Sometimes breaking Through Requires Staying Put

​Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. (Genesis 2:8)

It's true, before God encouraged man to flourish, God created the space where he knew man would most be able to do so.

It is also true, especially of this man - me - that man has often turned to spaces outside the garden - spaces and choices and relationships - where he was never going to flourish but always believed he must surely be close to finding the answer.

I have spent much of my life running from the garden I was always meant to be planted in. For much of my life, I have avoided the God who has been lovingly declaring, I am right here, while I wildly ran to a God I have imagined must surely be somewhere over there.

God created the garden and said, come sit with me. Man ran off to a tree and said, surely there must be more.

It's a painful lesson to learn. Living a life believing there just has to be more, when the reality is more than I could ever have imagined has been waiting in the garden. Why would God create the garden before he ever created the man he longed to share it with? Turns out where we are planted has more influence on our ability to flourish than our desire to flourish does.

I have declared this year that my words are 'break through'. If we aren't careful, we can come to believe our breakthrough comes on the other side of a breakout.

Break out of this relationship I'm in.

Break out of this job I'm in.

Break out of this debt I'm in.

And certainly, breaking through does often require us to break out of some things. But I think often overlooked in our chase of the breakout is a simple question: am I planted in the right place?

Am I so busy running away that I no longer hear the one asking me to stay? Stay in the garden with him.

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the Lord, they will flourish in the courts of our God. (Psalm 92: 12-3)

Flourish, sometimes it's not about finding a new house, but flourishing in the one we were always meant to flourish in.

It takes some plants a long time to grow.

But no plant will ever grow planted in the wrong place.