Parable of the Wheat and Tares
Are you familiar with the parable of the wheat and tares? Sherry is sharing three things we can learn from it as Christian women in this post.
I hear so many people who are stopped in their spiritual tracks by the hardships of life. They can’t get beyond what someone did to them, or some difficulty they ran across. They can’t see past their own pain.
I get it, pain twists and deceives and overwhelms us. Hardships come at us and we don’t know how to overcome them. We wonder where God is and why He isn’t rescuing us from these weeds.
Because hardships, pain, trials, difficulties, evil deeds perpetrated on us… those are the weeds of life.
But what does God say about weeds in our lives?
3 Lessons from the Parable of the Wheat and Tares
In Matthew chapter 13, Jesus told us a story of a farmer who woke up one morning to find that enemies had sown weeds in his wheat field. Oddly enough, he did not tell his farm hands to pull the weeds up – he said this was because he did not want the wheat to also be pulled up by the roots.
1.) Stay Vigilant
We can break this parable down into a few different points. First off, the evil weeds were sown at night.
Pay attention to your fellow Christians who are experiencing a “night time.” That’s when the devil will choose to sow weeds in their life.
Nighttime means our defenses are down, we’re alone, we’re blind in the dark. Pay attention to when you enter this season, and pay attention when you know a friend is entering this season.
2.) Don’t Get Discouraged or Stop Growing
Another point to be taken is that the farmer allowed the wheat and weeds to grow together.
We can take from that that we are not to use those weeds as an excuse to stop growing. We are still to take what we can from the experience and use it to grow closer to God, to grow stronger in our faith, to grow wiser in the ways of the world around us.
3.) Know the Good from the Bad
Also, the farmer’s biggest fear seemed to be that the wheat would be pulled up by the roots if the weeds were torn out at a young stage of growth.
So when you’re in a time of hardship, don’t let your spiritual roots be intertwined with the roots of the weeds.
What would that look like? Perhaps embracing the bad in order to just get along with the crowd? Or perhaps it would be joining in with anger or experimenting in sin when you know it’s wrong.
Don’t add to your troubles by allowing the bad roots to mix in with the good ones.
Join the Conversation
How do you avoid being bogged down by the weeds of life? How do you grow while in the midst of the world of weeds?
Recommended Devotional Book
Set Your Sights
Oftentimes in life, our biggest problem comes from the angle we’re looking at things. When we straighten out the perspectives, in our own minds, we might just see the solution readily available. That’s why our perspective should always be guided by the Bible. God’s Holy Word is the only straight angle that will keep us in the proper perspective. In this four-week devotional, Sherry Chamblee helps us look at things from the right angle.
