“My sweetheart, My Bride, is a secret garden, a walled garden, a private spring!” -Song of Songs 4:13
There is no one more romantically intimate than Jesus Christ!
We’re His secret garden.
I’ve been meditating on this for almost a year now, thinking how I am “A planting of the Lord”.
Not just my heart, but everything about me- all that I am is from Him.
This planting started at the moment of my spiritual conception.
“For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” –1 Peter 1:23
He starts with the imperishable seed of the Word of God!
I became a child of God because God planted the seed of His Word in me. I really am the planting of the Lord!
Now the really cool thing about this is when God planted that seed, He already knew what it was going to grow up to be!
“So they will be called oaks of righteousness, The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified.” -Isa 61:3
God doesn’t plant weeds!
He plants oak trees whose roots go deep down into Jesus Christ and display His righteousness to the praise of His glory!
A planting of the Lord
So what does it mean to be “a planting of the Lord”?
First of all, if I’m a planting of the Lord nobody’s going to be able to uproot me!
“No man is able to pluck them out of my Father’s hand.” -John 10:29
God takes care of what He plants. He takes personal responsibility for His garden.
I’m pretty sure God is an expert gardener!
That means I don’t have to worry.
He waters, tends and provides for everything He plants.
The other thing I know about God is that He’s not throwing random seed around- He plants with a purpose.
How do I know that?
Because from Genesis to Revelation God is intentional.
God is an intentional God. That means when He planted me, He had a reason.
So let me tie some of this together in a practical way so you can see how it impacts me and my life.
I Matter To God
If God’s going to bother to plant me, I obviously matter to Him!
He’s invested in me.
And not in an impersonal way.
He says I’m His “secret garden”, “a walled garden”, nonetheless! In other words, He’s protecting me. He’s set me apart. I’m not just out they’re growing in the middle of some field. I’m in a protected, cared for, environment.
On top of that he calls me His sweetheart, His bride! And not just me- this is true of every one of us who truly belong to Jesus. We are collectively His “secret garden”, the planting of the Lord.
Pulling The Weeds
It kind of makes sense that God weeds His garden, right?
As I meditated on what it means to be a planting of the Lord I came across this scripture…
Jesus replied, “Every plant not planted by my heavenly Father will be uprooted.” -Matthew 15:13
God’s going to weed His garden whether I like it or not!
So why not just cooperate with Him?
Do you really want anything growing in your life that God didn’t plant there? My attitude is, “If God didn’t plant it, I don’t want it!”
This is what surrender is all about, and I know it’s a really serious prayer to pray, but the more you understand the goodness of God the more you’ll gladly pray this with all your heart…
“Father, uproot everything in my heart and life that’s not from you!”
I trust the love God has for me, and I know He’ll never take anything from me unless it would be better for me to have it gone.
That includes even my own deeply-held desires.
In the original Greek, what this passage is saying is that every cultivated plant that our Heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.
As I began to think about that I realized that there are many things planted in my heart that I cultivate. Some of them have probably been put there by God, some of them have been planted and put there by the Devil without me knowing it, and some of the things I cultivate are just my own desires. Maybe I’ve even received prophetic words from other people or things that I believe that God has spoken to me, and I’m cultivating them, I’m watering them, I’m nourishing them. Some of these things might even seem good, but if God’s not the one that planted them do I really want them taking root and growing in my heart and life?
As I said before, I don’t want anyone or anything in my life that God hasn’t planted there. Period.
So I’ve been asking God to uproot everything that He didn’t plant. If God didn’t plant it, I don’t want it to be growing!
I’ve learned over the past year that surrender is the gateway to every blessing of God. I really don’t think it’s possible to surrender too much. The more I surrender, the better my life is.
Surrender is basically telling God, “You have the right to uproot everything you haven’t planted!”
But true surrender goes beyond even this.
When I know that I’m “A planting of the Lord”, and I’m loved by Him- that I’m His “sweetheart” and “His bride”, and that He calls me His “secret garden”- surrender becomes my greatest delight!
Why?
Because I want to be completely His.
I’m gladly “letting go” of the things I once held so tightly! All I want is open hands to hold Him!
God calls me see His “secret garden” in the “Song of Songs”. This is a song like no other… there may be ten thousand love songs but none like this!
This is Jesus and His Bride with love in their eyes and a song in their heart.
Jesus is “faithful and true” and He doesn’t want any weeds growing in His garden of love! I’m letting go of everything that keeps me from a pure devotion of Him.