In order to seek God’s kingdom first, we will need to choose to FIRST put aside this world’s kingdom! Otherwise we can end up with a huge competition between this world’s kingdom’s and His! Unfortunately, the wrong kingdom often wins, because this world pushes and prods at us incessantly. The kingdom of God, the kingdom we’ve been born into spiritually, needs to be cherished by us.
So before we do anything in our lives at all, let’s always ask the Lord: “What do You want Holy Spirit?” His kingdom aims are often long-range. Just like any farmer sows seed for a harvest, one little seed in God’s kingdom can produce a plant with many more seeds inside it, over time. This is how the kingdom of God spreads, through the cultivation of our lives. What He has planted inside our hearts was made to grow.
In the parable of the sower – Matthew 13 – the Lord explains how this process works, what to watch out for that can rob us along the way. Our bit is to receive the newly planted seed, by making sure the ground of our heart is open, soft and prepared. That’s not always easy. Preparation takes diligence, and physical engagement with what the bible says. We need to daily choose to live out what we read in the bible, IN REAL LIFE. This devoted tilling of the soil of our hearts, means we are also letting the Lord Himself turn over any parts of our soil that have become hard and we are trusting Jesus with our inner selves.
We can’t afford to hide behind our broken past or the difficulties of this life, or even pointing at other people’s sins – to avoid dealing with the our own hearts. We will take ourselves out of His growing processes and get stuck. We are in a battle, that battle isn’t just about avoiding sin, it is about producing more seeds. Sadly, weeds are a sign of a gardener who does not check their garden, daily. So let’s check our hearts before Him, and repent and repair things with Him, and others – daily. Keep refreshing your love for Jesus at every opportunity. It’s the farmer’s job to make sure the ground stays soft, weed-free, and watered so it can be planted out.
The Holy Spirit is right here with us, watching over us, waiting to see Christ’s qualities spring to life in us. For His plants to grow, bloom and produce even more seeds, we must engage in His processes – because you and I are the fresh bread of heaven that other people get to eat daily. We’ve been shaped and formed into loaves by our personal circumstances — the blessings, difficulties, joys and suffering in our lives. Our God-given responses to these things shape that bread.
Some seeds are sown onto the surface of the soil, and covered with a light sprinkling of more soil. This can be how the ‘birds of the air’ can get access to it. These seeds are not planted very deeply because they need the sun to germinate them, not just the warmth of the soil. So we need to watch out for the birds of the air! We must be on our guard, otherwise the seed of God’s word can be pinched or stolen away. This happens because of the inattention on behalf of the gardener. Those kinds of opportunistic situations that can occur when God’s word is lying on the surface of our heart.
When we accept the seed of His Word into us, it nourishes us and promotes growth. But the stuff that drags our focus away from Jesus is often current, and it needs our immediate response. The best response is “HELP!”However, there are other seeds are planted more deeply and their roots go down deep into the soil. “Have your roots planted deep in Christ. Grow in Him. Get your strength from Him. Let Him make you strong in the faith as you have been taught. Your life should be full of thanks to Him.” Colossians 2:7.
There is no need to hide from the Holy Spirit’s processes, we are designed to live in the Grace of God and His workings in our lives, experientially, day after day. Being a Christian is something we live— we don’t just believe it, or take comfort in the fact that we can repeat appropriate things at appropriate times. This is now our chosen way to live: “For in Him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.” (Acts17:28.)
Humility waters the seed that God plants within us, and the bible is the best kind of water – Living Water! As we deliberately take notice, and act on what the Lord says in the bible, it then becomes the fertiliser of our faith. We need both His water and fertiliser. Jesus said this in Matthew 11:9. “Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest (relief and ease and refreshment and recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls.” Humility is not self-effacement – it is Jesus’ own yoke. He wore it, by choice, when He lived on earth.
Lastly, a mature bullock when it is selected to pull a load has to accept its yoke. The beast freely walks into it. When we are yoked to the Lord, it means we’ve chosen to walk with Him. Now we walk in step with the other bullocks around us, because we are part of a ‘team.’ When we come to Him we are choosing to accept the same yoke that He accepted – God’s Will comes first. The end result of planting seeds is food, and grain that has more seeds in it. To be a good faithful farmer of what we have been given, we will always need to follow Jesus’ example. Bye. 👋.
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