The Garden of Personal Growth

Does personal growth really work or is it just a bunch of hooey? Is it just a bunch of hocus pocus, a bunch of woo woo? Or does personal growth really do something? Is personal growth real or is it just a figment of our imagination? I submit to you that not only is personal growth real, Today, I'm going to give you the down and dirty of personal growth. And this video, all videos are like, what am I going to call this video? Man, I was going to call it, how does your garden grow? No, I don't like that. I was going to call it down and dirty. dirt and up in the garden. No, I'm not going to call it that. I'm going to call it, the gardener is the garden. No, I don't want to call it that. And so we're just going to do the down and dirty and personal growth. Okay. Why am I calling it down and dirty and personal growth? Well, I'm going to read the passage to you first. It's in Genesis chapter two. The Bible has so much to say about gardens, grounds, growth. that it's kind of mind-blowing. It has a lot to say about trees and fruit and herbs or vegetables and grass. The Bible talks about all of this stuff and the ground and all of the stuff that it does. It's really, it's... really mind-blowing. So here we are, Genesis chapter 2. I'm going to start with verse number 7, and it says, and we're going to read down to verse number 17. It says, It says, and the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground, and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he... put the man whom he had formed. So after God made man, the scripture says the Lord God planted a garden eastward need. Now, I don't know if that's chronological. I don't know if he made the garden first and then the man or the man and then the garden. And he just told us about the garden after he told us about the man or if he made the garden first. I don't know if that's If he planted the garden after he made the man, it doesn't matter. He did all of it. So then it says, out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food and the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Now, a lot of people like to ask the question, well, if God didn't want man to eat off the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, why did he put it in the garden? First of all, if you ain't God, why are you asking God why? Instead of asking him, what should I be doing? You want a good question to ask God? What should I be doing with my life? Instead of, why did you do this? And why did he do that? If he's really God, why? Get over yourself. Now you're trying to make yourself the God of God. It don't work. But since you did ask the question, I'll go ahead and answer it. Why do I believe that God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden and then he tells man not to eat of it? Because if there's no opportunity to do wrong, right has no value. It's not right if there's no opportunity to do wrong. It's just the default. You know, there's not a man in the world that wants to be married to a woman just because he's the only man. Or a woman in the world that wants to be married to a man just because she's the only... Like, if you were the only man in the world and a woman was attracted to you, it ain't that deep, bro. Right? So the fact that there's an opportunity to do wrong when you do something right, that makes the right that you did way more valuable. Are y'all tracking? Okay. Anyway, that has nothing to do with what I'm going to talk about today, but I figured I'd cover it because people like to ask those parenthetical questions and even if they don't, I remember somebody asking me and then I go there. Okay, here we go. Out of the ground, the Lord God made, verse nine, every tree, out of the Lord, out of the ground, the Lord God made to grow every tree and is pleasant to the eyes. good for food, tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And the river that went out of Eden to the water of the garden, from thence it was parted and became into four heads. The name of the first was Pison, which compassed the land of Havilah where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. That's the first time gold is mentioned in the Bible, by the way. I'm not even going to stop there. Or as my good friend, Dr. Darius Daniels said, I'm not even going to bother that. Gold of that land is good. And there's delium and onyx stone. And the name of the second river, Gihon, is the same as that that compasses the land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third is Hadikio, that which goes towards the east of Assyria. And the fourth is the river Euphrates. And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of the land of Assyria. going to stop. So a couple of things we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the ground. We're going to talk about the garden and we're going to talk about this full grown man. Okay. Now, interestingly enough, the scripture says the Lord God formed man to dust the ground. If you go back to Genesis chapter one and verse number 26 and 27, it says the Lord God and, and, and, and, um, and, um, the Lord said, let us make man in our image and let them have. So God created man in Genesis chapter one. 1 verse 26, 27, then he formed the man, the body for the man, Genesis chapter 2 verse 7, he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, the man became a living soul. I believe that God breathed the man that he created into the body that he created for the man that he created. right? Because you are not your body. You just live in your body. Are y'all tracking? Okay. So the first thing I want to write up here is the word garden. Is that red or is that green? It's red. Okay. Okay. Okay. Garden. Eve say garden. Then Eden. Eve say Eden. And then I'm going to write free food. Okay, free food. Okay, I'm going to erase that F because it doesn't look like an F, it looks like an R. Okay, I'm going to throw my pen down. Wow, this is really going to be good. Okay, okay, so free food. Now, so the Garden of Eden, the word garden means enclosure. What that means is the Garden of Eden was a protected place. Right? Eden means pleasure. And then free food is provision. So now we understand God's ideal environment for man that he made. It is God's protected place of pleasure and provision. That is God's ideal environment for man, a protected place of pleasure and provision. Eve tracking? So this is where he put the first man. Like, there's not a better place. He didn't put him in a factory. He didn't put him in a country club. He didn't put him in a science lab. He put him in a garden. He didn't even put him in a bakery. People talk about economic pie, right? Oh, there's not enough pie. Don't take too much of the economic pie. The economy is not a pie. God didn't put man in a bakery. He put him in a garden. If you were to put him in a bakery, consumption would create lack. But he put him in a garden where consumption creates production. Because when you eat the fruit, it exposes the seed, which can grow more fruit. Are y'all tracking? And so God's ideal environment for the man is a protected place of pleasure. So God put the man in the garden to protect him. Now, what is God protecting the man from? I don't know, but here's what I do know. Whatever he's protecting the man from, it's outside the garden. Are y'all with me? Now, God put the man in the garden to dress it and keep it. Now, here's the interesting thing about the garden. There's some ground in the garden. There's a fence around the garden. There's at least one gate. We know that, right? Maybe more than one gate, but there's fence around it. I can't draw three-dimensionally. If I could, I would deal with it. Okay, so here's what happens. When you take a seed and you put it in the ground, I'm going to do it differently. When you take a seed and you put that seed in the ground, if this seed is going to ever become a tree, Yeah, it has to go down on the ground. But it has to cease to be a seed, or it can never become a tree. What do we learn from that? Well, there are so many times in Scripture where God compares us to trees. In Psalms chapter 1, it says, Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. In his law doth he meditate day and night. He shall be like a tree. Like a what? Like a tree planted by the rivers of waters that bringeth forth his fruit in his season. He shall be like a tree that... that's planted, so planted like a tree. And so this seed that wants to grow, it's gotta be planted, but it's gotta be willing to stop being what it's been. Isn't it interesting that in Psalms chapter one, it says blessed is the man, and it doesn't tell you that the man is blessed who does, it says blessed is the man who doesn't. Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor sit at the seat of the scornful, nor stand at the way of sinners, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. God told us. what the man who's blessed doesn't do before he tells what the man who's blessed does do. So donting the don't is as important as doing the do. But wait a minute. When God called Abram, he didn't call Abram to the promised land. He called him out of the land of the familiar. He said, I want you to leave your country. I want you to leave your kindred. I want you to leave your father's house. to go to a land that I will show you. He said, hey, you know where you are. You know the people who are where you are. They know you where you are. And I'm gonna call you away from what you've been being to a place of who you are. you can become. And the reason I believe that God called, first of all, the things that were written aforetime were written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the scripture might have hope. So the stories that are in the Bible are not just there for our learning. our entertainment. They are illustrations to show us the principles of God. And one of the principles of God is this. We have to let go of what we've been holding onto to make room for what he has for us. We've got to get out of where we've been being before we can enter into where we're going. And if I say, I'm going to go visit my brother in Pennsylvania, I'm going to go, I'm going to do a road trip. I'm going to go to Pennsylvania. I'm going to visit my brother in Pennsylvania. Myron, when are you leaving? I'm leaving as soon as I can see the Pennsylvania state line. When do I get to Pennsylvania? Never. Because I have to leave where I am and be willing to be gone from there. Long before I ever get to see the place I'm going. So don't be confused by the fact that there's some disorientation and there's a little bit of confusion, a little bit of wonder and a whole lot of hope and expectation on the journey of life that you are on. That's how God designed it. But if you keep holding on to what you've had, you can never step into the place that God has for you. So he called him away from his father. Why? Because his name was Abram. Do you ever wonder when you read Genesis chapter 12, why does God say, he said, if you will leave your country and your kindred and your father's house to go to a land that I will show you, I will bless you. I'll make of you a great nation. And then he says, and I will make your name great. Make your name great? God's in, I don't know if y'all noticed this or not, God's in the great names. He has the greatest name of all names. Man, I heard somebody say last week, I don't even remember what I was watching, I was listening to something, and he said, He said, he said, the reason, like, oh, excuse me, I was thinking about it. He said the name of God, which is spelled Yud-Heh-Vov-Heh. And we say Yahwehweh, right? We say Yahwehweh. But it's like the inhales, that's the Yahweh. The exhales, Wah. Ah. Wah. Like, he is like our total existence. Well, you take the yud, hey, bub, hey, not to mention the fact, yud, hey, bub, hey. This is Hebrew. That's a hand. This means behold. This is a nail. This is behold. The hand behold. The nail behold. Read it backwards. Behold the nail. Behold the nail. Behold the hand. That's God's name. Okay, anyway, that's an aside, but it's a good aside. His name was Abram. Abram means high father or exalted father, but he could not have any children. So every time somebody called his name, it reminded him of his insignificance, his impotence, his imposter syndrome. Here goes the high father with no kids. God said, I'm going to make your name great. I'm going to change your name from Abram, high father with no children, to Abram, father of many nations. But I'm not going to do that for you where you are right now. Because those people who know you as the high father with no children, they won't let you forget who you're not. So sometimes you got to get away from the land of the familiar. Before you can ever step into the land of the fantastic. Can I get a witness? Okay, so there's the ground. And so you plant the seed in the ground. And then the seed, when it ceases to be a seed, it begins to sprout. And it begins to grow. And then all of a sudden it breaks through the dirt. Now, interesting thing about this ground down here under the ground, the arrets, the earth, it's a foundation. If you go down in the dirt, it's dark down in the dirt. I say hi to people, how you doing? I'm above the dirt. And exactly when were you below the dirt? I don't ask them, but that's what I think. That's what I think. I think, and you were below the dirt when? Okay, but it's dark below the dirt. It's damp. It's damp. It's difficult. There's a lot of resistance down here. There are things that these roots have to push through before this seed can become a tree. And see, we think that we desire our lives to be easy and effortless, but the reality is that we don't. is, if your life is too easy and effortless, you can't become strong enough to do anything meaningful. You got to go through some stuff to get to your stuff. And if you're unwilling to go through what God has ordained you go through, you will never get to what God ordained you to get to. That's why I believe in Genesis chapter one, before anything else happened, God shows us, even for God, disruption always follows intention. In the beginning, God created the heavenly earth. That's God's intention. He intended to create the heavenly earth. He did it. Congratulations. What happens next? And the earth will be the same. which that word was the word became without form and void and darkness upon the face of the deep. In Genesis chapter one, God's not just giving us an account of what he did. He's giving us a pattern because we are made in his image to do what he did based on what he put inside of us. So he's showing us how it's going to work. Are y'all tracking? And so when God himself created everything out of nothing, the first thing that showed up was disruption. Because disruption always follows intention. And by the way, we already know that, but we sometimes forget it. And so what happens is we get started on a new journey and some disruption shows up, and we automatically conclude we're going in the wrong direction. When the disruption is often a sign that you're going in the right direction. Like when you start working out, you don't feel better first, you feel way more worse first. Can I get a witness? Stuff hurts. You don't feel stronger first, you feel weaker first. Why? Because disruption always follows intention. It's how life works. And it's going to be dark and damp and difficult down under the dirt. In the place where you're growing, nobody gets to see how awesome you are because you ain't awesome yet, you down in the dirt. And so what happens is it finally pushes through and it grows up. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of waters, bringeth forth its fruit in the season. Now, you've heard me talk about this before, but it bears saying again and again and again and again and again. Trees cannot grow in one direction. In fact, nothing can, especially not you. Who? Eve tap yourself on the chest, say me. You can't grow in one direction. We'd like to grow in one direction. We'd like to just grow straight up. But God didn't make you like a rocket. He made you like a tree. The part of the tree that grows first is the part that grows down. This is the gravotropic. I'm just going to put grav, gravotropic nature of the tree. The part of the tree that grows up is the phototropic. Now, what does gravotropic mean? Gravatropic means that it grows away from light and towards gravity. Are y'all tracking? Phototropic means it grows away from gravity and towards light. Do you understand when God made you, he made you both gravotropic and phototropic? It's really interesting. There's a book called The Language of Creation, really mind-blowing book. And one of the concepts in the book is that earth gives heaven expression, but heaven gives earth meaning. And so when you look at heaven, that's the significance, that's the meaning, but earth is the expression of that meaning. Isn't it fascinating when God made man, he made us part earth, expression, part heaven, meaning. See, that's why things mean something to us. Stuff means something to me. It don't mean nothing to a dog and a cat and a chimpanzee. They're not sitting around contemplating the laws of the universe. Not ever have they ever done it. Why? Because they're not made in the image of God, and they don't have both. Are y'all tracking? And so the phototropic nature, here's what we don't realize, though. Not only does this have to happen first, this can only grow as tall as these roots grow deep. And the root part is the sometimes, oftentimes, the unfun part. It's the practice. Right? It's the reading of the books. It's the studying. It's the reps that nobody sees. That's the unfun part. But man, when you do the unfun part long enough, even though you can't be seen, even though nobody's cheering your cheers, even though nobody's singing your praises, you do the unfun part long enough, eventually you're going to break through the dirt. You're going to see some light. Then you're going to start reaching toward the light. And because your roots... See, some of you have been lamenting the length of your journey. You've been brokenhearted. I've been at this so long. When is it going to work for me? It's going to work for you when it's supposed to because everything's beautiful in his time, not your time. And see, here's what's going to happen. If you break through the dirt too soon, your roots won't be strong enough to support the fruit that's going to come out of it. So let God do his thing in his time in your life, and you'll be glad you did. Well, anyway, so this is the nature of the tree. Well, that's cool. And so the scripture says God put the man in the garden to dress it, that's cultivate, and keep it. The word keep means to protect. Now, is anybody else a little confused by this, or is it just me? Because I thought the word garden meant enclosure. So it's the protected place. God put the garden around the man to protect the man from the stuff that was outside the garden. But now God's putting the man in the garden and telling the man to protect the garden. I'm confused. Now, is it protecting me or am I protecting it? Who's protecting who around here? And it's fascinating to me that God said, here's what I want you to do. I want you to protect what's protecting you. I want you to take care of what's taking care of you. I want you to look after what's looking after you. Y'all ain't picking up what I'm putting down. I want you to look after what's looking after you. And here's what the fascinating part is. I get chills thinking about it again. The hair is literally standing up on my arm right now. Because God put the garden around the man to protect the man from what's outside the garden. But God put the man in the garden to protect the garden from the stuff that's in the garden. Mmm. Say what? God put the man, dress it, put some water on it. Dress it, put some fertilizer on it. Dress it, tend to it, but cultivate it, protect it. Because where there are weeds, I mean, where there are seeds, there are weeds. And if you don't protect, see, here's the problem. Weeds like the same stuff that seeds like. And weeds are in competition for the nourishment that was meant for the seeds. Y'all ain't picking up what I'm putting down. And God said, I'm putting you in here. Because you got to take care of the inside of the garden. And you got to make sure you pull those weeds. Hmm? But there's also an enemy in the garden. There's some temptations in the garden. Oh, lie. And God said, dress it, cultivate it, keep it, protect the inside of the garden. Now, the interesting thing about it is this. This is the soil. All this down here, this is the soil. God made this man's body from the dust of the ground. The man's body that he lives in is made out of the same soil that the trees grow out of. And then, the first thing God said to man when he talked to him. So interesting. So we can learn a lot from first things. There's a principle of Bible study called the law of first mention. However God first mentions something in scripture, that's God's original design for that thing. Because God doesn't change. So if that's why he designed it in the beginning, it's still the design right now. He ain't changing it. Are y'all with me? Okay. So. The first thing God tells us about God, I think it behooves us to study the patterns in Scripture and the practices and the precepts and the promises, right, and the prayers and the prophecies. It behooves us to study these patterns in Scripture. And here's one of the patterns I see in Scripture. The first thing God tells about God is not that he is love, even though he's love. It's not that he's holy. Yes, he's holy. The first thing God tells about God is not that he's righteous. Yes, he's righteous. The first thing God tells about God is not that he's omnipotent, even though he's omnipotent. Not that he's omniscient, even though he's omniscient. Not that he's omnipresent, even though he's omnipresent. The first thing, which thing? The what? First, the what? The first thing God tells us about God is that he's creative. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. That's the first thing he tells us. Why? Because it's one of the most important things we need. to understand about God. Why? Because until we understand that, we can't understand ourselves who are made in the image of the God who made us. What does that mean? The first thing that God says about man is this. Let us make man in our image. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air and every creeping thing that moves upon the earth. That's the first thing God tells about man. First thing God tells about God is that he's creative. First thing God tells about man is that he made us like him. He created us in his image. He made us a lookalike. He made us a lookalike with a body. Okay. The first thing God says to man. This is the first words God ever said to man. This is the first command. Thousands of years before the Ten Commandments. Are you all with me? First thing God says to man. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, subdue it, and have dominion. Be fruitful. Now. Unfortunately, if I'm in the garden, God's talking to me, and this is the first thing he says to me is be fruitful. I'm going to say. What does that mean? Well, fortunately for us, God rinses and repeats a lot. What does that mean? That means all principles are microcosms of each other. So if I want to know what fruitfulness is, I need to look at a fruit so I can understand fruitfulness. Now, the Bible tells us that God made every green herb to produce seed, but it also tells us that God made every tree to bring forth fruit, and in the fruit... is the seed thereof. So the seed of the fruit is inside of the fruit. So what the fruit does is produce on the outside based on what God put on the inside. And so what God is telling me is God is telling me that when he's telling me to be fruitful, he's telling me he put a seed in me. He put a seed in you. He put a seed in all of us. He said, you make sure based on the seed I put inside of you that fruit shows up outside of you. Ain't that what it says? He said, be fruitful. So you make sure that based on the seed. Now, what is the seed he put inside of us? Okay. We about to go there. I don't know if y'all ready or not. We about to go there. The seed that God put inside of us is an aspect of his creativity. Now he put a different aspect of his creativity inside of all of us so that you need me and I need you and we need us and us needs we. So that no man is an island, no woman is an island. God put us here so that you have something that would benefit me and I got something that would benefit you. And that's how God created the concept of community by not giving all of us, any of us, everything, but giving all of us something. And so when he planted the seed of his creativity, when God planted the seed, how did he do that? He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul. Now, God planted a garden eastward in Eden. And then he planted a seed in the garden that is the man. So the gardener, Adam, is not just the gardener. The gardener is also a garden. Y'all ain't picking up what I'm putting down. And God said, you make sure you cultivate the garden that is you so it produces some fruit that looks like me. Oh, oh, but it gets more better. So, so it says, maybe that's why it says, Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of ungodly, nor sitteth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of scornful, standeth in the way of sinners. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and his laws that he meditate day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of waters that bringeth forth what? His fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. Let me ask you a question. How many folk you know, whatsoever they do, is prospering? I'm just asking, because that's what God promised. Now, God ain't lying. So, something ain't lining up. And maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the thing that ain't lining up. Are y'all tracking? Okay. Isaiah 55. My ways are not your ways, saith the Lord, neither are my thoughts your thoughts, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. Now watch what it says. As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven. I don't know if y'all remember in Genesis chapter two, I think it was verse nine, it said, for God had not yet made rain to fall upon the earth. I don't know if y'all remember that or not. Okay, so let's go back to Isaiah 55. My ways are not your ways, saith the Lord, neither are my thoughts your thoughts, for as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and it watereth the earth. And maketh it bring forth and bud. The rain and the snow that comes from heaven forces the earth to produce fruit. Why? Maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give bread to the... eater, consumption to the consumer, and seed to the sower, production to the producer. Here's what it says. So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. God said his word is going to be like the rain and snow that comes down from heaven and waters the earth. It makes it bring forth and bud. So shall my word be to go forth out of my mouth, and it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper. There's that word again. In the thing whereunto I sent it. God said that his word is like the rain and the snow that comes down from heaven. So I'm supposed to dress the garden. What am I dressing the garden with? I'm dressing the garden with the word of God. I'm cultivating it. I'm making sure that the soil stays damp. I'm making sure I'm saturating the soil that is me. This garden, I'm saturating this dirt pot, this clay pot, this dirt garden that has the seed of God's likeness. planted in. I'm saturating it with the word, the water of the word of God so that it produces fruit that looks like him. The gardener is a gardener who was put in the garden to protect it from the things that were inside the garden while the garden was protecting him from the things that were outside the garden. Oh, oh, oh, we ain't through. No, no, no, no, no, baby, no, we ain't through. Now we got to figure out, what are these weeds that are inside the garden that is me, that are going to protect the garden that is me, that doesn't represent me? It is me, but it don't represent me. What are the weeds that I can protect this garden from? I am so glad that God tells us what we got to protect the garden from and the weeds that we got to protect our garden from. We talked about cultivating it, now we're going to talk about keeping it. We got to protect our garden from the world, from the flesh, and from the devil. Those are the enemies. that are inside of us. The world is inside of us because of influences. The flesh is inside of us with impulses. And the devil, he is inside of us, not physically, but via indoctrination from the world system. Are y'all tracking? See, we read this and we don't even understand what it means, the world, flesh, and the devil. It's interesting. Recently. See. People don't even apply their own faulty hermeneutic principles, hermeneutic Bible study principles to their own faulty beliefs, except when it's convenient. I did a video a few weeks ago on why God doesn't love everybody. And I know that's one of the most controversial videos I've ever done, but it's in the Bible. I didn't put it in there. It was in my Bible when I got up this morning. People say, well, but God so loved the world. Okay, God so loved the world. That means God loves everybody. Well, if that means God loves everybody, when God says love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, we shouldn't love anybody. If you're going to use the same logic. I'm just saying, right? So let's look further than just, let's don't take a verse out of context and think that it's gonna contradict every other thing that God said. Everything that God says supports everything else God said. There are no isolated doctrines in scripture. Are y'all tracking what I'm saying? There are no isolated. It all supports what it all says and it all says the same thing over and over and over and over again. So hopefully one of these times, about an 11,000th time, we might get it. Okay, the world. How does the world show up? The world shows up and attacks us in our ambitions. You know where that shows up? In our desire to be impressive so that people think something about us. The world affects us in our desire to be seen as something by other people. I need you to believe this about me. That's a worldly temptation. See, If you love mercy and you do justly and you walk humbly with thy God, you don't have to worry about what people think about you. Jesus said the world hated me. Don't be surprised if it's going to hate you also. The world attacks us in our ambitions. The flesh attacks us in our appetites. You would talk about this on Thanksgiving Day. It's real. I did a video called Satan's Secret Weapon. It's destroyed more people than alcohol and drugs. You know what it is? Food. In America, most people dig their graves with a knife and fork. But it's our appetites. It's our appetites for food. It's our appetites for sex. It's our appetites for good feelings. That's why people take drugs and get drunk. Because I just want to feel something. And the devil attacks us in our attitudes. Especially the attitude of pride, thinking that we are better than somebody else. He also attacks us. He also attacks us in our attention. He gets us to pay attention to things that God told us not to pay attention to. He gets us to pay attention to things that God told us not to do. And so, why does he want us to pay attention? Go back and read Genesis chapter 3. Here's what it says. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden. The woman said, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the trees in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. Well, God didn't say don't touch it, but she made the mistake that we make. The thought she could use willpower to conquer the flesh, but the flesh ain't going to help you conquer your flesh. You know why? Because the flesh likes all the stuff the flesh likes. So Eve thought, if I don't touch it, I'm not going to eat it, but she was wrong. He said, you shall not surely die. For God does not know that the day you eat their oven, your eyes will be opened and you shall be as God's knowing good and evil. And then it says, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, that it was to make one wise, she took the fruit of their oven and did eat and gave also unto her husband with her and he did eat. How did that happen? How did that happen so fast? back. What was that transition? Satan got her to pay attention to the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The ignored it. Why did she ignore it? The had all of this abundance around her. Adam and Eve were in the garden of Eden. It was the protected place of pleasure. It was a garden with an enclosure. It was a protected place of pleasure. They had apple trees and plum trees and pear trees and coconut trees and almond trees and fig trees and trees and trees and more fruit trees and peach trees and orange trees. And this is getting really squeaky. and other trees and more trees and more trees. And right smack dab, just imagine trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees. And here's what God said, of every tree that man freely eat. Okay, cool. Now, Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve are down here in the Garden of Eden. They're down here in the Garden of Eden, and there's two other trees. There's a tree of life. I'm going to make that this. There's a tree of life, and then there's a tree of knowledge of good and evil. God said, don't eat off of this tree. Now, Adam and Eve had everything. Eve say everything. Everything but one thing. So they had everything, lacked one thing, which by the way shows us that the very first temptation in the history of the world was the temptation to focus on lack. That's another thing we have to protect our garden from, focusing on lack. Because when you focus on what's missing, you can't see what's there. There are so many times in Scripture that we could, like, I don't even have time to go into all of it, but when you're focused on what's missing, you can't see what's there. So what happened was, the enemy got Eve to focus her attention on the thing that was missing. Why did he do that? Because he knows where attention goes, intention follows. When you give something... attention long enough, eventually you will set an intention on the thing you gave attention to. Y'all tracking? Well, guess what Adam and Eve had to do? They had to walk past all of their abundance to get to the thing they lacked. We have been made in the image of God. God planted a seed of his creativity down inside of us that we're supposed to use to manifest. fruitfulness and productivity to the world, to show the world who he is. But we got to water the garden that is us with the water of the word of God so they can bring forth fruit. We have to protect the garden from the enemies within because the garden was put there to protect man from the enemy without. And I am here to tell you, oh, by the way, just really quickly, the Bible tells us the way we defeat the temptation of the world is just don't love it. Don't love the accolades of people. The flesh, here's what the Bible tells us about the flesh, flee also youthful lust. You run from fleshly temptations. Put yourself in a different environment. You find yourself in an environment where you're being tempted physically, remove yourself from the environment. Now this was, it seems like, this one right here, James chapter 4, here's what it says. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. So how do we defeat the devil? We submit to God and then we resist him. If you try to resist Satan without submitting to God, you will fail every time. Why? Why does submitting to God help you resist Satan? Here's why. Because all authority is an alignment issue. This is the umbrella of God's protection. It is God's, we'll just call it promises. It's more than that, but we'll just call it that. This is the umbrella of God's protection. I submit myself. Do you know what the word submit means? It means to place yourself under. I submit. I place myself under. What am I placing myself under? I'm placing myself under the protection of God. That's my garden that's protecting me from the outside. Now I've got to protect me from the inside. When I say, you know what? I don't know. I don't like this. I ain't having enough fun under here. I'm going to go over here. I have no ability to resist Satan over here because I'm no longer under the protection of God. All the fiery darts of the enemy, when they get here, they bounce off. When they come here, I'm done. All I'm saying is this, God made you a gardener and a garden. Dress it and keep it. That's the down and dirty of personal growth. People think, people, like, I have no, people think that I teach the Bible based, I mean, teach business based on biblical principles because I want somebody to be religious. I don't want anybody to be religious. They care less. God has the best answers. To what? To every problem that ever existed. He has the best answer. So I teach from a biblical perspective so you can know if something happens to me and I'm gone, the answers are still here. I'm a messenger. I'm not the message. And I am here to let you know that if you will saturate the soil that is you with the word of God, it will change your life in ways that you cannot currently imagine. So hopefully this blesses you on YouTube and in the room and on Zoom in a way that will make your life, take your life to a level that you previously could not imagine. I'm telling you, God is awesome. And when you, like, focus on the gravatropic nature of your life, the studying and the praying and the learning that you do when nobody's watching down in the dirt, when you show up in the marketplace, folk can't help but see the phototropic nature of your existence. Because you took care of the gravatropic nature of your existence. Garden the garden that is you. That is the down and dirty, dirty of personal growth. Stay blessed by the best. I hope it helps you. In the meantime, see you next time.

Does personal growth really work or is it just a bunch of hooey? Is it just a bunch of hocus pocus, a bunch of woo woo? Or does personal growth really do something?

Is personal growth real or is it just a figment of our imagination? I submit to you that not only is personal growth real, Today, I'm going to give you the down and dirty of personal growth. And this video, all videos are like, what am I going to call this video?

Man, I was going to call it, how does your garden grow? No, I don't like that. I was going to call it down and dirty. dirt and up in the garden. No, I'm not going to call it that.

I'm going to call it, the gardener is the garden. No, I don't want to call it that. And so we're just going to do the down and dirty and personal growth.

Okay. Why am I calling it down and dirty and personal growth? Well, I'm going to read the passage to you first. It's in Genesis chapter two. The Bible has so much to say about gardens, grounds, growth.

that it's kind of mind-blowing. It has a lot to say about trees and fruit and herbs or vegetables and grass. The Bible talks about all of this stuff and the ground and all of the stuff that it does. It's really, it's...

really mind-blowing. So here we are, Genesis chapter 2. I'm going to start with verse number 7, and it says, and we're going to read down to verse number 17. It says, It says, and the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground, and he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he... put the man whom he had formed.

So after God made man, the scripture says the Lord God planted a garden eastward need. Now, I don't know if that's chronological. I don't know if he made the garden first and then the man or the man and then the garden.

And he just told us about the garden after he told us about the man or if he made the garden first. I don't know if that's If he planted the garden after he made the man, it doesn't matter. He did all of it.

So then it says, out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food and the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Now, a lot of people like to ask the question, well, if God didn't want man to eat off the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, why did he put it in the garden? First of all, if you ain't God, why are you asking God why? Instead of asking him, what should I be doing? You want a good question to ask God?

What should I be doing with my life? Instead of, why did you do this? And why did he do that?

If he's really God, why? Get over yourself. Now you're trying to make yourself the God of God. It don't work.

But since you did ask the question, I'll go ahead and answer it. Why do I believe that God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden and then he tells man not to eat of it? Because if there's no opportunity to do wrong, right has no value. It's not right if there's no opportunity to do wrong. It's just the default.

You know, there's not a man in the world that wants to be married to a woman just because he's the only man. Or a woman in the world that wants to be married to a man just because she's the only... Like, if you were the only man in the world and a woman was attracted to you, it ain't that deep, bro. Right?

So the fact that there's an opportunity to do wrong when you do something right, that makes the right that you did way more valuable. Are y'all tracking? Okay. Anyway, that has nothing to do with what I'm going to talk about today, but I figured I'd cover it because people like to ask those parenthetical questions and even if they don't, I remember somebody asking me and then I go there. Okay, here we go.

Out of the ground, the Lord God made, verse nine, every tree, out of the Lord, out of the ground, the Lord God made to grow every tree and is pleasant to the eyes. good for food, tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And the river that went out of Eden to the water of the garden, from thence it was parted and became into four heads. The name of the first was Pison, which compassed the land of Havilah where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good.

That's the first time gold is mentioned in the Bible, by the way. I'm not even going to stop there. Or as my good friend, Dr. Darius Daniels said, I'm not even going to bother that. Gold of that land is good. And there's delium and onyx stone.

And the name of the second river, Gihon, is the same as that that compasses the land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third is Hadikio, that which goes towards the east of Assyria. And the fourth is the river Euphrates. And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of the land of Assyria.

going to stop. So a couple of things we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the ground.

We're going to talk about the garden and we're going to talk about this full grown man. Okay. Now, interestingly enough, the scripture says the Lord God formed man to dust the ground. If you go back to Genesis chapter one and verse number 26 and 27, it says the Lord God and, and, and, and, um, and, um, the Lord said, let us make man in our image and let them have.

So God created man in Genesis chapter one. 1 verse 26, 27, then he formed the man, the body for the man, Genesis chapter 2 verse 7, he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, the man became a living soul. I believe that God breathed the man that he created into the body that he created for the man that he created. right? Because you are not your body.

You just live in your body. Are y'all tracking? Okay. So the first thing I want to write up here is the word garden.

Is that red or is that green? It's red. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Garden.

Eve say garden. Then Eden. Eve say Eden.

And then I'm going to write free food. Okay, free food. Okay, I'm going to erase that F because it doesn't look like an F, it looks like an R.

Okay, I'm going to throw my pen down. Wow, this is really going to be good. Okay, okay, so free food. Now, so the Garden of Eden, the word garden means enclosure. What that means is the Garden of Eden was a protected place.

Right? Eden means pleasure. And then free food is provision. So now we understand God's ideal environment for man that he made.

It is God's protected place of pleasure and provision. That is God's ideal environment for man, a protected place of pleasure and provision. Eve tracking?

So this is where he put the first man. Like, there's not a better place. He didn't put him in a factory. He didn't put him in a country club.

He didn't put him in a science lab. He put him in a garden. He didn't even put him in a bakery.

People talk about economic pie, right? Oh, there's not enough pie. Don't take too much of the economic pie.

The economy is not a pie. God didn't put man in a bakery. He put him in a garden.

If you were to put him in a bakery, consumption would create lack. But he put him in a garden where consumption creates production. Because when you eat the fruit, it exposes the seed, which can grow more fruit.

Are y'all tracking? And so God's ideal environment for the man is a protected place of pleasure. So God put the man in the garden to protect him. Now, what is God protecting the man from? I don't know, but here's what I do know.

Whatever he's protecting the man from, it's outside the garden. Are y'all with me? Now, God put the man in the garden to dress it and keep it.

Now, here's the interesting thing about the garden. There's some ground in the garden. There's a fence around the garden.

There's at least one gate. We know that, right? Maybe more than one gate, but there's fence around it. I can't draw three-dimensionally.

If I could, I would deal with it. Okay, so here's what happens. When you take a seed and you put it in the ground, I'm going to do it differently. When you take a seed and you put that seed in the ground, if this seed is going to ever become a tree, Yeah, it has to go down on the ground.

But it has to cease to be a seed, or it can never become a tree. What do we learn from that? Well, there are so many times in Scripture where God compares us to trees. In Psalms chapter 1, it says, Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. In his law doth he meditate day and night.

He shall be like a tree. Like a what? Like a tree planted by the rivers of waters that bringeth forth his fruit in his season.

He shall be like a tree that... that's planted, so planted like a tree. And so this seed that wants to grow, it's gotta be planted, but it's gotta be willing to stop being what it's been.

Isn't it interesting that in Psalms chapter one, it says blessed is the man, and it doesn't tell you that the man is blessed who does, it says blessed is the man who doesn't. Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor sit at the seat of the scornful, nor stand at the way of sinners, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. God told us.

what the man who's blessed doesn't do before he tells what the man who's blessed does do. So donting the don't is as important as doing the do. But wait a minute. When God called Abram, he didn't call Abram to the promised land. He called him out of the land of the familiar.

He said, I want you to leave your country. I want you to leave your kindred. I want you to leave your father's house.

to go to a land that I will show you. He said, hey, you know where you are. You know the people who are where you are. They know you where you are. And I'm gonna call you away from what you've been being to a place of who you are.

you can become. And the reason I believe that God called, first of all, the things that were written aforetime were written for our learning that we through patience and comfort of the scripture might have hope. So the stories that are in the Bible are not just there for our learning.

our entertainment. They are illustrations to show us the principles of God. And one of the principles of God is this. We have to let go of what we've been holding onto to make room for what he has for us.

We've got to get out of where we've been being before we can enter into where we're going. And if I say, I'm going to go visit my brother in Pennsylvania, I'm going to go, I'm going to do a road trip. I'm going to go to Pennsylvania.

I'm going to visit my brother in Pennsylvania. Myron, when are you leaving? I'm leaving as soon as I can see the Pennsylvania state line. When do I get to Pennsylvania? Never.

Because I have to leave where I am and be willing to be gone from there. Long before I ever get to see the place I'm going. So don't be confused by the fact that there's some disorientation and there's a little bit of confusion, a little bit of wonder and a whole lot of hope and expectation on the journey of life that you are on.

That's how God designed it. But if you keep holding on to what you've had, you can never step into the place that God has for you. So he called him away from his father.

Why? Because his name was Abram. Do you ever wonder when you read Genesis chapter 12, why does God say, he said, if you will leave your country and your kindred and your father's house to go to a land that I will show you, I will bless you. I'll make of you a great nation. And then he says, and I will make your name great.

Make your name great? God's in, I don't know if y'all noticed this or not, God's in the great names. He has the greatest name of all names. Man, I heard somebody say last week, I don't even remember what I was watching, I was listening to something, and he said, He said, he said, the reason, like, oh, excuse me, I was thinking about it.

He said the name of God, which is spelled Yud-Heh-Vov-Heh. And we say Yahwehweh, right? We say Yahwehweh. But it's like the inhales, that's the Yahweh.

The exhales, Wah. Ah. Wah.

Like, he is like our total existence. Well, you take the yud, hey, bub, hey, not to mention the fact, yud, hey, bub, hey. This is Hebrew. That's a hand.

This means behold. This is a nail. This is behold. The hand behold.

The nail behold. Read it backwards. Behold the nail. Behold the nail.

Behold the hand. That's God's name. Okay, anyway, that's an aside, but it's a good aside. His name was Abram. Abram means high father or exalted father, but he could not have any children.

So every time somebody called his name, it reminded him of his insignificance, his impotence, his imposter syndrome. Here goes the high father with no kids. God said, I'm going to make your name great. I'm going to change your name from Abram, high father with no children, to Abram, father of many nations.

But I'm not going to do that for you where you are right now. Because those people who know you as the high father with no children, they won't let you forget who you're not. So sometimes you got to get away from the land of the familiar. Before you can ever step into the land of the fantastic. Can I get a witness?

Okay, so there's the ground. And so you plant the seed in the ground. And then the seed, when it ceases to be a seed, it begins to sprout. And it begins to grow. And then all of a sudden it breaks through the dirt.

Now, interesting thing about this ground down here under the ground, the arrets, the earth, it's a foundation. If you go down in the dirt, it's dark down in the dirt. I say hi to people, how you doing?

I'm above the dirt. And exactly when were you below the dirt? I don't ask them, but that's what I think.

That's what I think. I think, and you were below the dirt when? Okay, but it's dark below the dirt.

It's damp. It's damp. It's difficult. There's a lot of resistance down here. There are things that these roots have to push through before this seed can become a tree.

And see, we think that we desire our lives to be easy and effortless, but the reality is that we don't. is, if your life is too easy and effortless, you can't become strong enough to do anything meaningful. You got to go through some stuff to get to your stuff. And if you're unwilling to go through what God has ordained you go through, you will never get to what God ordained you to get to.

That's why I believe in Genesis chapter one, before anything else happened, God shows us, even for God, disruption always follows intention. In the beginning, God created the heavenly earth. That's God's intention. He intended to create the heavenly earth.

He did it. Congratulations. What happens next?

And the earth will be the same. which that word was the word became without form and void and darkness upon the face of the deep. In Genesis chapter one, God's not just giving us an account of what he did. He's giving us a pattern because we are made in his image to do what he did based on what he put inside of us.

So he's showing us how it's going to work. Are y'all tracking? And so when God himself created everything out of nothing, the first thing that showed up was disruption. Because disruption always follows intention. And by the way, we already know that, but we sometimes forget it.

And so what happens is we get started on a new journey and some disruption shows up, and we automatically conclude we're going in the wrong direction. When the disruption is often a sign that you're going in the right direction. Like when you start working out, you don't feel better first, you feel way more worse first.

Can I get a witness? Stuff hurts. You don't feel stronger first, you feel weaker first. Why?

Because disruption always follows intention. It's how life works. And it's going to be dark and damp and difficult down under the dirt.

In the place where you're growing, nobody gets to see how awesome you are because you ain't awesome yet, you down in the dirt. And so what happens is it finally pushes through and it grows up. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of waters, bringeth forth its fruit in the season.

Now, you've heard me talk about this before, but it bears saying again and again and again and again and again. Trees cannot grow in one direction. In fact, nothing can, especially not you.

Who? Eve tap yourself on the chest, say me. You can't grow in one direction.

We'd like to grow in one direction. We'd like to just grow straight up. But God didn't make you like a rocket.

He made you like a tree. The part of the tree that grows first is the part that grows down. This is the gravotropic.

I'm just going to put grav, gravotropic nature of the tree. The part of the tree that grows up is the phototropic. Now, what does gravotropic mean?

Gravatropic means that it grows away from light and towards gravity. Are y'all tracking? Phototropic means it grows away from gravity and towards light. Do you understand when God made you, he made you both gravotropic and phototropic?

It's really interesting. There's a book called The Language of Creation, really mind-blowing book. And one of the concepts in the book is that earth gives heaven expression, but heaven gives earth meaning. And so when you look at heaven, that's the significance, that's the meaning, but earth is the expression of that meaning. Isn't it fascinating when God made man, he made us part earth, expression, part heaven, meaning.

See, that's why things mean something to us. Stuff means something to me. It don't mean nothing to a dog and a cat and a chimpanzee.

They're not sitting around contemplating the laws of the universe. Not ever have they ever done it. Why?

Because they're not made in the image of God, and they don't have both. Are y'all tracking? And so the phototropic nature, here's what we don't realize, though. Not only does this have to happen first, this can only grow as tall as these roots grow deep.

And the root part is the sometimes, oftentimes, the unfun part. It's the practice. Right? It's the reading of the books. It's the studying.

It's the reps that nobody sees. That's the unfun part. But man, when you do the unfun part long enough, even though you can't be seen, even though nobody's cheering your cheers, even though nobody's singing your praises, you do the unfun part long enough, eventually you're going to break through the dirt. You're going to see some light. Then you're going to start reaching toward the light.

And because your roots... See, some of you have been lamenting the length of your journey. You've been brokenhearted.

I've been at this so long. When is it going to work for me? It's going to work for you when it's supposed to because everything's beautiful in his time, not your time. And see, here's what's going to happen. If you break through the dirt too soon, your roots won't be strong enough to support the fruit that's going to come out of it.

So let God do his thing in his time in your life, and you'll be glad you did. Well, anyway, so this is the nature of the tree. Well, that's cool.

And so the scripture says God put the man in the garden to dress it, that's cultivate, and keep it. The word keep means to protect. Now, is anybody else a little confused by this, or is it just me?

Because I thought the word garden meant enclosure. So it's the protected place. God put the garden around the man to protect the man from the stuff that was outside the garden.

But now God's putting the man in the garden and telling the man to protect the garden. I'm confused. Now, is it protecting me or am I protecting it? Who's protecting who around here? And it's fascinating to me that God said, here's what I want you to do.

I want you to protect what's protecting you. I want you to take care of what's taking care of you. I want you to look after what's looking after you.

Y'all ain't picking up what I'm putting down. I want you to look after what's looking after you. And here's what the fascinating part is. I get chills thinking about it again.

The hair is literally standing up on my arm right now. Because God put the garden around the man to protect the man from what's outside the garden. But God put the man in the garden to protect the garden from the stuff that's in the garden. Mmm. Say what?

God put the man, dress it, put some water on it. Dress it, put some fertilizer on it. Dress it, tend to it, but cultivate it, protect it. Because where there are weeds, I mean, where there are seeds, there are weeds.

And if you don't protect, see, here's the problem. Weeds like the same stuff that seeds like. And weeds are in competition for the nourishment that was meant for the seeds.

Y'all ain't picking up what I'm putting down. And God said, I'm putting you in here. Because you got to take care of the inside of the garden.

And you got to make sure you pull those weeds. Hmm? But there's also an enemy in the garden. There's some temptations in the garden. Oh, lie.

And God said, dress it, cultivate it, keep it, protect the inside of the garden. Now, the interesting thing about it is this. This is the soil.

All this down here, this is the soil. God made this man's body from the dust of the ground. The man's body that he lives in is made out of the same soil that the trees grow out of.

And then, the first thing God said to man when he talked to him. So interesting. So we can learn a lot from first things.

There's a principle of Bible study called the law of first mention. However God first mentions something in scripture, that's God's original design for that thing. Because God doesn't change. So if that's why he designed it in the beginning, it's still the design right now. He ain't changing it.

Are y'all with me? Okay. So. The first thing God tells us about God, I think it behooves us to study the patterns in Scripture and the practices and the precepts and the promises, right, and the prayers and the prophecies. It behooves us to study these patterns in Scripture.

And here's one of the patterns I see in Scripture. The first thing God tells about God is not that he is love, even though he's love. It's not that he's holy.

Yes, he's holy. The first thing God tells about God is not that he's righteous. Yes, he's righteous. The first thing God tells about God is not that he's omnipotent, even though he's omnipotent. Not that he's omniscient, even though he's omniscient.

Not that he's omnipresent, even though he's omnipresent. The first thing, which thing? The what? First, the what?

The first thing God tells us about God is that he's creative. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. That's the first thing he tells us.

Why? Because it's one of the most important things we need. to understand about God.

Why? Because until we understand that, we can't understand ourselves who are made in the image of the God who made us. What does that mean?

The first thing that God says about man is this. Let us make man in our image. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air and every creeping thing that moves upon the earth.

That's the first thing God tells about man. First thing God tells about God is that he's creative. First thing God tells about man is that he made us like him.

He created us in his image. He made us a lookalike. He made us a lookalike with a body.

Okay. The first thing God says to man. This is the first words God ever said to man.

This is the first command. Thousands of years before the Ten Commandments. Are you all with me?

First thing God says to man. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, be fruitful, multiply, replenish the earth, subdue it, and have dominion. Be fruitful. Now.

Unfortunately, if I'm in the garden, God's talking to me, and this is the first thing he says to me is be fruitful. I'm going to say. What does that mean? Well, fortunately for us, God rinses and repeats a lot.

What does that mean? That means all principles are microcosms of each other. So if I want to know what fruitfulness is, I need to look at a fruit so I can understand fruitfulness. Now, the Bible tells us that God made every green herb to produce seed, but it also tells us that God made every tree to bring forth fruit, and in the fruit...

is the seed thereof. So the seed of the fruit is inside of the fruit. So what the fruit does is produce on the outside based on what God put on the inside. And so what God is telling me is God is telling me that when he's telling me to be fruitful, he's telling me he put a seed in me.

He put a seed in you. He put a seed in all of us. He said, you make sure based on the seed I put inside of you that fruit shows up outside of you. Ain't that what it says?

He said, be fruitful. So you make sure that based on the seed. Now, what is the seed he put inside of us?

Okay. We about to go there. I don't know if y'all ready or not. We about to go there. The seed that God put inside of us is an aspect of his creativity.

Now he put a different aspect of his creativity inside of all of us so that you need me and I need you and we need us and us needs we. So that no man is an island, no woman is an island. God put us here so that you have something that would benefit me and I got something that would benefit you. And that's how God created the concept of community by not giving all of us, any of us, everything, but giving all of us something.

And so when he planted the seed of his creativity, when God planted the seed, how did he do that? He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul. Now, God planted a garden eastward in Eden. And then he planted a seed in the garden that is the man. So the gardener, Adam, is not just the gardener.

The gardener is also a garden. Y'all ain't picking up what I'm putting down. And God said, you make sure you cultivate the garden that is you so it produces some fruit that looks like me.

Oh, oh, but it gets more better. So, so it says, maybe that's why it says, Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of ungodly, nor sitteth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of scornful, standeth in the way of sinners. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and his laws that he meditate day and night.

He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of waters that bringeth forth what? His fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.

Let me ask you a question. How many folk you know, whatsoever they do, is prospering? I'm just asking, because that's what God promised.

Now, God ain't lying. So, something ain't lining up. And maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the thing that ain't lining up.

Are y'all tracking? Okay. Isaiah 55. My ways are not your ways, saith the Lord, neither are my thoughts your thoughts, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Now watch what it says. As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven. I don't know if y'all remember in Genesis chapter two, I think it was verse nine, it said, for God had not yet made rain to fall upon the earth. I don't know if y'all remember that or not. Okay, so let's go back to Isaiah 55. My ways are not your ways, saith the Lord, neither are my thoughts your thoughts, for as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and it watereth the earth.

And maketh it bring forth and bud. The rain and the snow that comes from heaven forces the earth to produce fruit. Why? Maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give bread to the... eater, consumption to the consumer, and seed to the sower, production to the producer.

Here's what it says. So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. God said his word is going to be like the rain and snow that comes down from heaven and waters the earth.

It makes it bring forth and bud. So shall my word be to go forth out of my mouth, and it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper. There's that word again.

In the thing whereunto I sent it. God said that his word is like the rain and the snow that comes down from heaven. So I'm supposed to dress the garden. What am I dressing the garden with?

I'm dressing the garden with the word of God. I'm cultivating it. I'm making sure that the soil stays damp.

I'm making sure I'm saturating the soil that is me. This garden, I'm saturating this dirt pot, this clay pot, this dirt garden that has the seed of God's likeness. planted in.

I'm saturating it with the word, the water of the word of God so that it produces fruit that looks like him. The gardener is a gardener who was put in the garden to protect it from the things that were inside the garden while the garden was protecting him from the things that were outside the garden. Oh, oh, oh, we ain't through. No, no, no, no, no, baby, no, we ain't through.

Now we got to figure out, what are these weeds that are inside the garden that is me, that are going to protect the garden that is me, that doesn't represent me? It is me, but it don't represent me. What are the weeds that I can protect this garden from? I am so glad that God tells us what we got to protect the garden from and the weeds that we got to protect our garden from. We talked about cultivating it, now we're going to talk about keeping it.

We got to protect our garden from the world, from the flesh, and from the devil. Those are the enemies. that are inside of us.

The world is inside of us because of influences. The flesh is inside of us with impulses. And the devil, he is inside of us, not physically, but via indoctrination from the world system.

Are y'all tracking? See, we read this and we don't even understand what it means, the world, flesh, and the devil. It's interesting. Recently. See.

People don't even apply their own faulty hermeneutic principles, hermeneutic Bible study principles to their own faulty beliefs, except when it's convenient. I did a video a few weeks ago on why God doesn't love everybody. And I know that's one of the most controversial videos I've ever done, but it's in the Bible.

I didn't put it in there. It was in my Bible when I got up this morning. People say, well, but God so loved the world. Okay, God so loved the world. That means God loves everybody.

Well, if that means God loves everybody, when God says love not the world, neither the things that are in the world, we shouldn't love anybody. If you're going to use the same logic. I'm just saying, right? So let's look further than just, let's don't take a verse out of context and think that it's gonna contradict every other thing that God said. Everything that God says supports everything else God said.

There are no isolated doctrines in scripture. Are y'all tracking what I'm saying? There are no isolated. It all supports what it all says and it all says the same thing over and over and over and over again.

So hopefully one of these times, about an 11,000th time, we might get it. Okay, the world. How does the world show up? The world shows up and attacks us in our ambitions. You know where that shows up?

In our desire to be impressive so that people think something about us. The world affects us in our desire to be seen as something by other people. I need you to believe this about me.

That's a worldly temptation. See, If you love mercy and you do justly and you walk humbly with thy God, you don't have to worry about what people think about you. Jesus said the world hated me.

Don't be surprised if it's going to hate you also. The world attacks us in our ambitions. The flesh attacks us in our appetites. You would talk about this on Thanksgiving Day.

It's real. I did a video called Satan's Secret Weapon. It's destroyed more people than alcohol and drugs. You know what it is?

Food. In America, most people dig their graves with a knife and fork. But it's our appetites. It's our appetites for food.

It's our appetites for sex. It's our appetites for good feelings. That's why people take drugs and get drunk.

Because I just want to feel something. And the devil attacks us in our attitudes. Especially the attitude of pride, thinking that we are better than somebody else. He also attacks us.

He also attacks us in our attention. He gets us to pay attention to things that God told us not to pay attention to. He gets us to pay attention to things that God told us not to do.

And so, why does he want us to pay attention? Go back and read Genesis chapter 3. Here's what it says. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden.

The woman said, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the trees in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die. Well, God didn't say don't touch it, but she made the mistake that we make. The thought she could use willpower to conquer the flesh, but the flesh ain't going to help you conquer your flesh. You know why?

Because the flesh likes all the stuff the flesh likes. So Eve thought, if I don't touch it, I'm not going to eat it, but she was wrong. He said, you shall not surely die.

For God does not know that the day you eat their oven, your eyes will be opened and you shall be as God's knowing good and evil. And then it says, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasant to the eyes, that it was to make one wise, she took the fruit of their oven and did eat and gave also unto her husband with her and he did eat. How did that happen?

How did that happen so fast? back. What was that transition? Satan got her to pay attention to the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

The ignored it. Why did she ignore it? The had all of this abundance around her. Adam and Eve were in the garden of Eden. It was the protected place of pleasure.

It was a garden with an enclosure. It was a protected place of pleasure. They had apple trees and plum trees and pear trees and coconut trees and almond trees and fig trees and trees and trees and more fruit trees and peach trees and orange trees. And this is getting really squeaky. and other trees and more trees and more trees.

And right smack dab, just imagine trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees, trees. And here's what God said, of every tree that man freely eat. Okay, cool.

Now, Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve are down here in the Garden of Eden. They're down here in the Garden of Eden, and there's two other trees. There's a tree of life. I'm going to make that this. There's a tree of life, and then there's a tree of knowledge of good and evil.

God said, don't eat off of this tree. Now, Adam and Eve had everything. Eve say everything.

Everything but one thing. So they had everything, lacked one thing, which by the way shows us that the very first temptation in the history of the world was the temptation to focus on lack. That's another thing we have to protect our garden from, focusing on lack.

Because when you focus on what's missing, you can't see what's there. There are so many times in Scripture that we could, like, I don't even have time to go into all of it, but when you're focused on what's missing, you can't see what's there. So what happened was, the enemy got Eve to focus her attention on the thing that was missing. Why did he do that? Because he knows where attention goes, intention follows.

When you give something... attention long enough, eventually you will set an intention on the thing you gave attention to. Y'all tracking? Well, guess what Adam and Eve had to do?

They had to walk past all of their abundance to get to the thing they lacked. We have been made in the image of God. God planted a seed of his creativity down inside of us that we're supposed to use to manifest.

fruitfulness and productivity to the world, to show the world who he is. But we got to water the garden that is us with the water of the word of God so they can bring forth fruit. We have to protect the garden from the enemies within because the garden was put there to protect man from the enemy without. And I am here to tell you, oh, by the way, just really quickly, the Bible tells us the way we defeat the temptation of the world is just don't love it. Don't love the accolades of people.

The flesh, here's what the Bible tells us about the flesh, flee also youthful lust. You run from fleshly temptations. Put yourself in a different environment.

You find yourself in an environment where you're being tempted physically, remove yourself from the environment. Now this was, it seems like, this one right here, James chapter 4, here's what it says. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

So how do we defeat the devil? We submit to God and then we resist him. If you try to resist Satan without submitting to God, you will fail every time. Why?

Why does submitting to God help you resist Satan? Here's why. Because all authority is an alignment issue. This is the umbrella of God's protection.

It is God's, we'll just call it promises. It's more than that, but we'll just call it that. This is the umbrella of God's protection.

I submit myself. Do you know what the word submit means? It means to place yourself under. I submit.

I place myself under. What am I placing myself under? I'm placing myself under the protection of God. That's my garden that's protecting me from the outside. Now I've got to protect me from the inside.

When I say, you know what? I don't know. I don't like this.

I ain't having enough fun under here. I'm going to go over here. I have no ability to resist Satan over here because I'm no longer under the protection of God. All the fiery darts of the enemy, when they get here, they bounce off. When they come here, I'm done.

All I'm saying is this, God made you a gardener and a garden. Dress it and keep it. That's the down and dirty of personal growth. People think, people, like, I have no, people think that I teach the Bible based, I mean, teach business based on biblical principles because I want somebody to be religious. I don't want anybody to be religious.

They care less. God has the best answers. To what?

To every problem that ever existed. He has the best answer. So I teach from a biblical perspective so you can know if something happens to me and I'm gone, the answers are still here.

I'm a messenger. I'm not the message. And I am here to let you know that if you will saturate the soil that is you with the word of God, it will change your life in ways that you cannot currently imagine. So hopefully this blesses you on YouTube and in the room and on Zoom in a way that will make your life, take your life to a level that you previously could not imagine. I'm telling you, God is awesome.

And when you, like, focus on the gravatropic nature of your life, the studying and the praying and the learning that you do when nobody's watching down in the dirt, when you show up in the marketplace, folk can't help but see the phototropic nature of your existence. Because you took care of the gravatropic nature of your existence. Garden the garden that is you.

That is the down and dirty, dirty of personal growth. Stay blessed by the best. I hope it helps you. In the meantime, see you next time.

Transcript for:The Garden of Personal Growth

Transcript for:
The Garden of Personal Growth