The Dandelion

  
Weeding my flowerbeds this weekend I was reminded of two things:

1.) Weeds are annoying

2) Dandelions go hand in hand with Matthew 7:15,

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

This comparison of the wolf in sheeps clothing and the dandelion comes from the fact that last year our yard had barely any, and this year, that nasty weed is rampant throughout our yard, and multiplying by the day!

Intrigued at the thought of their spread, I decided to do some research to find out from a basic standpoint, what gives a weed this superhero type ability to multiply? 

I found the following:

1) They have A TON of seeds, maybe even thousands per plant giving them the ability to spread at a fascinating rate.

2) Their seed has the ability to go dormant, and become active at the slightest disturbance in the ground. You may think they are gone, and even forgot they were there, until something happens and that growth is activated again. 

3) They grow in places other plants cannot. We see them sticking out of pavement! No grass in sight, but there in that crack stands a dandelion tall and strong, seemingly full of pride.

It’s interesting really to think on these facts and compare them to sin and its effect on our life. Sin has a way of entering our lives in a very small way like that wolf in sheeps clothing, it comes looking innocent like that sheep or the flower on the stem of the dandelion, and if we aren’t careful to nip it from the start, it has the ability to take root and spread. 

That seed starts with one drink and can lead to alcoholism. It starts with a thought of, ‘I just want to feel alive,’ and becomes addiction. It starts with an innocent text and becomes adultry. It starts with one word spoken out of anger and becomes abuse. All of these things are extreme, I know, but if we are not careful, we can fall into the traps the enemy sets for us, and what used to seem so extreme and unthinkable, well, it doesn’t seem so awful anymore, and starts to look beautiful like the yellow of the dandelion, and what we used to call a weed, or sin, we now call a flower, and beautiful, yet all the while its innerworkings have remained the same weed, or sin that it always has been. 

As a child we have all mistaken a dandelion for a flower. We picked them by the bouquet, and presented them to our mothers who whole heartedly accepted our gift and loved our thoughtfulness, but as we got older, eventually, our parents taught us that what we thought was a flower was actually not, and rather than seeing it as a prize to behold, we learn it is something we work to protect our yard against. 

In the same manner, as we grow in our relationship with Jesus, we learn to identify sin in our lives and the necessity to eliminate it. Eliminating it though takes time, just like eliminating a dandelion requires killing the entire root, we have to remove the entire sin from our life and remove all chances of it going dormant, and becoming active again. 

God gives us a promise though, and His promise is that we don’t have to go through this alone, and His Word instructs us exactly how to go about minimizing it in our life. 

In Psalm 32:5 David gives us a beautiful example of beginning the battle against sin when he says, 

I acknowledged my sin to You, and my iniquity I have not hidden. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and You forgave the iniquity of my sin.

 Overcoming our sin requires an acknowledgement, it requires a moment of integrity and transparency before God, a moment that allows us to become good ground that He can work in to start pointing out the dandelions in our life and He begins to help us pull them by their taproot removing their hold over us, and any chance of them going into a secret dormancy. 

Taking steps to do this though takes dedication, and determination, it requires of us a readiness to spend time in His word to identify sin, time talking to Him in prayer, and it takes us coming to the point of realization in John 3:30, 

He must increase, and I must decrease. 

When we choose to believe this truth we experience the truth found in Romans 8:37 when it says, 

We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 

But to be that conquerer, and realize His power, we have to muster up the courage and…Choose Him.