"Purposeful Planting": A Sunday Conversation with Pastor Emily Holverson

Welcome to Heaven Earth Church.

My name is Ross Stackhouse.

I'm the founding pastor of Heaven Earth Church.

From the beginning, our heart was to be a church for people who

don't fit neatly into church.

Our heart is to meet people where they are, to learn their stories,

to honor their stories.

Because in every human story is God's story.

In this podcast, you'll hear more about the people who now call

Heaven Earth Church home.

Their stories, in many cases of misfits who are discovering or

rediscovering faith.

If you want to know more about us, you can go to heavenorthchurch.org

Otherwise, we invite you now into the story.

Hello, good people.

Brad Miller here, the producer of the Heaven Earth Church podcast.

One of the main benefits of being a part of the Heaven Earth

Church community is our Sunday morning conversations taught by founding

pastor Ross Stackhouse.

You can watch and participate in the Sunday morning conversation

this Sunday morning, 9:30am Eastern Time at YouTube.com Heaven

Earth Church.

The audio version of the Sunday morning conversation is available

here on the podcast, which you can find at Apple Podcasts, Spotify

and on the website, which is heavenearthchurch.org now with the

message purposeful planting is Pastor Emily Halverson.

What are you looking forward to this summer?

Growing a garden for the church for the first time.

Other things.

What are you looking forward to this summer?

Warmth.

Not here yet.

That's true.

Going to Milwaukee to see the Killers.

Milwaukee is a good city, you guys.

It's in Wisconsin.

It's good.

Good people.

Good people.

Milwaukee.

No, Milwaukee is a city.

The Killers is a band.

Jamin.

Not having to wake up at 6am every single morning.

I'm looking forward to that too.

Other things.

What are you looking forward to?

Yeah, Melissa.

I love this.

Melissa joined the reading program this summer at the library.

She's going to make also.

She's going to get all kinds of prizes and read lots of great

books and get to log things, which is fun.

Sometimes those little rewards.

Do you like spreadsheets?

I know.

We're right there.

Okay.

What else are you looking forward to this summer?

Yeah, Kaylee, we are going to Maine.

We are.

We are going to go see Acadia.

Natalie going to college.

That's technically the end of the summer, but I will count it.

She's my daughter, for anyone who doesn't know.

So I can give her a little bit of a hard time.

But yeah, she's going to college in the fall.

She's gonna go way high in the U.P.

of Michigan.

She'll be way up in the Upper Peninsula.

So we're looking forward to having her around a little bit more

this summer.

Michigan Tech.

Michigan Tech, Yep.

Up in Houghton.

Yeah.

Charles.

Charles is looking forward to rest after a busy season.

Just a chill, chill season, summer.

Anything else that you're looking forward to?

Yeah.

Jamin.

I thought I saw your hand.

Yeah.

Lake Michigan.

Going to Lake Michigan.

Yeah.

Some great lake time.

It's always good time.

I kind of like Joanna.

I'm looking forward to my garden this summer last.

So I'm especially hopeful for my cucumbers and my tomatoes.

Those aren't mine, but they're lovely.

Cucumbers and tomatoes.

Last year, my cucumbers and my tomatoes just didn't do very well.

And we kept trying to figure out what is going on with these plants.

Why?

Like, we didn't really think we did anything differently.

We're still trying to figure out our soil.

They just didn't do great.

And so this year when I planted, I did some more research,

because that's what I do.

And I came across this thing called companion planting.

Are you guys familiar with companion planting?

So I had a friend years ago who was a big proponent of this,

and I kind of ignored it because it takes more work.

And so I didn't do it.

But anyways, Damon, can you go to the next slide for me?

But companion planting is basically just.

It's strategic pairing of your plants for the health of both of

them.

So it kind of.

You're not like attracting extra pests.

You're maybe having.

You're attracting insects that are good pollinators, for one, and

they benefit the other.

You have different root structures, so they're not in competition.

And it's being really intentional about what you're planting

for the overall fruit and harvest of your plants.

So as I was researching this, I came across things like dill and

cucumbers are really good companion plants.

Well, this is great.

Dill and tomatoes, not so good.

Which my dill was by my tomatoes last year.

So we moved it away from the tomatoes.

But then I found this plant.

Do you guys know what that is?

Yes.

Did you say fennel?

Somebody said fennel?

No.

Oh, aloe.

It sounded like fennel.

Yeah, kind of.

This is fennel.

Have any of you grown fennel?

I wasn't the only one.

I had never grown fennel.

And last year I got this idea that I was going to grow fennel.

I had this extra spot in my.

I spreadsheet my garden.

So I, like, make my own graph paper on a spreadsheet.

And I plot out my garden, and I had this spot, and I was like,

I'm going to try fennel.

I've never tried it before.

I'm going to grow some.

So I had it in right in front of my cucumbers.

And this year, I discovered that a bad pairing in companion planting

is fennel and cucumbers.

And so all of a sudden, my poor yield last year was starting

to make a little bit more sense because I had planted this

plant that is a fine, wonderful plant in and of itself.

It's not the fennel's fault, but paired with my cucumbers, it

was affecting my garden.

And this year, see, I got a little lazy at the end of my garden

last year, and I just left my fennel in my garden, which meant

it stayed there and rooted all winter.

So this year, I literally, every day I'm pulling out little

baby fennel plants all throughout my garden because they

keep coming up.

So I have to keep going back, and I have to keep pulling them out

and keep pulling them up because I let this plant grow, and

I really want cucumbers.

This is my goal, so I'm looking forward to that.

But my fennel experiment was a good reminder to me that if I.

If I want to grow the fruit that I want to grow, then I have

to be really intentional about how I.

How I'm planting.

And there's this passage in Scripture, it's all about fruit,

and it's all about freedom, and it's all about intentionality.

And it's in Galatians 5.

And this was a letter, Galatians is a letter that Paul wrote

to a church about 2,000 years ago.

And there was this kind of debate going on about how people

get made right with God.

So as you kind of think and reflect, how have you heard that

people are made right with God?

When you hear that phrase, like, what do you think?

How do we.

How do we be okay with God?

What does that mean?

Through baptism.

Okay, Repenting.

Okay?

Following the rules, changing the way you're living.

Okay, so there's some actions involved in what you guys.

What you guys have said.

There are some particular actions that were being told to the

Galatian church that they needed to follow.

It had to do with things they did to their body.

But they said, this is what's going to make you right with God.

And Paul's like, no, no, no, no, no.

You're missing the point.

And so he makes these kind of points through his letter.

And his first point is that the rules, following the rules is

not what makes you right with God.

It's not about following a list of do's and don'ts.

And he makes a really strong statement.

He says, so Christ has truly set us free.

Now make sure that you stay free and don't get tied up again

in the slavery of the law.

So there's this whole Jewish law that the people were following

and all this.

Basically, it's just this big list.

It's this big list of rules.

But the importance of the law was this is how you're okay with

God.

So you follow all the rules and then you know you're okay with

God.

This was.

This was the system that was in place.

And Paul goes on and he says.

He says, but when we place our faith in Christ Jesus, he said, what's

important is that is faith expressing itself in love.

So he's like, it's all about how we live and all about how we

let this love, how we show that in our lives.

So he's saying, your beliefs matter.

Like, they are important, but your actions matter.

And if you're walking with Jesus, your faith in him is shown

through that.

So it's not just this.

It's not just ideas about God.

It's like, how are we, like, tangibly living?

How are we showing that in our life?

How are we making a difference to anyone?

Are we making a difference in what we're doing in the life?

Does anybody know that we know who Jesus is?

We might be able to list some really good lists of things.

But does it.

Does it have any.

Does it matter at all?

And so he says to them, he says, don't get.

Don't listen to these people who are trying to confuse you.

He says some pretty harsh things about it.

It's all in Galatians 5, if you want to check it out somewhere

this week.

But he says, don't listen to them.

They're trying to.

They're trying to make you follow the law.

But that.

That if you're trying to be okay with God by just following that,

he's like, you're going to get sucked back into this system.

That really is very draining.

It doesn't make you free.

And so then.

But then he goes on and he says, basically he says, so what

is this freedom for, right?

This whole idea of being free if we don't have to follow all these

rules, right?

If that's not really what makes us God, well, then can we just

do whatever we want?

And so he says, this jamin.

Can you go to that next slide for me?

Nope, the next one.

There you go.

He says, but don't use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature.

Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.

For the whole law can be summed up in this one command.

Love your neighbors as yourself.

So he's saying, can I do whatever I want?

He's like, well, I mean, you could.

You could do whatever you wanted, but it's not gonna be beneficial.

It doesn't make it good.

Not every action that I take, I might have the ch to do whatever

I want.

Like, I could do that.

I can do a lot of things, but it doesn't mean it's going to be

good for me or for anybody else.

And he has a whole list of things that he says, don't do this.

It's referred to as the sinful nature.

But there's all these different things.

But really the heart of it is that there are things that are really

selfish.

They're things that hurt people.

They're things that are all about pleasing me and my desires

and making me, myself and I the center of the world and not loving

other people.

And he's like, if we're loving other people, that's kind of the.

That's the litmus test.

Like, you guys know what a litmus paper is?

It's.

Yeah, like with a.

I think, about chemistry class, right?

So you take the litmus test and you stick it on in a solution

and it tells you if it's an acid or a base.

And that's what Paul's saying.

He's like, this is the litmus test.

If we take it and we put it on an action, we're like, does it show

love?

If it's not showing love, it's not about following Jesus.

It's not about life in the Spirit.

And so then he makes this third point to the Galatians.

He says.

He says, let the Holy Spirit guide your life, right?

So it's not about all the rules.

Choose wisely and let the Holy Spirit guide your life.

And this word fruit is actually singular.

So we hear about the fruit of the Spirit.

This is Galatians 5:22.

Galatians 5:22

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,

goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.

Gentleness.

That word fruit is singular in the Greek.

So basically what I think that means is Paul saying, if we live

by the spirit, there's this fruit that it produces, and then

it looks like these other things.

So it's like an apple tree makes an apple, right?

An apple tree doesn't make Oranges.

An apple tree produces apples.

So we live by the Spirit.

It produces this fruit of the spirit.

And that fruit of the spirit is this life that looks like this.

It has these different characteristics.

And the thing about all of this, right, is we.

So Paul's writing this to Galatians, but we see this fruit

of the Spirit in the life of Jesus.

And there's this story in the book of John about a woman who gets

caught.

She gets caught in the act of adultery.

And people that, like the religious teachers, kind of bring

her out in front of Jesus and they're carrying these big stones.

They literally want to throw the stones at her and kill her.

Because they.

In the law, the law says, if this happens, you stone people.

And so they brought her out, and they're like, teacher, Jesus,

what do we do with her?

And Jesus, he does this.

He kneels down and he starts writing in the sand.

And he looks up and he says, well, whoever is without sin, you

can throw the first stone.

And the accusers start dropping their rocks, and they start

walking away.

And Jesus looks at the woman and he says, has no one condemned

you?

And she said, no one.

And he says, I don't condemn you either.

He says, go and leave your life of sin.

But he says to her, he says, in those actions, what I hear him

saying to her is, your life is worth so much more.

You are worth so much more than what your choices are showing,

but also than what these people think of you.

But I see you.

I see your potential.

I see what's inside of you.

There's more to your life than this.

You have purpose.

You have value.

And he calls that out in her.

He says, there's this better way for you.

You can find it and you can live in it.

And that's like.

In that.

I was thinking about it this week, and I was like, this is our

first value here in this church, in this place, is this value

of seeing people as God's masterpieces.

That's what it's all about.

And then later in John, we see this story about vines and fruit

and staying connected to the vine.

This is in John 15.

But he says, look, if you want to produce good fruit, you have to

stay with me.

You have to remain with me.

Like, this is how it works.

So, like, if I have my apple tree and I cut off a branch, that

branch is not going to.

It's not going to produce any fruit.

There's no apples that are going to come from that branch.

It's the same idea.

Jesus is saying, look, if you want to produce this good fruit,

your life, you gotta stay with me.

He says in that passage.

He said, this is.

But this is my command.

And his command is not a big, huge list of do's and don'ts.

It's this.

It's just simply, love each other, stay with God, stay with me,

love each other.

This is how you bear fruit.

You want to bear good fruit.

This is.

This is the way we do it.

So I have another question for you.

What makes it hard to stay with Jesus and to love others?

Ego.

You want to say any more about that?

Okay.

Control.

Busyness.

Being able to forgive yourself.

Yeah.

There's almost a sense sometimes.

I'm not saying you said this wrong, but, like, when I'm in that

place, sometimes I'm like, do I actually believe that that's all

I have to do is, like, be with him?

Like, I should have to do something else.

I should have to have some other penance.

I should have to make it up somehow.

Jamin, did you have an online thing back there?

Did I see your hand?

Okay, never mind.

Yeah, I throw out grief and hurt, disappointment, bad experiences.

Maybe with the church, maybe with other people, other relationships,

fear, doubt, expectations, wanting it to be easier than it is.

It's a simple phrase, but in practice, it can be hard to do.

And yet there's this call, this reminder to us this morning

that if I want to grow good fruit, I have to be intentional with

how I.

With how I plan.

And that, to me, like, that intentionality, I feel like, in some

ways is almost like choice.

Like, I have choice in the matter.

Like, I get to choose.

Like, I don't.

I don't have to respond because anybody tells me I have to

or I should.

But it's like, what do I want in my life?

What is the kind of life that.

That I want to live?

And if I'm wanting to bear or have a life that bears good fruit,

there's this reality that, like, oh, I got to put.

I got to put the work in.

I saw T shirt the other week that kind of made me mad.

And I was like, well, it's kind of true, but it kind of.

I didn't like it, but it says.

It said, don't.

Don't be upset with the results you don't get because of

the work you didn't put in.

Here's why it made me mad, because first I was like, well, that's

true.

But secondly, because I was like, ugh.

But that's very much like a.

Like a shaming Thing.

And so then I get curious, well, why do I feel shame?

Oh, because are there things that I should be doing that I'm not

doing?

And so I'm not putting in the work in, so I'm not seeing the results.

And all of that can be true.

And what's also true is, and there's this factor, and there's

that factor, and there's this factor, and I'm still dealing with

this thing.

And sometimes I just need to give myself grace and be patient

with the process.

And where I'm at, I can get really impatient with results.

Really, really impatient with results.

And in that place of impatience, start to feel like I'm

not doing anything when really I'm just early in the growing season

and I need to give it a little more time.

So aiming for this good fruit, when we aim for good fruit, we're

more likely to grow it.

So if I want.

So in this context, right, if I want my life to look more like

Jesus, if that's my aim, I'm more likely to seek out the things

that are going to help me to do that.

If that's not my aim, I'm more likely to seek other things and put

more energy and investment in those other things.

So, like, as a parent, if I'm patient, if I want to reflect Jesus

with my kids, when I'm patient with them, I see results shifting.

I see my stress decrease.

I see the impact that that has in my family when I choose to be

patient with them.

And when I choose to not be patient with them, I see the results

that way, too.

But you can see the fruit when you choose to take those action.

Often, I think I choose the other.

The other way in that.

But the journey, right?

The other thing about fruit is that the more we see good fruit,

the more we learn to recognize it, the more we can discern the bad

fruit.

So, like, when I started growing cucumbers, I just got excited

that I got a cucumber.

Yes, I got one.

This is fantastic.

And then kind of like season after season, I'm like, oh, this

season I got lots of cucumbers, or this season I only

got a couple.

Okay.

But they weren't great, or they were kind of weird, or you just.

You kind of learn as you go, like, this is the really good fruit.

Like, this is the best fruit, that this is the fruit that I like

that I'm really, really pleased with.

But we learn that as we.

As we go, what is the good fruit?

What's the better fruit?

How do I keep Making it better, not in a judgmental way of

myself, but in a, like, I just want to keep growing and I want to

keep learning kind of way.

And the law, this list of rules, this list of, like, do's and

don'ts, if that's.

If that's, like, what I base my faith on is I'm only doing these

things, and I'm not doing these things.

And so I'm right.

That's not freedom.

I might now, my life might look similar.

Like, I might make similar choices, but my reasoning is really,

really important.

Because if I'm doing it just so that people can look at me and

be like, yes, she does all the right things, it's not going to produce

good fruit if I'm doing it because I'm like, this is the life

I'm after, so I'm going to make these choices.

That's where the good fruit comes in.

Living for all my selfish desires does not bring freedom.

It makes me trapped in my ego.

It makes me less likely to care about other people, makes me

less likely to invest in them, makes me more likely to see them

as a means to an end or not worth my time.

But this right here, this freedom, right, this is the good

fruit of the Spirit.

He set us free.

Christ has set us free.

So let's make sure that we stay free and don't get tied up again

in the slavery of the law.

This is like this big point that Paul is saying.

He's like, man, he set you free.

Walk in that freedom to this good, good life that he has in store

for you.

Parker Palmer says this.

He says, when we are rooted in true self, we can act in ways that

are life giving for us and all those whose lives we touch.

And there's a sense of, like, when we know who we are, like, and

we're living in accordance with that, it changes how we live.

And that produces really good fruit.

I didn't know that fennel was bad for my cucumbers until I knew

that it was bad for my cucumbers.

Because I don't know everything and I won't know everything.

So I get to keep learning.

But once I learned, I was like, okay, so now we don't plant

the fennel next to the cucumbers anymore.

I saw, like, the choice and the power that I had to affect that

situation.

Now, there's some situations in life, right, where, like, other

people plant fennel by our cucumbers, okay?

Or the rabbits eat my parsley, okay?

There are some things that are not my fault.

And those are different things, like how we respond to that.

Like, that's real and true.

And there's other ways to respond to that.

So not everything is my fault either.

Those areas where I can see, like, okay, I can make a choice in

those places where I don't have choice, well, I can learn how

to navigate that, too, with patience, with goodness, even when

I don't want to be good to people sometimes.

I know you never feel like that, but I do sometimes.

So these are my gardening tips that I'm reminding myself of this

week.

And the first one is to keep paying attention to Jesus.

Jesus lived and walked the fruit of the spirit.

Like, it's all over the New Testament.

We see how he interacted with people and situations and places

that really showed this life in the spirit and what it produces.

And bless you all the allergies today.

And what a.

Yeah, so the life in the spirit, right?

So keep paying attention to Jesus.

This is what I tell myself.

And I just.

My confession, guys.

This week, literally, I sat down with this passage, and I was

like, lord, I have read this passage 700 times.

Like, I'm kind of bored with this passage.

And this was like, my answer was like, go smell your lavender.

Just take a minute and deep and breathe deep and, like, keep

paying attention.

Like, so even those places, like I said earlier, like, my bad

attitude, like, this is where.

But it was also my honest attitude.

It was also just where I was.

But when we keep paying attention to Jesus, we keep seeing,

like, okay, yep, it's there.

And sometimes Jesus keeps.

It's just like, I just gotta keep walking.

Just gotta keep walking.

I gotta keep growing.

Secondly, practicing what he did.

Practice doing what he did.

So as we pay attention and see these different things and who he

was and how he lived and how he loved, right?

We can practice that.

And practice is an important word.

There's this old record called Agape Land.

Does anybody know this record?

Probably not.

It's okay, you do.

That's right.

You do.

But there's a song in there called Practice Makes Perfect.

And there's this little pianist on the record, like, trying

to play the piano and getting wrong notes.

But the whole idea is that, like, practice is important.

We can have the best theory, we can have the best plans, we can

have the best spreadsheets.

But practice is real.

Like, that doesn't give us tangible skill.

Like on the soccer field, right?

You can have the best plan for how you're going to execute.

But if you don't practice your foot skills, you might not Be able

to execute him as well.

So we have to keep practicing doing what he did.

Patience takes practice.

Goodness can take practice.

Like self control takes practice.

And the third thing is take Jesus wherever you go.

Bobblehead Jesus is around here somewhere.

Last week he got put into a box.

Oh, is he back there?

There he is.

So bobblehead Jesus, right?

But last week, Rocks put him in Ross.

Rocks Ross put him in a box.

Whew.

That was a hard sentence.

But it's this idea, like, we take Jesus wherever we go.

We don't keep him in a box.

So as I'm in the grocery store, as I'm driving my car, as

I'm engaged in some sort of school activity, as I'm interacting

with teachers, as I'm at work doing my job, as I'm seeing my neighbor,

as I'm wherever I am, as I'm sitting on my couch exhausted and

I am engaging with my children or deciding whether to make a phone

call or not make a phone call, whatever, wherever I am, like, take

Jesus.

I have to take Jesus with me.

And so there's this whole big idea that, like, learning to stay

in step with the Spirit shapes us from the inside out.

And it produces the kind of fruit that we see in the life of

Jesus.

So day after day, we keep going back to, we keep tilling the

soil and we pulling out the weeds and just putting in that life.

Everyday life with Jesus.

Over time, it shapes us and how we see things and how we see

the world and how we interact.

And that shapes the choices that we make.

And so it's this inside out living instead of this, like, yep,

here's my rule book that I follow.

And now I'm good.

And that's when we get the best fruit, is when we have that

inside out life with the Spirit.

That's when we have the fruit that really sets us free.

And that's the fruit that's worth living for.

So that's my prayer for all of us this morning, is that whether

you're like, this is my first season with this garden and I have

no idea what to do except I see dirt and I have seeds.

Great.

You can choose to put them in.

You can choose to not put them in.

Whether it's your 17th season with the garden, you're like, I'm

learning more things, or you've been gardening your whole

life, like, there's always more.

There's always room to grow.

And I think I find the older I get, like, there's an excitement

in that that I'm never actually done learning.

I'm never actually done growing.

There's always, always more with life, with the spirit.

So that's my prayer for us today.

So would you pray with me, Father?

God, I just thank you that you are good and I thank you that you

are patient and that you are kind.

I thank you that you call us to life with you.

And I thank you that you remind us of things that pull us

just towards life, towards ways that are not yours, Lord, but

really the heart of that is it just, it entangles us, it keeps us

from living the fullest life we can.

So I just, I pray you'd help us to keep seeing you, that you keep

teaching us about this life in the spirit, that you would show us

fruit, good fruit, Lord, that you would help us to be fruitful

in our lives and that you'd help this church, Lord, just to be

fruitful in this season.

Thank you for the ways that you just stick with us.

Thank you for the ways that when I come with my lists of things,

you go, will you just sit with me for a little while?

Let me remind you how much I love you so, God, I just pray that

for us in this season that we would be reminded, we would be reminded

of your love for us and that we can bring all of our stuff to

you and trust you with it.

I just pray this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Thank you for participating in the conversation happening at Heaven

Earth Church.

Your next opportunity to do so live is this Sunday morning, 9:30am

Eastern time either at the main campus at 3:09 East Main in

Whiteland, Indiana or online at YouTube Live.

That'[email protected] heavenerthechurch.

The audio podcast is always available at Apple Podcast and on

Spotify.

You can help others find out about the Heaven Earth Church podcast

by going to Apple Podcasts and or Spotify and leaving a five star

rating and your review.

Instructions on how to do just that and links are in the show notes.

You can always find out more by going to the church website heavenearthchurch.org

we.

Want to thank you for spending time with us today.

My name is Ross Stackhouse, the pastor to Heaven Earth Church

and you may think out there that your story is over, but in fact

your faith story may just be beginning.

If you want more information about our church or you're interested

in a next step, you can go to heavenearthchurch.org otherwise we

look forward to being with you next time at the Heaven Earth Church

podcast.