Archive - May 9, 2013

I want a house with a yard for a garden and a patio lined with flowers. Right now, I have an apartment with four pots at the front door and a window planter. It doesn’t really feel like gardening when you have to fill your pitcher with water from the bath tub.

Nonetheless, I am excited to say that our sugar snap peas sprouted from the dirt yesterday. This morning, I marveled at the delicate leaves that are beginning to open. And, of course, I was thrilled to use them as a segway back into the blog series – Fruit Need Roots.

If you remember my garden last year, I grew the sugar snap peas in the window planter along with bell peppers. This season, I decided the peas needed more soil in order to get a bigger harvest. So they are planted in my biggest pot outside our front door.

Agriculturally speaking, that seems like a basic fact. I planted my seeds in dirt. But spiritually, there are profound implications. Is your faith planted in soil?

If you haven’t already guessed, we’re going to look at the Parable of the Sower from Matthew 13. Jesus describes three types of soils to His followers.

SOIL NUMBER ONE:

vs. 4: As he was sowing, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and ate them up.

vs. 19: When anyone hears the word about the kingdom and doesn’t understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the one sown along the path.

Some of us have a heart like this soil. We hear but we never listen. It’s not that no one has ever explained the gospel  to us– it’s that we never cared. Our Bible gathers dust on the shelf and our mind wanders as we doodle through sermons. This is a dangerous state to live in.

It’s even more dangerous to say, “I never have a heart like this path” or maybe even “I’m a Christian who has accepted the Gospel so this doesn’t apply to me anymore.” In my own life, I don’t think  my entire heart has ever been hardened away from God all at once (praise to the Father!) But I have had those lows in my relationship with God that I have not wanted to talk to Him. No matter how many Scripture verses or sermons I heard on the topic of prayer, I didn’t change my routine. I was doing just fine on my own.

I had a hard heart (and a hard head!) in that aspect of my life. So before we breeze past this first type of spiritual soil, take a moment to reflect on your life. Are there aspects of your life that you are withholding from God?

As we’ll continue to see, we’ll need every ounce of fertile soil in order to produce righteous Fruit of the Spirit.

Read the next post in this series: http://wp.me/p2xHae-97