Winter is important to many plants. It’s when they build up their energy for growth come spring.
Take spring bulbs. They require a chilling period before they’ll bloom. Dutch iris, tulips, daffodils, and more need the brittle darkness of winter, because it stimulates a biochemical chain of events inside that “jumpstarts” the flower as it begins developing.
And heaven forbid we give the bulbs too much water. They’ll rot in the ground before they can begin to grow. All we need to do is dampen the soil and leave them alone.
We are apt to mess up the growth process if we try to help out our new bulbs too much.
As new Christians, we are those spring bulbs. Plant us directly in the hot soil of the missionary field, and we might soak up the heat, but we’ll never bring out the true beauty of what Christ intends for us to be. Throw us into ground saturated with deep theological teaching, and it’ll provide the opportunity for spiritual rot to set in.
Let’s hark to the words of Solomon 6:11:
“I went down to the nut orchard to look at the blossoms of the valley, to see whether the vines had budded, whether the pomegranates were in bloom.”
Solomon might be inspecting a tree, but the ideology is the same. We can’t force new Christians to bloom prematurely. God has a process to ensure they are given the opportunity to become strong in him, for the eternal beauty of the Christ-process to remake them into a shining example of the new life that Jesus brought to us on the cross.
New Christians need a time to let Jesus trigger their inner flower, to “jumpstart” their faith before we sic them on the world. We also need to restrain from overwatering them with ideology.
How does Paul say it in Philippians 2:12?
“Therefore…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”
What he really means is that we need to back off once we plant a new Christian. We share the message of Christ, cover the new believer with just enough Christian teaching to protect her from exposure to the world, dampen the soil with the love of Christ, and let things chill for a while. Then, when her faith bursts from the soil, the bloom of Christ will be wonderful to behold.
It’s God who works wonders in the human heart, not us. We need to let him do the work he knows how to do. He has a plan in place already. If we try to help too much, we might very well mess up the process that is already underway.
We can plant God’s salvation message, but it’s up to him to bring it into bloom.
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