Mar. 31, 2009 - What kind of soil do you have?
I was doing Student of the Word with the Sweet Savages tonight after dinner and we studied Matthew 13:1-23. The parable of the 4 soils. Something neat came out of it that we had never thought of, so I thought I'd share it with you. I'll paraphrase the 4 soils first that Jesus was talking about and His explanation of what it meant...
1. Seed that was sown on the path--is like someone who hears the truth of God's Word but never understands it and it never grows.
2. Seed that is sown on the rocky soil--is like someone who hears and receives God's Word but it has no depth to them so when trials come, their faith is gone.
3. Seed that is sown in the area with weeds--is like someone who hears the Word, begins to live it, but the things of this world are too tempting and money and "things" choke out their faith.
4. Seed that is sown in the good soil--is like someone who hears the truths of God's Word, understands it, believes it and they bear much fruit in their lives. (Fruit of the Holy Spirit)
Since we usually have a garden every year, albeit one that is small and usually has way too many weeds, we could better relate and talk about this parable for our own lives.
We first talked about it in relation to our own selves being the sowers. We might share the Good News of what the Bible says with a bunch of people, but very few seem changed by it. The seed sown above was ALL good seed, but WHERE the seed landed made all the difference. As children of God, our job is to share what God has done in our lives and, even more important, share the Gospel. If 75% of what we share never shows fruit, that is not our fault. The Bible says that it is the work of the Holy Spirit in people's lives that allow them to understand the Gospel. Our job is to obey God and leave the results up to him. (Hey, that sounds a lot like Facing the Giants main theme!)
On the other hand, if we think of our own individual lives as being ground that seed is sown on, what kind of ground are we? Are we a path? Rocky soil? Weedy soil? or GOOD soil?
We discussed tonight how our lives are not like a nice clean bag of potting soil with no weeds or rocks...our hearts are more like our garden. We might go out and get up all the rocks in the garden and pull all the weeds (The things of this world that lure us away from God/ sin in our hearts/ anything that hinders us from loving God with ALL our hearts, souls, mind and strength) but a few days or weeks later, we somehow find MORE rocks and weeds and need to again deal with that which has worked it's way into our hearts to choke out the good fruit in our lives. Cleaning our hearts is not (unfortunately) a 1 time deal. We need to constantly be hoeing, raking and cleaning our souls and hearts with the Word of God and prayer as the Holy Spirit reveals those things in our "garden" that are hindering our ability to grow good seed.
Pretty neat, huh?
Now, go clean out your garden so the good seed can grow!!
Comments
Apr. 1, 2009 - AMEN!
Posted by Eunice
Just wanted to give a hearty Amen Misti! And add... I have learned so much about God and areas in my own life while gardening. Gardening is often a visual for me. I recently bought soil and manure and the bag was full of weeds and grass. That's never happened before, but every single bag has at least half a dozen! My first thought when realizing this was...."okay Lord, what am I suppose to learn from this?" For some reason it's so clear in the garden. :O)
Apr. 12, 2009 - Thanks so much!
Posted by seasonsmom
Just wanted to thank you for taking your time to minister to me again and again. Bless ya!
