Is Your Heart Filled With Negative Seeds?!

Why do I feel like I’m not good enough? Smart enough? Pretty enough? I just feel completely lost! Why can’t I be content during this season? Well, don’t let anyone fool you, but everyone at some point questions their purpose! The main reason for why you are questioning who you are and what your purpose is is because of the negativity you are planting in you heart (Matthew 15:13-Every plant that my heavenly Father did not plant will be up rooted).

I listed FIVE ways that you could be planting negative seeds into your heart without fully realizing that you are!

1) Media: You have to be so careful about what you allow your eyes to see and ears to hear. I used to watch just about anything on TV from the Bad Girls Club to the Real Housewives franchise. I didn’t see anything wrong with grown women fighting and cussing each other out until my walk with Jesus Christ grew stronger. I no longer saw certain shows to be appealing nor worth my time. You may not realize it, but you mimic what you see. This can go from the way you behave in relationships to the way you dress. You may find yourself dressing more provocative to receive attention from the opposite sex because you saw on a TV show that that’s how the girl got the guy. You may even change the way you speak because you saw the girl on TV gain more friends by dropping the F bomb after every other word she spoke. (Open your bible and read Numbers 13 for biblical example).

2) False Teachers: This one gives me the chills because it’s so easy to get caught up in someone who appears to have it all together. I have seen many spiritual leaders who really contradict what they preach. They promote living for Christ, but the way they behave away from the pulpit doesn’t depict Christ-like ways. The number one thing I’ve noticed is their love of money. They may preach that if you live for the Lord and do A, B, C and D, you will become very rich. Yes, it is true that the Lord takes care of His people, but your focus can not be on worshiping Christ to get rich or to gain “things”. I am NOT saying you are planting negative seeds in your heart if you enjoy listening to or watching spiritual leaders who like to dress nice or have nice things, but you have to be careful and look at the complete picture of what they are promoting.
*To understand how to identify a false teacher, I advise you to read Galatians 5:7-12 where Paul gives six ways to identify wolves in sheep clothing.

3) Environment: The environment that you are always in has a great impact on how you feel about yourself. Maybe you think it’s the school you go to that causes you to feel discontentment. I know the feeling of having classmates that just seem to really get on your nerves. You can’t really explain what it is about them, but whenever they talk or do anything you are ready to walk out and leave. What are you planting in your heart to allow yourself to get so worked up? Maybe, it’s not them and it’s really you. Maybe, you are in an environment that you really shouldn’t be in? Well just remember that this a TEST that you are experiencing. I like to look at difficult or stressful situations as a TEST! You either pass or fail. I hate the feeling of getting upset in situations because I know that I am not honoring God. When I remind myself that I am not representing my position as being God’s daughter, I can calm myself back down and realize that I can pass the TEST. I’m not usually the person that gets worked up and mad, but when I do I try my best to look around at my environment to see what is influencing me.

4) So-called Friends: I used to be a puppet! When I say puppet, I mean that I used to be that friend where you can make them do and say anything. I really wanted to please everyone and make everyone like me, so I would act just like my friends. I can remember one year in college. Some of the girls I hung around behaved over the top and seemed to always get the most attention from guys because of their behavior. Some even had stank faces imprinted on their face. You know, when a girl walks around like she smells boo boo in the air! That’s stank face. Well I was more on the shy reserved side, so even though I knew that their behavior wasn’t close to being Christ-like, I would mimic their ways. If a girl looked at me wrong I was ready to tell my girls, so that we could question the girl. If I liked a boy and he failed to let me know he had a girlfriend, I would consult my girls so that they could tell me the best way to seek revenge on him. I can remember talking to my mother one evening and I was letting her know certain things that had happened one weekend at college. I told her how me and some girls almost got into an argument at a party and how I had to win this game this guy was trying to play with me. After I finished my conversation with my mother, she let me know that she didn’t like who I was turning into. Whoever I was around had planted seeds of worldliness into my heart and now I was behaving like a girl who was beginning to lose her way. In the bible, Christians are instructed to stay away from worldliness and urged to pursue godliness. The apostle James stated in his book, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James. 4:4). I know this sounds silly, but I didn’t know that I was disobeying God by befriending people who had this big of an impact on me. I didn’t realize how much I was hurting people and causing a path of destruction for myself. I thought it was okay to hang around anyone and everyone. But I did know that something was wrong when I felt so convicted and shameful about my actions. I felt fake. I felt like I had been adopted into a secret society where you could behave any type of way without any type of repercussions. The only problem was that there were repercussions. The main thing I am trying to get you to understand is that if you don’t choose your friends wisely and have God in mind, you will allow seeds of discontentment and shame to be planted into your heart. I can honestly say I felt discontentment and shame for TWO AND A HALF YEARS because I continued to feed those seeds that were planted in my heart. But remember your friends can’t be perfect and neither can you. Remember, perfect friends are fake friends. There’s no such thing as perfect people, but if things appear to be off about someone listen to those senses.

5) Yourself: Stand in the mirror and look at yourself! Really stare at your reflection and ask yourself what can you do differently to bring yourself closer to Christ completely. Maybe, you need to distanced yourself from stuff on TV, social media, so-called friends, or maybe even your environment.

*Thanks for reading this message and please comment below to add more ways we can all protect our hearts and gain a better relationship with Christ! Stay Sweet. Be Blessed.