Ryan brought absolute fire last Sunday! He challenged us to look deeply at our clear calling to steward the earth. With Earth Day 2026 hitting next week on April 22, his message struck a massive chord with me. We have a huge, God-given responsibility to care for this beautiful planet. We cannot just sit back and watch from the sidelines. We need to step up immediately. We need to get our hands dirty.
I left our service feeling completely energized to take action. God calls us to be active participants in God’s wild, beautiful creation. How we treat the earth directly reflects how we honor our Creator.
Tracing God’s Story Through the Dirt
That physical call to gardening connects perfectly to what God is doing in our souls. We are in the thick of our incredible Gardens of Life series. God uses the powerful imagery of gardens from the very first pages of Scripture to the absolute last. He loves working in the dirt. He uses gardens to show us exactly how He operates. He plants us. He waters us. He cultivates wild, unstoppable growth in us.
Stepping into the Garden of Surrender
Gardening is not always sunshine and blooming flowers. Most of the time, it is exhausting, backbreaking work. It requires sweat. It requires serious effort. You get blisters on your hands and aches in your back. This Sunday, we are heading straight into the most intense biblical garden of all. We are looking at the Garden of Gethsemane. We are calling this upcoming message “The Garden of Surrender.”
This is the heavy stuff. This is where Jesus faced His absolute hardest moments on earth. Before the ultimate victory of the cross, there was the intense agony of the garden. Jesus fell to the ground in sheer distress. He sweat actual drops of blood. The word Gethsemane literally means “olive press.” Jesus was being pressed and crushed by the massive weight of what was coming.
He wrestled intensely with God’s will. He begged for another way out. Jesus felt fear. He felt overwhelming anxiety. He showed us that it is completely okay to bring our raw, unfiltered emotions straight to God. You do not have to clean up your act before you step into the garden. But ultimately, He made the radical choice to surrender entirely. He said, “Not my will, but Yours be done.” That single, powerful sentence changed human history forever.
Join Us for a Fresh Start
You absolutely do not want to miss this Sunday at Trinity UMC. We are going to dive deep into this Garden of Surrender together and we will be celebrating Missions! Bring your pain. Bring your heavy doubts. Bring your stubborn resistance. Let’s lay it all down in the dirt. We are going to worship loudly, pray boldly, and step into the incredible freedom that only comes from total surrender.
I want you to invite your friends. Bring your neighbors. Share this post with anyone in our community who desperately needs a fresh start right now. We all need this powerful message. Let’s pack out the house and step into our explosive growth together as a church family. God is doing something massive at Trinity UMC. You need to be part of it. I cannot wait to see you there. Let’s grow!
