Conquering Armies Advance

The little army is advancing. You can’t quite hear it but it is coming. My eyes are drawn to the area often and my attention is on it as I walk by. There is a war on now…. Not in Iraq or Afghanistan – or another distant place in the world. It is on my street – quite close to my home.

The war is with a little yellow weed that is coming down our street – jumping from one piece of grass to the next. It is ravenous in that when it roots itself it fills an area of grass that may not have many blades of grass at all. It is pretty and seems to be full in the area that it grows. But it is deadly – everything beside it eventually dies.

It is fairly easy to pick from the area that it is growing in. However when you pick it there is a hole that doesn’t fill right away. Also I have noted that when you grab it to pick it there are many runners sent out from the mother plant. The runners in turn send down little shoots from their stems to root at the place they touch the ground.

In simple terms the weed is somewhat of a monster. In our case this monster is as close as my next door neighbor’s lawn – with one small section of grass between our main lawn and the weeds in his yard.

The other day my neighbor was sitting in the grass and pulling a handful at a time. Last night as we talked I leaned over and pulled more handfuls. The weed is retreating as we attack it. By the end of the summer it may well be slowed and never get to us. Working together to help him get rid of the weed has helped our yard as well.

Life application…
In everything that I see and hear around me there are life applications for me.

Weeds for me today are habits. They are like the annoying things that tend to pull us down. We don’t really want them but we have them. For some it may be smoking – for others it may be consuming too much food with little exercise. I only know the ones that I face personally – and at times they have overwhelmed my own life.

I have found that it is so easy to see the ‘weeds’ in other people’s lives… but harder by far getting a handle on our own life. It is easy to control the advance in other’s lives by criticism (advice) but just about impossible to stop doing what is destroying us. It is like a doctor that smokes telling a person that is suffering from severe lung problems, due to cigarette usage, that he or she should stop.

I know one person’s very worst habit, maybe the worst habit of anyone in our area, is that of criticizing other people’s habits. This individual is gifted at telling others what they should do. When she is not able to get them to listen – she becomes very angry. Anger is her second major habit that is out of control. Guess what no one visits her. Her children and grandchildren don’t like coming around either.

This dear lady was attending a funeral visitation recently. Another person that I know well was also there. This second individual was speaking with two other people. Their conversation was louder than normal. The dear lady walked up to the second person, tapped him on the shoulder and told him that he was being too loud for the setting. No it was not a joke – she was serious. She then went on to show her displeasure at this one with dirty looks. She is unable to control her habit of criticizing – for which I am very sorry for her.

Now I know that criticism and anger don’t seem like habits – compared to smoking and taking drugs. It doesn’t seem to be as bad as over eating. However many people I know that struggle with these three have suffered at the hands of the ones that have had the criticism and anger. It is easier to stay addicted to drugs, smoking and over eating as it helps to numb the constant criticism that is felt.

There are times as a pastor that the constant criticism that I get makes me want some of the old habits back again. I would like to cover the pain of what I feel when ‘dear folk’ lay into me again and again.

I actually know another minister that has started to drink heavily to cope with his ‘dear sisters’ on different committees in his church. His wife said that the ministry is killing him. I believe that they cope looking forward to certain people’s funerals. Sad but true. If people only knew how easily habits can destroy others around them.

Habits need to be stopped or else they will invade our whole lives and kill everything near and dear to us. They are like my weeds in my grass… filling a void and taking over…. But need to be extracted before the next generation is infected.

In my life I can stop the affect of criticism by not allowing the words to continue. When I have heard an individual using terrible words about someone else I have asked the criticizer to pray with me for the one that they are criticizing – and then I have asked them to lead the two of us in prayer – RIGHT THEN. Funny thing is that they shut right up.

Sorry for that early morning sermon…. I was picking weeds last night and also facing some more criticism last week. The two just kind of came together.

Proverbs 18:21 (New International Version of the Bible)
The tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.

~ Pastor Murray Lincoln ~