Watch the scales!

When my grandmother died in 2013, I got a beautiful peace lily after her service. I keep it in my office and it has flourished in the 4 years that I have had it. This morning when I got to my office and looked at the plant, I noticed that there was an infestation of scale bugs that I thought I had gotten rid of. I have been watering the plant regularly but hadn’t done my normal preventative maintenance in a while and the scale had gotten out of control. Though I thought all was well, because I hadn’t been paying a lot of attention, the scale had quietly set up camp on my plant. As I was cleaning the leaves and stalks, the Lord began to talk to me about how easy it was for the scale to slip in and take over the plant right under my nose.

As I thought about my plant, I began to wonder how many of you have allowed your spirit, your freedom, your joy to be taken over and you didn’t even realize it. How many of you have been going to church and praying regularly but not been self-examining and purging? How many of you have let small issues turn into big problems because you didn’t address them when they first happened? You see, the enemy is tricky! He likes to slide in and plant seeds of discord and confusion that will eventually grow into anger and chaos, if you don’t stop it at the root. You see, I was doing the minimum by watering the plant but I wasn’t doing what was necessary to protect it from the scale. That one misstep allowed a whole bunch of bugs to come and it took me longer to clean up and doctor the plant then it would have if I had been watching and addressing over time.

Can I just encourage you to not let the enemy use something small in your marriage, in your church, in your relationships to grow because you won’t address them? Can I encourage you to look at your heart and see if you have some scales growing there? Song of Solomon 2:15 says, “Catch us the foxes, the little foxes that spoil the vices, for our vines have tender grapes.” It’s not the big predators that usually take you out. It’s the small ones that grow into big ones. I let those little scale bugs take over my plant and it took me a long time to get them off. What I found out was that scale infestations generally result in poor growth, reduced vigor, and yellowed leaves. If left unaddressed, the plant can become so weak that it dies. What does that have to do with you?  Keep right on letting those issues that need to be addressed linger and grow until calamity comes. Keep right on letting little things go unchecked and watch the life get sucked out of your marriage. Don’t you want to grow? Don’t you want to have healthy relationships? Well, if you don’t wake up and stop putting band aids on things that require surgery, you are going to have a dead thing.

Listen…those bugs could have left my plant a yellow hot mess but I remembered that a couple of weeks ago, the plant guy for the school came by and gave the plant an extra treatment and enhanced feeding. That protective measure very well may have boosted the plant enough to keep growing. There were a couple of leaves that I had to take off but for the most part, the plant was still green and growing. The Lord showed me that just like the plant guy came by to look in on the plant, He is looking after you.  He allowed me to see that His grace is sufficient even when you miss His instruction. His love is still abundant even when you ignore the signs. His protection is still all consuming even when you don’t acknowledge it. But He showed me that I have a responsibility to do my part. He showed me what I needed to differently. I am now responsible for the knowledge and I need to make adjustments. Don’t allow the scales in your life to take over because you keep doing the minimum. It’s time to go beyond the routine and the necessary and watch God keep what the enemy would desire to kill.

Amen