The Lord speaks through tomatoes! Who knew?? Apparently Veggie Tales had it right all along haha!

Flashback to our first full ministry day at Dunamis! We started the morning off by learning how to care for the plants well. The procedure was to look for any dying branches, leaves, or spots where the plant was rotting. You cut that part off and then with a sponge you use a natural solution to clean the newly made wound. If you don't clean it, the spot will just get infected and begin to rot again. Although, rather than being able to go back and recut it, the whole plant will be affected, causing it to die completely. 

As I was learning all of this and examining the plants, the Lord started speaking! I started to see these vines of tomatoes as our hearts. 

Sometimes our hearts sprout extra and unnecessary habits, feelings, or thought processes. This could look like sin and brokenness. Most of the time these things don't glorify the Lord or help us to look more like Him. To refine our hearts and pursue God in looking more like Him, we have to prune ourselves of these attachments. But when we cut off these habits from our heart we must be careful and tedious in cleansing the wound. We must replace it with something glorifying to Jesus or walk with the Lord in the journey of growing new and healthy ways of life. If you don't treat the wound properly it will just get infected, causing the rot to grow back and possibly hurt the whole heart, aka the whole plant. Something beautiful about the idea of cleansing an open wound though, is that when you treat the wound properly it is now able to produce new life and new growth. It will bring abundant newness from where hurt once was.

Something I prayed while pruning and cleansing each plant was that the Lord would do this to my heart. I ask that He continually refine me, purify me, and grow me in new and beautiful ways!

"He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." John 15:2-4