Heartgate International Ministries

As a child growing up in Wisconsin, I lived on a street lined with Dutch Elm trees.  The trees were there throughout my childhood.  But one day as I walked down the street we lived on, I noticed the trees on both sides of the street had grown so large that they now covered the street with a lush, green cathedral-like arch.  It was magnificent!  It had never seemed like such a big deal before.  In fact, I never really noticed them before.  They were just trees planted by the side of the road that I walked down almost daily.  But now they had become a thing of beauty as they reached towards heaven overlapping the limbs of  trees on the opposite side of the street doing the same.

This is how our life is so much of the time.  Growth is happening and we aren’t even aware of it until it is complete and finished.  The growth process required that those trees be subjected to the elements of sun, wind, rain, snow and ice – and all the while the trees were growing taller and stretching further.  Those very elements, along with the passing of time, were the making of the arch of tree limbs.

Thank God for the elements that produce growth in our lives.  Without them there would be no growth.  Yielding to those elements God brings into our lives to form and shape us will always produce something of beauty.

It may be that you are facing some seemingly adverse elements in your life today.  Remember this — they are the elements that are helping you grow strong and tall in God’s will for your life and fruitfulness through your life.  The grace of God is always available for every challenge we face .  If we yield to the process, and take hold of the grace provided, we will be transformed in the Potter’s hands.  Be thankful for the elements as they are sent to help, not hinder, your growth.

“But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”-2Pet.3:18