{"id":14644,"date":"2021-07-26T04:44:19","date_gmt":"2021-07-26T09:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/?p=14644"},"modified":"2021-07-26T04:44:28","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T09:44:28","slug":"are-you-flourishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/?p=14644","title":{"rendered":"Are You Flourishing?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thoughts of our huge garden in Oklahoma was my blog inspiration for this day. We always had great anticipation for a bumper crop. Then reality set in. Cultivating the soil, which can be rocky, dry and, if by hand, can be a wearisome task. Then it was sowing the seeds, keeping a watch out for critters that liked to eat the new sprouts before they matured, pulling the weeds that choked out the plants and harvesting those taters, carrots, onions, beans, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Those were our crops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was going this direction with my thoughts about cultivating the gardens of our souls to flourish and become all God destined us to be. Like our vegetable garden that took plenty of time and plenty of effort to produce a bumper crop, so it is with God\u2019s garden that is produced in you and me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only planting I’ve done since moving to my apartment home here in Austin was, in tradition, planting a yellow rose bush as my husband and I did at our homes over the years. I so wanted it to flourish \u2013 but the essentials just weren\u2019t there. That\u2019s when my thoughts turned to the beautiful little garden area that my neighbor cultivated and planted. I see it across the way from my windows or patio. As He does often, I sensed God moving me to go out and take a photo of her patio area which has just the right amount of sunshine as well as the water sprinkler head that is right where she doesn\u2019t have to worry about watering it enough in this Texas heat. The other photo here is my little patio area \u2013 a fake Boston Fern and an extremely poor attempt to have a miniature yellow rose bush flourish. There is no sun on my patio and it rarely gets watered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cFlourishing\u201d is my word-of-the-day. God allows major cultivating of \u201cour heart\u2019s soil\u201d so that we flourish as we live the abundant, good life and beyond. (John 10:10) Having weeds of bitterness, anger, fear and just barely getting by each day, is not flourishing. He wants us to flourish \u2013 to go beyond merely surviving to flourishing during these planting and harvesting seasons of our lives.

How do we live the good life? How do we really, truly flourish? For Christians, the notion of \u201cflourishing\u201d goes much deeper than just \u201cliving the good life\u201d. When God finished creating the world, He said it was, \u201cVery good.\u201d His intent for His creation was for it to flourish. As part of God\u2019s creation, being made in His image, we feel this desire for flourishing deep in our bones.

It\u2019s a no brainer why my friend\u2019s garden area is flourishing. All the elements are there. Water AND the sun. And it is the same for those who really want to flourish in their life but apart from THE SON, it will be a constant struggle. Being a Believer of the Son provides not merely a set of values or vision we should pursue, it provides the heart cure and renewal in our souls that opens up showers of blessing so that we experience flourishing each day. Flourishing comes from good soil, good LIGHT, and good watering. We flourish when we help others flourish. If our \u201ccrop\u201d is scrawny and barely making it, perhaps it\u2019s time to take a closer look to be sure it\u2019s getting enough SON and water that comes from the \u201cSprings of Living Water\u201d where our souls are nourished and satified.

“Blessed is the man\/woman who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.” Psalm 1:1-6<\/p>\n\n\n\n


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Thoughts of our huge garden in Oklahoma was my blog inspiration for this day. We always had great anticipation for a bumper crop. Then reality set in. Cultivating the soil, which can be rocky, dry and, if by hand, can be a wearisome task. Then it was sowing the seeds, keeping a watch out for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21198,21197],"tags":[143,1210,10456,1769,17938,1810,9418,5576,21196,21194,40,21195,5543,11984,19519,2681],"class_list":["post-14644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bumper-crop","category-flourishing","tag-abundant-life","tag-blog","tag-bumper-crop","tag-christian","tag-cultivating","tag-flourish","tag-flourishing","tag-garden","tag-good-life","tag-harvesting","tag-inspiration","tag-sowing","tag-springs-of-living-water","tag-sun","tag-very-good","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14647,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14644\/revisions\/14647"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mypeacezone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}