WHAT ARE YOU CULTIVATING IN YOUR GARDEN...

I  love gardens especially when they are well tended. The sheer variety and richness in colour and texture of the leaves and flowers on the plants never fails to amaze me. The fragrance some of them give out is really lovely. A lot of my life has been spent travelling so I have had to cultivate a lot of my plants in plant pots. This means that you are limited by space, and can not grow as many as you would want to so you don't have the colours and variety that are available. Also when you move the plants from one country to another, there is always the risk of losing some because they don't adjust well to new temperatures. You can not really enjoy a lovely garden this way.

 

I was reading the book of Proverbs which is a very good book to read for practical advice. It has 31 chapters so some people read one chapter of Proverbs per day, and do this every month of the year. That is a great prescription just there.
Proverbs 4 v 23 says " keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flows the springs of life.
 
Let's imagine that my heart is a garden that is being referred to here. This means that it is my responsibility to keep it (protection) and maintain all the plants that I grow in it. It tells me that of all that I own, this garden  is what I need to guard the most. This sounds quite important and is being highlighted by the Lord at this time. The beauty of the garden depends on a number of things. It depends on what I have planted myself, for instance the variety in texture, colour and fragrance. It also depends on my ability to uproot horrible weeds, water and provide nutrients to the plants and ensure the garden is protected from prey (evil).

 

 

You might be wondering what on earth do I plant in my heart? We plant thoughts and attitudes. These thoughts and attitudes are picked up from those we associate with, our environment and experiences. They come in through our portals like eyes ( what we watch), ears ( what we listen to, for example gossip etc).
These thoughts inform our decisions, which in turn inform our behaviour ( actions and values). Our ability to examine our thoughts regularly and make adjustments is crucial to the beauty of our garden. It's important that we have a standard for truth, against which we can measure things. If we do not know what we are standing on, we will fall for anything. Romans 12 v 2 advises us not to be conformed to this world. In other words, do not copy the Joneses and others around you, but be determined  to have your mind renewed. This implies that we need to have the same thoughts that God thinks of us, so we can act according to those, which will be good and acceptable in His sight. God's word is truth and in (John 8 v32, John 17 v 17 ) we are told that the truth will set us free. When we study God's words, the truth that we are taking in renews our minds. It is the Word and the Spirit that provide the nourishment for our garden. We thus get new attitudes, behaviour and new ideals and these cause our gardens to blossom and we then enter in and experience the good things God has planned.
 
Sometimes, when we have not uprooted weeds and other things, like bitterness, offence, anger, frustration, in our thoughts, we get led into actions and lifestyle that very easily result in bondage.

It's then difficult to enter into what the Lord has prepared because our spring is no longer fresh, and we have opened ourselves and our gardens up to the one who deals in bitterness, and hatred, the evil one. in this way we thus provide him with gardens to cultivate in our hearts and we know that no good plants or fruit will come out of these.This simply is legal right to our garden, where he not only grows his awful crops and weeds, but he also deprives God of His garden in our hearts and he also contaminates our spring.
 
Sometimes we say, we don't have authority over our thought life. Philippians 4 v 8 suggests a more aggressive approach. We are told to think about what we have been thinking about. We are also then told to aggressively and intentionally look for those things that are true, honourable, good, pure, lovely, kind, gracious, virtuous and so on and to think on those. In other words, look for these amazing plants and get them and cultivate them so your garden will look amazing with such a variety of colour and fragrance and texture. Out of all these, behaviour will be greatly influenced and our actions then, will tend to lead to greater freedom, wholeness and victory.

 

God bless you,

 

Mina.

For those who attended this conference before, we will like you to prayerfully invite and bring along at least ten other people, so they get blessed.

We ask you to please advertise it in your churches, so that others can come to receive impartation at the conference.

Please encourage your friends to take time off work, to fully engage and receive all that the Lord has in store for us at this conference.

Donate Towards Kingdom Advance Conference - Easter 2016

KAC / Youth Invasion

Do check out our KAC 2016 / Youth Event pages on our website for more information on our Kingdom Advance Conference.

Information about things to look forward to at the conference;
Q and A dinner session with Dr Randy Clark, Hotels, Restaurants, KAC 2016 Highlights, Guest Speakers, Sponsor a Priest, Kingdom Youth Invasion...etc.



Video (Day 1): Kingdom Harvest Conference 2015

Day 1 teachings of last year's Kingdom Harvest Conference (2015) will be on the website....
www.lapislazuliministries.com. Do check it out.
Our prayer is that your faith increase and expectations heightened as you watch.


Live Streaming: KAC 2016

Kingdom Advance Conference  2016 will be streamed live.


Bethel Sozo

We are creating host homes where Sozo videos can be watched, please get in touch with Lapis Lazuli Ministries office, if you are interested.

Personal Bethel Sozo sessions are taking place at the office (3rd Floor Maku House, 109 Awolowo Road, South West Ikoyi, Lagos). Please book on the website or send an email to info@lapislazuliministries.org if you would like to have a personal sozo. If you will like to be trained up to minister in sozo, please get in touch with us.

May the Lord continue to uphold and preserve you all.

God's blessings,

Femi and Mina Bajomo