Have you ever had the thought, "How could a God that is supposed to be good and loving allow bad things to happen?" I certainly have thought that. But you must be very careful with that question or any like it. God is Sovereign and He does not play concerning His Sovereignty. I did go to God one time, very humbly, and asked Him why He allowed and allows children and women to be raped. His answer was, "Please do not ask Me that question. Please trust Me. You need to understand there are things that will happen in this life that you will not understand until you come to heaven." I said, "Ok, God, I choose to trust You."

In my time with the Lord this morning He showed me a very clear picture of a plant I have. I bought some hyacinth bulbs that had already started sprouting about a week ago. I planted them in a pot I had and set them in direct sunlight outside. The other day I noticed that someone or something had disturbed the dirt in my pot and one of the bulbs was mostly uncovered and there were holes in the dirt that shouldn't be there. I quickly fixed the dirt and headed out to where we needed to go. Yesterday as we were leaving to go to church, I noticed that the dirt had been disturbed again, this time not as bad. I ran inside and got some long toothpicks and stuck them in the dirt to try to keep what ever was/is from messing up my plants again.

God showed me that plant in my mind this morning as I was praying. Here's what He caused me to understand.

God calls us trees of righteousness in His word. Well, trees mostly do not grow without being planted in dirt. Notice I said "PLANTED" in dirt. Not just thrown in dirt. They don't just have a little dirt thrown on them. The dirt isn't just around them. They are planted in it. We think dirt is just for plants, trees and flowers. But we humans have dirt too.

I was talking to God this morning about how the dirt in my life hurts. It hurts having your children not wanting to be in relationship with you and being away from the Lord. It hurts not having your brother want to speak to you over something you find to be a bit petty. It hurts to be diagnosed with a disease and wait and wait and wait for your healing to manifest. I could go on and on, but I believe you probably get my point. We all have hurts, grief, sorrow, pain, disappointments, and frustrations. That is the dirt in our lives. Coming to Jesus doesn't make the dirt go away. We may get out of some dirt, much like being repotted with fresh dirt, but there is always dirt in our lives. The dirt hurts. It's supposed to. Why? Because it's there to make us grow.

Do you think a plant, flower or tree can ignore the dirt that it's planted in? I don't. We should not be ignoring the dirt we're planted in either. We should be growing in that dirt. As we grow God must repot us in a bigger pot with fresh dirt. That's called overcoming. That's called maturing, growing....going from glory to glory, from faith to faith.

We are all mostly looking to get our dirt out of our lives. It's shameful many times, it's terribly uncomfortable most of the time if not all the time. We don't like it. We didn't choose it, for the most part. And we certainly don't want it.

Here's the part I love. Some of the dirt we are planted in, God chose for us. Some came from the enemy. And some is a result of decisions we have made in our lives. But NONE OF IT is meant by God to destroy us. God is not grossed out by your dirt that you're in. He doesn't take one look at you and say you are too dirty. If you're in the wrong dirt, such as addiction, He will repot you in good dirt if you will let Him.

Another thing we do is see the dirt in other people's lives and judge them for it. Stop. The dirt is there in their lives for a reason and you are not the one in charge of their dirt. Leave them alone, unless you are helping them to grow.

I could go on with this analogy, like how we are called to be trees of righteousness but some of us see ourselves as little succulents. A tree of righteousness is comparable to an oak tree in the bible. But a succulent is planted in shallow dirt. The bigger we become, the more dirt we need to grow. That's why life doesn't get easier as we grow in the Lord, it seems many times to get harder. It's because there is more of us to feed. We have more branches, more leaves and more need for life to flow through us.

This analogy is one you and I can continue to build on as the Lord gives us understanding, but I hope this revelation helps you to understand more of the reason your life is so dirty. I hope you have a fabulous day. Be blessed.