[The Mayor]

Freep mail me to be on or off the Daily Bread ping list

How To Bloom
March 22, 2011

My family and I live in an apartment, so our “flower garden” consists of what we can grow in indoor pots. For a long time our plants would not flower despite watering and fertilizing. Then we discovered that the soil had to be raked and turned over if the plants were to bloom. Now our potted plants are a pure joy to look at with their healthy leaves and blooming flowers.

Sometimes we need a little raking and turning in our own lives to make us bloom. Writing to the harassed believers in his day, Peter said, “Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice” (1 Peter 4:12-13).

Like the soil in our potted plants, these Christians were having their lives “turned over.” God’s purpose in doing that was to allow their faith to result in praise and glory to Him at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1:7).

God wants to loosen the things that can choke our lives and that prevent us from radiating joy. To do this, He sometimes has to allow pain and trouble—trials that help stir up the soil of our lives. If this is what you are experiencing today, rejoice. Surrender to His touch and acquire a joy and fruitfulness you never imagined possible.

Turning the soil and pulling the weeds
Helps garden flowers to grow,
And if we’re to see growth in our lives
Trials and testings we’ll know. —Sper

Those who bless God in their trials
will be blessed by God through their trials.

Read: 1 Peter 1:1-9

Rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings. —1 Peter 4:13

Bible in a year:
Joshua 10-12; Luke 1:39-56

[jaycee]

Thank you, Mayor. I needed to hear exactly what is in our devotion today. It spoke to me and we always thank you for helping us begin our day with God's word!

[geologist]

Amazing to me how we are surrounded by examples of how life is to be lived. Soil becomes hard, as a rock relatively quickly, when it is not REGULARLY loosened. People are like that and do not realize it. Habits, attitudes, routines, ways of entrenched thinking. Often mistakenly. Plants must have water, (living water is the word of God), sunshine, energy, photosynthesis, which is what God's instructions/commands give us.

A few years ago there was a phrase popular
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” (an atheistic one likely.)

In the light of God's truth ... it is correct.

Our life depends on God, and millions do not know it, and certainly they are not loosening up the soil of their lives purposefully everyday.