How do I become something that I'm not?

A few years ago my wife and I decided to plant a garden. I did not own a roto-tiller, so I dug a 10' x 10' plot in the back yard with my shovel. I ripped up the old sod, turned over the soil, broke up the clods of dirt, raked it smooth and added some fertilizer. The ground was hard-packed clay and loaded with dandelion seeds, and a thousand other unidentifiable weeds--I had no idea how to fight this battle.

Shortly after we planted the vegetables, the weeds took over. Jenny and I tried to keep up with them, but our best efforts made little difference that first year. Our harvest was pathetic. Autumn came and I mulched the garden with newspaper, leaves from the maple tree, horse manure and straw.  The following spring I borrowed a tiller and worked the dirt for several hours. We kept up on the weeding better than the year before, but by August things were out of hand and we were grew discouraged.

Once again, autumn came and we burnt off the plot of ground (to kill the weeds), added straw, more horse manure, more leaves, more newspaper, grass clippings, lime dust and rotted sawdust. The next spring I tilled and raked for 6 hours or more. By now the plot had doubled in size.

This last summer I noticed that very few weeds were taking over the garden. The hard, clay soil was now so soft and rich that everything seemed to grow well. By harvest time we had more vegetables than we could consume. We canned and froze what we could use and still gave away incredible amounts of produce.  Our garden was bringing forth more than we could believe. I was so happy that I had not given up after that first year.

How did the weed infested clay become a fertile garden plot? It was worked and reworked and worked again. At times we felt like giving up on it, but each year something inspired us to go at it again. Gentleness is not part of our human nature, but if we desire God's fruit in our homes (and homeschools), we must let His Word wash us, break us, convict us, renew us, strengthen us, pierce us, heal us, fill us and roto-till on our souls to make us gentle. Weeds--our UN-gentle actions-- have to be ripped out by the roots (confessed and made right). Nutrients--vital to our soul--must be worked in on a regular basis. There is no other way to become the gentle people God wants us to become.

How do I know when I'm becoming gentle?

Your reactions change. Worry, fear and sudden outbursts of anger become a thing of the past. You no longer manipulate others to make yourself happy. You no longer get depressed when you don't get your way. You quit threatening others into compliance. You wake up thankful for God's blessings. You sleep in peace because your conscience is clean and your relationships are restored. The tone in your voice softens. Your eyebrows are no longer are separated by a deep furrow. You smile more. Your vocabulary expresses more encouragement and less criticism. You fall in love with Jesus Christ and become comfortable with His molding process in your life.