Don’t Settle For A Vegetable Garden -By Babatunde Olugboji
This week, we will conclude the series on Ahab, Jezebel, Naboth, and the piece of land near the palace that Ahab coveted, using 1 Kings 21 as our main scripture. Chief to this narrative was Jezebel, King Ahab’s wife, who was one of the three most treacherous women in the Bible, the other two being Potiphar’s temptress wife and Samson’s treacherous Delilah.
Doesn’t this narrative remind you of Paul advise to the Romans: ‘Don’t let the world squeeze you into its mold. Another Bible version says, stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you. (Rom 12:2) Ahab didn’t consider the fact that he was a citizen of the Kingdom of God while Jezebel was from a different kingdom, a kingdom of the Baal god. Unfortunately, Ahab was tied to her in wedlock, and he allowed her to squeeze him into her mode of worship.
Ahab wanted to convert Naboth’s vineyard into a vegetable garden but Naboth steadfastly refused. On the face of it, there was nothing wrong with a vegetable garden but think about it, a vineyard takes at least two years to develop, while a vegetable garden takes only a couple of weeks. So, to destroy such a long-term plan for a short-term project is shocking. You can thus describe Ahab as someone with a vegetable mentality.
Someone with a vegetable mentality will proffer temporary solutions to long term problems, will not put God inspired ideas to work, and will fail to trust God for big things. If you can get an A, why settle for a B? Are you saying that after crossing so many rivers, after acquiring so many degrees, God is not able to prosper you? After years of struggle, why are you settling for less, why are you selling yourself short, why are you abandoning your dream, why do you persist in staying in your comfort zone?
The vegetable garden issue has an even deeper meaning. When Ahab’s descendants were slaves in Egypt, there were vegetable gardens all around them. But God delivered them out of Egypt so each family would have not just a vegetable patch, but a whole land for themselves in the promised land. “The land that you are about to enter and occupy is not like the land of Egypt where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden.” (Deu 11:10-12)
Ahab, having been completely manipulated by Jezebel forgot that he was a person of covenant. He was ready to settle for less than what God wanted for him, he was ready to go back to the vegetable patches God had delivered his ancestors from. God had a whole territory for Ahab if he had been obedient, but his wife clouded his thinking. He was willing to settle for a vegetable garden.
My prayer this week is that you will not go back to whatever God had delivered you from. You will not go back to porn, drug abuse, alcohol dependency, anger, malice, and the like, in the name of Jesus. I release the power of God upon you today, the vegetable mentality is over in your life. Start trusting God for big things, and you see him do big things in your life.
Have a great week.
Kingdom Dynamics, a weekly column is written by Dr. Babatunde Olugboji, the President, Kingdom House, a non-profit organization in New Jersey, USA.
