Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Sunday Night Bible Fellowship!

 

In recent articles we've talked about the fact that your Bible refers to the WORD of God as SEED and that the process of seed time and harvest on the earth is imitating a similar process in the Kingdom of God. Everything in God's creation, humans, animals and plants included, follow this same basic process: a seed is planted in some SOIL, followed by a time of root formation and growth, until the plants appear above ground, followed by continued growth and maturing above and below ground until the perfect moment arrives for the harvest.

 

"The Kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil" (Mark 4:26).

 

So the same thing happens in the Kingdom of God: the Word is planted into the soil to produce a harvest. But there are a couple of things Christians lose sight of when we move from the earthbound description to the supernatural parallel. If the WORD is the SEED, what is the SOIL? Friend, the SOIL is you and me; the WORD must be planted in each of us and when it is, its nature is to produce a harvest in each Believer who's willing to accept and USE the SEED as it was intended. What is the harvest that the SEED is trying to produce? It's working to transform each of us by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2) so that we can come into the image of Christ (Romans 8:29). We don't know how the WORD accomplishes this; it just does (Mark 4:27) which we decide to accept by FAITH because nothing works without faith and because our Bible tells us this is the way the Kingdom of God works.

 

There Must be Something Planted

 

Last week we discussed from 1 Peter 1:23 that each of us had to have received the WORD-SEED at some point in our lives in order to have been born again (if you're not born again today just drop down to the section below called "Sinners' Prayer" and do what it says there). Before we were reborn, our spirit-man was dead and disconnected from the things of God. We looked like Adam in his fallen condition (Genesis 5:3) instead of like Jesus in His resurrected condition which is where the WORD started to take us the moment we were born again and got re-connected to the Holy Spirit.

 

But the process did NOT stop there after only one harvest. No, there are continuous, ongoing and a multitudinous number of SEEDS that need to be sown into your soil, and each harvest is supposed to be better than the previous one. But Christians try to circumvent the PLANTING part because it's a lot of hard work. Planting is actually VERY hard work and our Flesh doesn't want to have to do it. So we try everything possible to make life "easy" and avoid the work so we can use our time to do things that are more enjoyable.

 

But there will be NO harvest in the Kingdom of God unless it's been preceded by a PLANTING. Seed must be planted (or sown) into GOOD SOIL if we expect to see a harvest. But millions of Christians all over the Body of Christ are trying to ask God for things to change in their lives and wondering why the change doesn't happen. Could it be they're not changing because they've neglected to carry out the PLANTING of the SEED? Could it be they don't have enough WORD in them to know what they're talking about when they go to the Lord in prayer? Think on these things:

 

* Do you want to know the will of God for your life? You must renew your mind with the Word

   (Romans 12:2).

* Do you want God's favor (grace) in your life? It comes from knowledge of the Word (2 Peter 1:2).

* Do you want peace in your life? It also comes from knowledge of the Word (Psalm 119:165 and

   2 Peter 1:2).

* Are you trying to receive something? Everything pertaining to life comes from KNOWING God  

   (2 Peter 1:3).

* Do you want healing for your body? It's in the Word (Psalm 107:20).

* Do you want prosperity and success in your life NOW? That can also be found in the Word (Joshua

   1:8, John 10:10, 2 Corinthians 8:9 and many other scriptures).

    

Seeds won't do anything until they're planted in some soil. Your Bible carefully placed on your coffee table or faithfully carried under your arm each Sunday is powerless to do anything until you PLANT it, until you sow some of that SEED into GOOD GROUND. And also, the Bible says very clearly that if you want success in any area of your life, you have to be a DOER of the Word (James 1:25). To be a DOER of something requires that you know what to DO. You have to know what's in the WORD in order to DO it.  

 

The bottom line is that we have to make ourselves available to the work of SEED PLANTING in order to give the SEED (the Word of God) a chance to grow and produce something special in our lives. God wants us to be healed and prosperous and delivered, abounding in peace and joy and life and full of His Holy Spirit. But all of that depends on the PLANTING. We can't skip the PLANTING of the SEED yet millions of Believers are trying to do that exact thing. God's Kingdom only works one way: His way. There are no short cuts, there are no bypasses around the SEED planting work and NOBODY CAN DO THIS WORK FOR US. It can't be outsourced! We have to do the PLANTING for ourselves or there will be only skimpy harvests in our lives. And skimpy harvests result in lower revenue, less to eat, discouragement, hunger, frustration and insufficiency.

 

The Requirement of Sequence

 

Before we stop tonight, let me remind you that almost everything in the Kingdom of God works sequentially. In other words you have to do one thing, take the first step before you can progress to the next step. We can't skip steps in the sequence and jump over to steps further down the line. The World doesn't work so precisely so often we can skip steps in their systems and reach our objectives more quickly. The Flesh likes that system because it never wants to do all the work required by having to go through all the steps. The quicker to the objective the better.

 

A lot of Christians approach the Word of God as if they're in the World. They want to skip the planting because it's so much work and skip over to the harvest, the objective of where they're trying to go. But you can't harvest crops without planting seeds even in the World. So until we're ready to take the time and do the work of planting, we're not going to bring in any harvests, to the great frustration of many Believers. They can't figure out why they're still not prosperous or why they're still involved in some trial or why they can't throw off some sickness when in fact they've failed to do their planting.

 

Look, the Word of God has its own POWER to achieve everything you want done. But you have to PLANT that Word someplace before the POWER can be released, before the POWER can start to produce results in your life. It's a simple concept yet it's the most overlooked source of POWER in the Body of Christ. Do you feel like you lack POWER in your life? If so, there's almost always a single reason for it: you have failed to plant seeds from the Word of God in yourself so they can grow and produce POWER. You can't generate that POWER on your own and it only comes from one place: the Word of God, and in order to plant it you have to UNDERSTAND it. You don't just read it casually. You read it and then meditate on it until you UNDERSTAND it and then it will start to grow and produce something special in your life. The more Word, the more POWER. It's a simple concept!

 

How about deciding today to submit to the Father and do things His way for a change. Start showing up for the seed planting and it's promised that the seed WILL grow, we know not how, and it will ALWAYS produce a bountiful harvest. If you're tired of skimpy harvests, the next planting starts the first thing tomorrow morning. May God bless ALL your PLANTING in Jesus name!

 

Thanks for stopping by tonight. We'll be looking for you again NEXT Sunday night on November 23. In the meantime may the Lord bless you with every spiritual blessing (Ephesians 1:3), compelling you to PROSPER in every area of life!

 

Sinners' Prayer

 

If you've never invited Jesus to be the Lord of your life, you need to and you can do it today just by saying out loud the following simple prayer:

 

Jesus I declare today with all my heart that I believe in you and that God raised you from the dead. I acknowledge that my sins have been forgiven and I ask you to come into my life today and be my Lord and Savior. Thank you for salvation and eternal life.

 

If you were sincere as you prayed this prayer, God has already come into your life and you are a new creation, a totally new species recreated in His image. Now ask the Lord to lead you to a good faith-based, bible-teaching church where you can be equipped to fulfill your potential in the Kingdom of God.

 

And, when you get a chance have someone help you look up the following scriptures because they confirm what you've done by saying this prayer today and believing what you said:

 

Romans 10:9

2 Corinthians 5:17

Ephesians 2:8

 

Prayer Requests

 

If you have a Prayer Request, please connect to the Link below and follow the promptings. The PLN staff members pray over Prayer Requests every Tuesday morning at 10:00 AM eastern time. Agree with us for God to answer your petition.

 

http://www.creditcounseling.net/prayer-request.aspx 

 

Donations

 

If you've been edified by Prosperous Life Newsletter, you may want to consider making a SEED FAITH offering to support the Ministry (Galatians 6:6-7). God has instructed us to simply provide folks with an opportunity to sow seed into good ground so in due season you'll be eligible to reap a harvest and the rest is up to you as the Spirit leads. For your information PLN is a nonprofit gift to the Body of Christ so your financial offerings will usually be tax deductible (consult your tax advisor). Just go to the secure Shopping Cart on the Cornerstone web site by connecting through the following link. We appreciate your support and generosity.

 

http://www.creditcounseling.net/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1 

 

About Prosperous Life Newsletter

 

PLN is an outreach ministry of Make A Way Ministries and has been published continuously since January 1998. It's an e-publication about life in the Kingdom of God and is sent ONLY to our email list of MINISTRY MEMBERS. If you're reading this and aren't yet on our growing email list, please let us know and we'll be so very happy to add you to the list.

 

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