Lakeside Baptist Church

FROM THE PASTOR

March 26, 2017

My dad used to own one of those old manual rotating lawn mowers. I remember as a youngster, I got it out of the garage one day when dad was at work and proceeded to randomly push it all over the yard. Keep in mind, I wasn’t mowing, I was just running around doing what kids do with no real end goal in mind.

The thing I didn’t notice, as I was pushing it, is that the mower was doing what a lawn mower was supposed to do… mowing off the grass and weeds. It doesn’t take much imagination to visualize what the yard looked like after 15 minutes of my play. Dad noticed… as I recall he noticed well before he got to the end of the drive. I remember to this day that he wasn’t angry yet he firmly informed me that if I was old enough to push the mower around, I was old enough to learn do it right. I also remember there was the slightest twinkle in his eye as he said it. You see he knew what immature boys do and he had forgiven me before he even began to teach me to mow a straight row.

As I think back on that incident it reminds me of how my Lord has responded so many times when I’ve done some of the “not so mature things” in my spiritual growth journey. And it’s solely because I have experienced His response that I’m convinced that He fully understands that mistakes are part of the process of growing spiritually. Now, don’t misunderstand me, God can’t just blow-off or ignore some of these so called “mistakes”. He just can’t. You see, sin is still against His nature and He will never just leave us in a place He cannot teach us.

But still, it’s because of His disciplinary response to me, and His restoration of me, that I am completely convinced He’s doesn’t just “writing us off” for the “growing errors” we make as His children. If He did, He wouldn’t have provided a means of reconciliation with Him.

God’s desire is always for us to grow and mature and bear fruit for Him (see John 15). So occasionally He does “prune” us. But having experienced that process too, I am here to tell you that He does it with perfection, intimacy and complete love. Pruning is always done with restoration in mind and never done with pure discipline as His purpose.

All those years later I can still see that yard. For a while it bore the scars representing the immaturity of one young boy. Scars that remained as a visual reminder of a what was done wrong. Yet, because that young boy was corrected and taught the right way to do the task the next time, from that point on the rows were always straight as an arrow. And oh, by the way, as the grass grew the scars went away… but the lesson learned and the maturity gained remained.

Thank You for your faithfulness! Pastor Larry