Tag: #takestime

Cultivate the Garden of Your Faith

Growing our faith is like cultivating a garden. It needs tender loving care and patience. Plants do not grow overnight – similarly, our faith takes time to grow and mature. We need our Master Gardener to help us cultivate our Garden of Faith.

Prepare the Soil – Make Room for God

Before any seed is planted, the soil must be tilled. That means removing rocks, weeds, and thorns—the habits, thoughts, and distractions that harden our hearts or clutter our minds. We have to ask ourselves: where is our attention and focus? Is there any space in our lives for stillness, prayer and reflection? Just as the gardener clears the soil, we are called to examine, purify and prepare our hearts to make room for God.

“Break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, till He comes and rains righteousness upon you.” — Hosea 10:12 (ESV)

Sow with Intention – Plant the Seeds of Faith

Planting takes intentionality. Faith grows when we consistently invest in it – through prayer, devotions, worship, scripture reading, acts of love and kindness, trust and obedience to God. We have to sow the seeds of God’s love in our hearts and nurture our faith intentionally.

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” — Proverbs 4:23 (NIV)

Trust the Process – Growth Takes Time

Gardens don’t bloom overnight. Likewise, our faith matures through seasons—sometimes in silence, sometimes in storms. But underneath, God is always working. While waiting, we must not lose heart, but stay vigilant against the weeds of bitterness, comparison or apathy that can take root if left unchecked. Even when we don’t see anything happening, know that God is working underneath the soil and growing our roots for a sturdy foundation against the storms of life.

“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest…” — Galatians 6:9

My Invitation

This is my invitation to you today – to start cultivating your garden of faith by weeding out the negative voices and plant seeds of God’s Words to sink its roots in the fertile soil of our hearts and for the branches to grow strong and tall.

Start, even if you are not ready

We have a tendency to analyse and research when we want to start a personal project – Google search, ChatGPT, seeking expert opinion and friends’ advice, do research – all to make sure our little project that we have been dreaming of is fail-safe..!

The problem with all these checking and analysing is that we end up not starting at all – the curse of “analysis paralysis”. Furthermore, all the preparations might not prevent us from failure, as many things are not under our control.

So when do we start? NOW.

How do we start? Whatever first steps we can take. We don’t need to figure out all the steps to start our project. Along the way, we will figure things out, as we get more feedback and can improve on our initial action plans.

God always puts in our heart the desire to dream and make it happen. He will be the one to show us the way, but He will only show us a few steps at a time. Just so we trust Him. He will remove the obstacles in our way, and bring the connections and resources that we need. Sometimes, it is harder or longer than we expected, as we prefer to have things fast and easy. God wants to grow our character and it takes time. Humans and plants do not grow overnight – it takes time and seasons. Caterpillar takes time to turn into a beautiful butterfly.

We don’t see the finish line of a race when we are at the starting line. God sees the finish line and our victory. We journey together on this adventure, but we need to be at the starting line to start the race.

Trust in God’s timing.

Trust in the process of growth.

Just START.

Whether you feel ready or not.

Especially when you don’t feel ready!