Spiritual Gardening: Gospel Principals for Life Application

By Jonathan Holifield

Spiritual Gardening is a guide to help you grow in your life as a Christian. With enriching principles that you can apply to everyday. From a, seed, beginning Christian; to a, fruitful plant, mature Christian. This book will carry you through the step by step process of spiritually growing your life to achieve the fruitful results that you hope for. This book is a definite “must read”.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Oct 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781483430065

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Holifield

Copyright © 2019 Jonathan Holifield.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3007-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3006-5 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date:    09/26/2019

Foreword

FOR MANY YEARS I have been admired by my family, friends, and community for my great incite regarding Biblical facts and principles. I have also found to have a very unique and helpful way of understanding and explaining these gospel facts and principles in a way that they are understood by even the most spiritually deaf individuals. I do not credit myself for this power of understanding but consider it to be blessings from God that I have been empowered with to use to reach others and help them develop a stronger relationship with God. This is the reason that I have elected to write this book.

I am sure that most of you are familiar with the bible parable of the master and the three servants. You may read the parable for yourself in Appendix A. In the parable a master gives money to three different servants while he goes away.

Two of the servants invest the money and return more money to their master. The other servant is afraid of losing the money so he hides it and returns to the master the same amount of money that he was given. The master is pleased with the servants who invested their money but he is very displeased with the servant who is afraid to invest the money he was given. This parable teaches us that God does not want us to take the gifts and blessings that he has empowered us with and horde them in fear.

God wants us to take what he has given us and invest it. We should use our gifts to enrich the lives of others and bring people to him. In writing this book, I am sharing the insight and understanding that God has given me with the rest of the world.

Spiritual Gardening is written to examine the commonly known concepts and practices that farmers and gardeners use to grow healthy and delicious fruits and vegetables. In the book we review each stage on the plants growth and development along with the methods and techniques that farmers and gardeners us to ensure the health and productivity of their crop. In raising crops it is these methods and techniques that make the difference between a weak sickly plant and a strong healthy plant that will grow to produce an abundance of fruit. The book then reviews the situation of our spiritual life and how these same methods and concepts can be used in our spiritual life to ensure that we grow to be a strong and fruitful Christian.

In addition to this, I have also included two different features as an added convenience for the reader. Many of the religious books that I have read list bible verses for reference. The thing that annoys me about this is that if I want to read the verse for myself, I have to put down the book that I am reading and get my Bible to read it. For the benefit of the reader you will notice that I have included the Bible reference verse straight from the Bible enclosed in border throughout the book. All of the verses are from the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible so the reader can see what the Gospel says for himself without having to stop reading. Secondly you will notice that the text of the book is written in 12 point font which is a little larger than what you find in most books. This ensures that text is not only clearly visible but the book can also be easily read from a relaxed position.

Of course, you will not find the material in this very helpful unless first; you are a born again Christian. This means that you must trust in Jesus Christ the son of God and accept him as your personal Lord and Savior. For those of you who are not already a born again Christian you can find out how to become a born again Christian through the plan of salvation in Appendix B.

I. Our Spiritual Garden

ALL THROUGHOUT LIFE we have all most likely had some form of interest or education on gardening and farming. Even though you may not be an expert or grow vegetables or flowers as a hobby, chances are you have known someone in your family who did or maybe you remember reading some book or story like Charlotte’s Web or Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh, where farming or gardening was a major interest. Maybe, like me, you had a parent that grew a garden every summer. Planting and taking care of a garden is likely a common experience in your life. We all know the work and care that goes into growing a good garden and the reward of harvesting the fresh fruits and vegetables when they are ripe.

From the time I was a young boy I have had experiences with gardening. Every May I would help my mother plant her summer garden. First, she would till the ground. Then I would help as we divided out the rows. A row for each plant, a row for cucumbers, a row for tomatoes, a row for corn, and so on. Then, we would mix fertilizer with the soil, and poke small holes in the soil for the seeds to go in. Finally we would place a seed or two in each hole, cover it with soil, and lightly water each seed to give it an extra boost in getting started. Every day I would help water the garden and pull up any weeds we found. And every so often I would watch her spraying the garden to keep the bugs off the plants. As days turned into weeks I would watch each little seed sprout a seedling up from the ground and grow bigger and bigger until it was big enough and began to produce vegetables. Every year in late June and July we would enjoy crisp cucumbers, juicy red tomatoes, crunchy carrots, and delicious corn, greens and squash. Even though I was only a boy about 7 or 8, I always felt a certain sense of achievement in helping grow those vegetables.

Of course, I have learned much more about gardening as I have grown older. Today I’m well educated in the gardening principles of growing plants from preparing the soil for a seed to harvesting the rich fruit of a well maintained, mature plant. It is pretty common knowledge that the skill and practice of good gardening practices produces a good garden with rich bountiful fruit.

What I’ve come to realize over the years is that good garden practices aren’t just for the garden. Throughout the Gospel there are many times when Jesus would refer to parables of planting and growing crops as a means of explaining people and events. In The parable of the wheat and the tares, Jesus gives us an outline of the world; past, present, and future.

(Matthew 13:24-30)

This biblical parable clearly describes our world situation. The master is God and the wheat, the crop that he has planted, is the people in the world, us. With Adam and Eve God created humanity. God created us in His image, to be good. In the parable of the wheat and the tares the enemy comes and plants tares among the wheat. The enemy is the Devil. The devil came and planted sin by tempting eve and so seeds of sin was scattered among God’s seed of humanity. In the parable, the master cannot get rid of the tares without destroying his crop of wheat.

As proven in the story of Noah and the flood, God cannot get rid of our evil nature without destroying us and our good nature along with it. Even after the great flood, sin continued.

In the parable the wheat and tares are allowed to grow together until the harvest. Then the master has his servants harvest both the wheat and the tares. The crop