Spiritual Pest Control: Are You Using the Right Strategy?

It’s been a minute, I know. These past few months have been an adventure to say the least, but I am working to embrace my new norm and the blessings that come along with it. If I had to sum up the last few months, I would say it has been a time of healing, training, and strategic planning.

Back in February, I had a bout with vertigo that knocked me on my tail. It was one of the scariest times of my life, especially not knowing the cause of what I was experiencing. I tell you one thing, though, it gave me plenty of time to be still and think. As usual, God wastes nothing, and during this experience, a few underlying things were exposed and brought to the surface. So, lately, I’ve been working on being a better steward of my health.

About a year or so ago, I watched a documentary that highlighted the various blue zones around the world. One thing that all of these places had in common was that the primary source of exercise was achieved through simple everyday activities like walking, bicycling, gardening, and cleaning house. They also ate wholesome, sustainably raised, and grown foods, which enabled them to live long, healthy lives. While I don’t live in a blue zone, I certainly have taken some tips from their way of living to assist me on my health journey. So, for my second consecutive year, I’m growing a veggie garden. Now, understand I am nowhere near an expert at this, but I’m certainly having fun learning and growing as a plant mama.

I’ve tried different gardening methods. Last year, I companion planted seeds directly in the ground. But for some strange reason, even though my plants grew well, I didn’t get as large a harvest as I did the first time I planted a garden back in 2020. This year, I decided to companion plant with seedlings, baby plants started in a greenhouse. To my surprise, everything looks great and is thriving. However, recently I’ve been noticing some strange things going on in my garden.

Every morning, I start my day by looking out my back window at my garden, because it brings me great joy to see its progress. Imagine my perplexity when, one day, I looked out to see that a couple of leaves from my Kale plant had been eaten, leaving only the bare stem. How can this be? Just the night before, everything was there and intact. I went out to investigate and saw absolutely nothing in the garden bed or on the other leaves.

The next day, I noticed a few more leaves had been eaten. So, when I went out to water the garden a couple of days later, what did I see? A small but lengthy green worm lying in the center of one of the remaining kale leaves. He blended in so well, I almost missed him. Immediately, I exterminated him from the garden bed. Despite me using a recommended natural pest repellent, this little worm still managed to get in and wreak havoc on my kale.

A local farmer I ran into at the farmer’s market told me, “The method you’re using is great for most pests, but to prevent the worms and caterpillars, you need to use something different.”

I told you Yah wastes nothing. Well, as I was thinking about my garden problem and hoping that this new product would work, Holy Spirit reminded me that this happens in our lives, too. We’ve been working hard to cultivate this beautiful life and build up the proper defense barriers, but if we aren’t careful and aren’t using the proper defense mechanisms, things will creep in and begin to eat away at our life’s crops—our prayer lives, study time, family time, energy, health, appetites for Godly things, etc. And before we know it, we find ourselves depleted, off course, and wondering what happened.

I’m just passing through to remind you that, if you, in your assessment of your life’s garden, find yourself depleted, distracted, or falling off track in this season, it’s time to check your current spiritual pest control methods. The pests are not the same for each crop or season, which means sometimes your defense mechanisms have to change to address different pests. If your pest is tiredness and sleepiness every time you go to pray or study, then maybe you need to change the time or location of when and where you do so. If your pest is desiring things that are not pleasing to God, then maybe you need to assess the gates—eyes, ears, mouth, things you do, and places you go—that are giving the enemy legal access to you.

Whatever the pest, know that Holy Spirit is there to help give you strategies to overcome and help you navigate every season of your life. As a believer and follower of Jesus Christ, we were given access to Holy Spirit for this very purpose. So, why not utilize the wisdom and knowledge that He supplies? As believers, Yah has already provided the strategy for everything that you need through Holy Spirit. All you have to do is ask (Jeremiah 33:3).