by Matt Kick

Editor’s Note: After a recent phone call with my friend Matt Kick, he directed me to this article he recently wrote on fighting discouragement with faithfulness. I appreciate the word picture he uses and his concise advice. I think this will encourage you.

Don’t forget to water

When I was in college, I thought it would be funny to buy a plant with a friend. Neither of us ever expected the plant to last more than a couple of weeks, but it was something to do. Ironically, the life of that plant has far exceeded my expectation, but not without bumps in the road. This plant over the years has visually expressed the difficulties that I have faced.  Let me explain.

When I bought it, was fresh and a new plant. I watered it, and it thrived. However shortly after I got married, during a stressful season of life, I forgot the plant outside during a large storm. It was blown over, the pot broke, some of the branches were broken, and I was sure that the plant was going to die. This was a wake up call to bring the plant inside and nurture it. Slowly the tree began to sprout new branches and came back to life.

Then during a more recent difficult season of life, I forgot the plant outside during a frost. This time the plant lost all signs of life, and it even started showing signs of decay. For a while I just let the tree sit there like it would just start healing itself. The obvious result was that nothing changed. Then one day, someone watered the plant for me. In fact, they continued to do so every day. For weeks I did not even know that this going on. Then something beautiful happened, the tree began to sprout new life.

This new life however was not in the location that I thought it would be. I imagined new branches at the top of the tree, but there was a tiny sprout at the bottom of the tree. So I finally took the time to to cut away all the dead branches, even the top part of the tree that was dead. After doing this, more shoots began to sprout at the bottom of the tree. So I researched the plant and the branches at the bottom are seedlings. The tree in its time of health had lasted long enough and grown to a place of maturity to where it could produce additional plants from within itself.

Here’s the point: one of the ways that we endure the difficult times in life is to be reminded of our purpose. We as believers were meant to reproduce other Christ followers. Sometimes this is an unseen impact. Sometimes we truly do not know how God has used our faithfulness to impact the people around us. However, be encouraged that your Christian walk was not in vain. God perfectly used you, an imperfect person, to perfect the people around you.