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In this episode the Youth With A Mission Teaching Podcast Corrie Ten Boom brings us a teaching entitled “Field Under Heavenly Cultivation”.
Her teachings are coloured with stories and poems inspiring us to live radically, daily aware of the ways the spiritual realms intersect with our earthly lives. If you want to bear fruit in your life this teaching will help to provide you with tools to ensure “the wilderness of your heart is transformed into a garden”.
Corrie Ten Boom was an inspiration to many, including YWAM Staff and Students. She stood up against the Nazis during The Second World War in Holland. Her and her family hid many people from the Nazi regime, but they were eventually betrayed and put in Nazi concentration camps. Corrie was the only one in her family to survive the war.
During her time in one of the concentration camps, after spending four months alone in a cell, Corrie came to the understanding that she was a field being plowed and weeded by God. This realisation lead to this teaching that we will share with you now about how we are fields under heavenly cultivation.
Charles Spurgeon once said, “What a privilege it is to know that I am a field under heavenly cultivation – not a wilderness but a garden of the Lord, walled by grace, planted according to a divine plan, worked by love, weeded by heavenly discipline, and constantly protected by divine power. A soul, so privileged, is prepared to bring forth fruit to the glory of God.” Yes, as Paul says, “You are God’s field, God’s building” (1 Cor. 3:9). You are a field under cultivation, walled by grace. We see that grace when we look at the cross of Golgotha. There God’s Son bore the sins of the whole world, your sins and mine. But we also see that grace when we look at the empty grave. We have a living Savior, who is with us, who looks at us and loves us, who forgives us if we confess our sins and cleans us with His blood – what grace! Ephesians 1:7 says of Jesus, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace …”
We have been planted according to a divine pattern, even if we do not always understand that pattern, even if we do not always understand that pattern. God is interested in each of us “microscopically” as well as “telescopically.” The hairs of our heads have been counted, but the universe is also in His hand.
Yes, our life is like a garden of the Lord, walled by grace, cultivated by love, and weeded by heavenly discipline. Sin comes between us and God, like the weeds that impede the growth of plants and flowers. Heavenly discipline cultivates us by pulling out the weeds. These can be difficult times in one’s life.
I was in a jail cell all alone for four months. This was a time of plowing. I thought, “There’ll be nothing left of me.” I was desperate, but I suddenly saw God’s side of things. I was myself as a field that was being plowed and weeded …