Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Sunday Night Bible Fellowship!
We hope you're having a great holiday weekend and successfully survived all the food and football. In recent articles back before Thanksgiving started we've talked about the fact that the 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 the SOIL, followed by a time of root formation until the plants appear above ground, followed by continued growth and maturing both above and below ground until the perfect moment arrives for the harvest.
The same thing happens in the Kingdom of God: the Word is planted into the soil to produce a harvest. But there're 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 the life of each Believer who's willing to accept and USE the SEED as it was intended. What is the harvest the SEED is trying to produce? It's working to transform each of us by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2) 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 must accept by FAITH just because our Bible says that this is the way the Kingdom of God works.
Understanding Soil Conditions
As we all know, seeds won't do anything until they're planted. Did you know some of those 3,500 year-old Egyptian tombs that have been discovered were found with unplanted seeds in them and that those seeds will immediately take root and grow when they're PLANTED into good soil? Seeds have to be planted for something to grow. 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, that Bible says quite clearly that if you want success in 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, what it says and what it teaches, in order to be able to DO it. So, you have to plant the seed before you can DO anything that will ever lead to true success.
Now one of the most interesting of the parables of Christ, which also happens to be about this same particular subject, can be found in Mark 4:3-20. You can also find another version of it in Matthew 13:3-23. It's called "The Parable of the Sower and Soils" and in it Jesus shows that there are four basic soil conditions that SEED (the Word of God) can be sown into:
1. The first kind is the kind of soil that can be found by the side of a road that is so packed down and hard the seed can't penetrate it. The seeds just lie on top of the ground and don't take root and Satan comes immediately to steal these seeds. Matthew 3:19 explains that this happens when people don't UNDERSTAND the Word they've heard and it's easy for the devil to come and steal it. Why do most Christians FORGET within a few hours the message they've just heard in their churches on Sunday mornings? They didn't UNDERSTAND it or it wasn't important enough to them to meditate on, so the enemy came and stole it away before it could take root and produce any growth.
2. The second kind of soil is similar in that it has rocky places all over it. The Word doesn't take a firm root in that kind of soil and when the enemy sends affliction and/or persecution against this type of Believer to obstruct the rooting process, they give in to the pressure and give up on the Word they've heard often becoming offended at God for the affliction/persecution they're experiencing. The truth is, the source of ALL afflictions and persecution is Satan and his purpose is to stop the Word from producing God's BLESSING and favor in your life. Said another way, his purpose is to separate you from the Word, to separate the soil from the seed.
3. The third soil is full of thorns and the thorns choke out the seeds. A whole lot of Christians have this kind of soil because the "thorns" that keep the seeds from taking root are worry and anxiety and concern about things from the WORLD that are happening in their lives especially about financial issues and the covetousness of acquiring "things" to bring "comfort" to one's life. Believers with this soil type are too busy worrying about their problems to give the time to the Word that would eventually bring them all the solutions they're so worried about. So they hear the Word but it doesn't really penetrate or it isn't seen as a viable substitute for self-developed solutions.
4. Finally, there's a fourth type that's GOOD SOIL where the seeds will take firm root, mature above and below ground and produce bumper crops for those Believers. That's the kind of soil we all want to have because the Bible says it can produce thirty, sixty and a hundredfold of what was planted. These Believers hear the Word, they receive it gladly, they meditate on it so they can understand it, they refuse to focus on the afflictions and persecutions they encounter and they don't worry about those kinds of things. God will provide, God will make things turn out right and eventually those folks will be successful in everything they put their hand to. That's what makes good soil so you can produce the fruit in your life you've always wanted.
Most Believers start out in the first group and progress through the various soil types until they finally mature and at least some of their seeds begin to produce a good harvest. But we have to fight to stay in the fourth group. The enemy is not going to stop trying to steal your seeds so you have to protect them. You have to resist the enemy and you have to be alert to his devises. Friend, he wants to steal the Word from your ground. If he succeeds you'll be defeated and have to wait for the next opportunity to sow seed. But when you finally learn to stay in the fourth soil type, your fruit will be plentiful, overflowing with more than you need so you can bless other people. That's where you want to be. So take stock of yourself today and make an honest assessment of the kind of SOIL you're making available to the SOWER.
The Word is a Source of Great Power
Keep in mind that three of the four possible soil types result in separation from the seed. In other words the seed will be stolen in at least seventy-five percent of the situations you could be confronted with. Or by implication seventy-five percent of people who hear the Word, i.e. three-fourths of the Body of Christ is NOT good soil and the Word they need in order to be victorious and successful is routinely stolen. By observation, that order of magnitude seems about right: three-fourths of the Church is falling short of where they could be, which is to say falling short of what Jesus paid for at the Cross.
If you knew, really knew and appreciated, really UNDERSTOOD that the key to all success in all areas of life was literally at your fingertips and eager for you to take up, would you not want to grab hold of it and start using it? Well apparently most believers aren't seeing the opportunity that's in front of them because the Word of God is its own Source of Power that has the ability to change lives and they're not connecting to it. All we have to do is read it and then meditate on it long enough to get the UNDERSTANDING before it gets stolen. The Word of God is the SEED that in and of itself has the POWER to change lives but it has to be pursued and UNDERSTOOD. How much is success in every area of life worth to you? Is it worth a little time and study and meditation so it won't get stolen before you can use it, before you can DO it?
In sum, part of the revelation I'm trying to get across in this series is that the WORD is itself a SOURCE of great POWER that has been unappreciated. You take it (the seed) in, you work on understanding it, you DO it and VICTORY happens, WE KNOW NOT HOW. If Christians truly believed what I'm communicating here, that simply meditating on the Word of God accesses the greatest source of power on the face of the earth, the same power that raised Jesus from the grave, would they not be doing it? Since most of us aren't doing it, the conclusion has to be that we haven't embraced the concept yet, that we haven't comprehended where the POWER of the Kingdom actually comes from. The Word of God is ALIVE (Hebrews 4:12) and its POWER is waiting for you to access it. My job is simply to call attention to this great opportunity and the rest is up to you.
Thanks for stopping by tonight. We'll be looking for you again NEXT Sunday night on December 7. 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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