Your Words are the Fruit of Your Heart’s Garden

A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.
—Jesus, Luke 6:45 NLT

How can the words we speak build up and encourage and not tear down and destroy? I’m guessing you, like me, long to speak kindly and gently but know all too well the feeling of letting harsh, damaging words escape our lips. Jesus tells his disciples something important about this:  Your words are the fruit of your heart.

Clean the Inside First

The Jewish leaders of Jesus’ time liked to ask him questions. Such as, “Why don’t your disciples do the ritual cleansing before eating?” (Mark 7). And Jesus always had perfect responses. He tells the Pharisees that what we eat and what’s on the outside of our bodies does not defile the inside, but it’s actually what’s coming out of our mouths that’s most revealing. What comes out of our mouths tells the condition of our hearts.

Jesus tells the Jews so many times that it’s not the outside appearances that matter most, it is what is on the inside. And the Pharisees, who look the part of perfect Jewish behavior, were the recipient of statements like this:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside of it may also become clean.”
Matthew 23:25-26 CSB

Have we, like the Pharisees, spent too much time cleaning the outside of our cups while neglecting the inside? Whatever is in our hearts, our cups, will show—it will spill out in some way. Maybe not today while everything is going well, but it will come out when you are having one of those kind of days. Because what we plant in our heart’s garden is what grows.

Imagine Two Gardens

There is a garden that has been well-tended and now it’s full of life—flowers, fruits and vegetables, nutrient-rich soil, bugs buzzing around. It takes time and intention to clean out the bad stuff so that the good can grow. And that goodness gives life to other creatures:  the worms in the dirt, the bugs looking for nectar, the bees pollinating so that there’s more growth, animals that eat the plants, and the people that view the beauty and pick the produce too. This garden has been taken care of and it attracts others to it.

Now imagine a garden that has not been well-tended. It looks neglected, trampled on, lifeless. The plants are dying and the dirt is hard and dry. A sign that no one is watching over this garden is the weeds. The weeds grow and grow, sucking the life out of the good plants. The weeds must be picked for the desirable plants to grow. No one pauses to notice this garden except to say, “Whoa, that’s a mess.”

Your Heart is a Garden that Needs Tending

Now imagine your heart as a garden. It needs to be tended and cared for. What you want to grow should be nurtured, and what you don’t want to grow should be extracted. Weeds need to be removed before they take root.

Like any garden, you plant only what you want to grow. If you want love and joy to grow in your heart, you implant love and joy. In an actual garden, you don’t plant strawberry seeds and expect to grow apples. So why do we think we can plant seeds of bitterness and pride, and expect grace and patience to grow?

God is Our Gardener

I sought the Lord, and he answered me
and rescued me from all my fears.
Psalm 34:4

There is a Gardener who helps us remove weeds of bitterness, cynicism, pride, hatred, jealousy, discontent, and sin from our hearts. When we pray, read Scripture, and ask God for direction and wisdom, we are drawing near. James assures us that when we draw near to God, He will draw near to us. And it’s this abiding that helps us nurture and grow the right things in our lives, such as the fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control).

When we saturate our hearts with the goodness of God, there is little room for the bad. I’m not talking about ignoring the negative, but replacing it, handing it over to God so that He can do the work of replacing it.

Tending Your Garden

Prayer is sowing the seed and obedience brings the growth. You can pray for God to take away your loneliness, but you must do the work of turning loneliness into connection. Give God your jealousy, but then encourage that friend you admire and encourage yourself to live your own dreams. God can help you change your busy, overworked heart into a restful one, but you must do the work of following God’s leading when your body is telling you to say “no” to another commitment on your already busy schedule.

Guarding the Garden

Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life.
Proverbs 4:23 CSB

You are the keeper of your own heart’s garden. As the guard, you should not be lazy in keeping out what needs to stay out. What do you let in that affects you more than you would like? Social media feels like a big one these days; does Facebook make you angry? You have the power my friend, to take Facebook off of your phone or to change some settings where you don’t see what makes you angry every day. Does watching crime shows have you imagining dead bodies in every dark room of your house? Then don’t watch the show that’s placing fear into your heart. Do books have you daydreaming about a life that isn’t yours? Then read a different kind of book.

Pray before entering difficult situations that you can’t avoid. Ask God to fill you with all the good things so that your words are life-giving and not destructive to yourself and those around you. The words from “Lord We Come before Thee Now” remind us that we can ask God to fill our hearts so that the fruit of our hearts and lips is for the glory of Him:

“Fill our hearts with thy rich grace,
Tune our lips to sing thy praise”
—William Hammond

What have You been Planting?

When your words don’t match what you would like to be about, maybe it’s time to consider what you’ve been planting in your heart’s garden. What have you been letting in? What needs to be removed?

Then, think about what do you want to grow in your heart, in your words, in your actions, in your life? Do you want more grace, more peace, more love, more wisdom, more service to others? You can pray for those things. God provides what we need to live holy lives, if we’re courageous and humble enough to ask.

Finally, here is a prayer from Paul you’ll find in Ephesians 3:14-21. Pray it for yourself, pray it for others, and I’ll be praying it for you.

When I think of all this, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth. I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen.

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