Pray

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Grow, Eat, Enjoy…

+ PRAY!

Are you surprised to see prayer mentioned in a gardening blog? I hope it’s not a surprise to those who know me personally. I do love to garden and talk about gardening, but gardening is not the center of my life. God is! He is the One who gave me life, both physical and spiritual. He is the One who gives me the ability and the means to garden, to write, to teach, to cook, to entertain, and even to draw my next breath. So I want everything that I do, including writing and speaking as The Gardener Wife, to revolve around God and be to His glory alone. On this page I hereby stamp my website “S.D.G.”—Soli Deo Gloria—as Bach, Handel, and others marked some of their works.

Glory to God Alone

My work as The Gardener Wife is not as grand, of course, as the compositions of such musical geniuses. But because success as a blogger requires much self-promotion to grow my audience and increase my effectiveness, it’s important for me to remember why I’m doing this. The Gardener Wife was born out of a desire to help others to do what God has enabled me to do. The scripture verse quoted below is preceded by one of many Bible verses that tell us to serve others first: “No one should seek their own good, but the good of others,” (1 Cor. 10:24). That’s why you’ll see my goal stated all around this website: to help you to GROW SOMETHING, something beautiful—even better, something to eat! I want to help you to do what I’ve learned to do. That’s my goal and my prayer.

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

1 Corinthians 10:31

The Seed of the Word of God

Besides planting literal seeds in my garden, I also love to sow the seed which Jesus identified as the Word of God in one of His parables (Luke 8:11). In the years since I was first born again of that imperishable seed (1 Peter 1:23), I’ve slowly grown and have come to relish the Word more and more. I want to help others to grow spiritually, too. I’ve taught Sunday school, led Bible study groups, and spoken to church groups. I love to share the Bible at any opportunity I get. I’ve given talks on prayer journaling as well as marriage and parenting from a biblical perspective. I’m making it known here that in addition to the gardening talks I give as The Gardener Wife, I’m available to speak on these and other biblical topics at church and religious events. 

Although I’ve spoken and taught the Bible many times, I have not written anything on it outside of school and my personal journaling. That may change, especially now that I’ll start working on a doctorate at Bakke Graduate University in 2021. In fact, both my husband, newly retired, and I are pursuing Doctor of Transformational Leadership (DTL) degrees at BGU. This program is going to be a big challenge. It’s been over 30 years since I did graduate level work! (I earned two masters degrees way back when.) Therefore I expect my writing and posting as The Gardener Wife to slow down. In fact, that’s why I was determined to finish the construction of this website before the end of 2020. If I didn’t do it this year, it would never get done!

GROW, EAT, ENJOY + PRAY

Now that I’ve created this website, I’m going to reserve this corner as a place where I can post any Bible and faith related writing that I want to share with the world. This is better (and easier) than starting a separate website. Instead of adding more and more text onto this page, however, I’m going to add PRAY as another category for my blog—that’s in addition to The Gardener Wife themes, which are GROW, EAT, and ENJOY. Then I can write a blog post anytime I want to share something about faith, whether it relates to gardening or not.

As always, visitors to my website are welcome to explore the themes that are most interesting to them. You can find my blog themes in several locations throughout this website:

• _{The drop-down lists under “Blog” and “Pray” in the upper right corner of every page}
• _{The list under “Blog Post Themes” at the bottom left of every page}
• _{The big colorful buttons on my homepage.}

For example, if you’re looking for recipe ideas and aren’t interested in gardening tips at the moment, you can click on EAT in any of these locations—and you’ll see a list of my garden-to-table eating posts. If you’d rather scroll through all of my blog posts, then just click on “Blog” in the upper right corner of every page, not on one of the themes.

May God bless this new section of my website by using it to help folks to grow in their faith as well as to grow plants.

Grace and peace,

Debbie