots down deep into the ground, then they send out runners in all directions just under the surface, and then new thistle plants pop up all over. This is just what God told Adam would happen after he had sinned in the garden of Eden. God said, “Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee” (Genesis 3:17-1817And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 18Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; (Genesis 3:17‑18)).
Those thistles in that field had blossomed and gone to seed while we were away from home for some weeks. Their seeds had blown all over our garden and settled down to make new patches of thistles. They had been very successful! Like bad habits in our lives, the thistles had grown stronger and multiplied. But I made up my mind to attack them and get rid of them.
Almost every day for several weeks I went into the garden and dug up every thistle that popped above the ground. Then I went to the other side of the fence and dug a strip about two feet wide all along the garden’s back edge and as deep as I could go to kill those underground runners. The city maintenance crew would mow the rest of the field if the weeds grew too high, but they never mowed close to the fence.
There! I thought, as I wiped the grime and sweat off my face. That will finish those thistles! But deep down inside I knew I hadn’t gotten all those roots. And sure enough, within a couple of days they were popping up all over between the marigolds and snapdragons I’d planted along the fence.
Those thistles popping up reminded me of how sin keeps popping up in our lives. Sadly, we can’t get rid of the sin by ourselves any more than I could get rid of those thistles even though I kept digging at them. God tells us “we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” (Isaiah 64:66But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. (Isaiah 64:6)). What a sad condition we are in! And to top it off, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:99The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9)). We really don’t realize how sinful we are in God’s sight.
Trying to dig the bad things out of our lives is not enough. God says there must be punishment for our sins. Either we each must bear our own punishment, or someone else must bear it for us as our substitute. Only the Lord Jesus Christ, the holy, sinless Son of God, qualifies as our substitute. “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many” (Hebrews 9:2728). Will you accept Him as your substitute? “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:3131And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. (Acts 16:31)). The Bible says this is the only way we can have the sin in our lives removed by its roots and have our names written in God’s Book of Life.
I lost the battle with the thistles, but you don’t have to lose the battle with your sins. Will you let Christ have the victory in your life?
ML-08/31/1997