Soil

P 3497 Cherish what you already have.  

/ DVH

There can be times when what we hear from other people, spiritually speaking, can become incredibly appealing. Some things  sound like a shortcut to where we want to be. Here’s what I know about that — I can’t frame my entire life with the Lord, by other people’s experiences. I am not saying you can’t — I’m just saying it has never worked for me! 

Let’s take Brother-I-have-written-lots-of-books-and-loads-of-people-buy-them … and, your pastor. That book-writing brother indicates that he has found something that helps when you are praying about this and that, and it seems to be very helpful and pertinent to your life. The author indicates that this is the Word of the Lord, to help you. Great. Buy the book. But at the same time, make sure you are listening to what your pastor says week by week, as well. I like to pray: “Lord help me to hear You through my pastor.” We can become overly familiar with someone’s style, and miss the point God wants to make, simply because we already know them.

Where I live, Christians buy loads of ‘help’ books, perhaps that is because they feel like they have no clue how to help themselves. Yet their pastor faithfully preaches whatever the Lord gives him, week after week after week. Who knows what we might hear if we take off our ‘impress me with your wisdom, pastor’  hat, and put on the ‘speak Lord, I’m listening’ one. 

Here’s a fun story … I read it in a book! 🤣… I read about a pastor in South America who preached the same sermon on ‘love’ for months. The exact same sermon. The congregation got a bit ticked off about it so they asked the nice man, ‘Why?’ He said: “You are all still not doing it.” I think that is hilarious, and …very discerning … all at the same time!

Let’s look at what the bible says we are here to do. “So now through the church the multifaceted wisdom of God [in all its countless aspects] might now be made known [revealing the mystery] to the [angelic] rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 3:10. Our God is so incredible, one person cannot express all He is by themselves, yet He can use that one person to correct us. We need to remember, our pastor preaches our daily bread and butter, the author we like preaches the optional sprinkles that go on top.

Your pastor, and the brother with the multitude of books, are preaching to more people than YOU. They are also preaching to angelic rulers and authorities in heavenly places. The bible says there is another audience listening and watching. Perhaps they are the people who have gone on before us, the ones who are cheering for us to finish our race!! BTW, that does not mean your pastor is right, and your favourite author is wrong, or visa versa – it means you and I just got a glimpse into a bigger picture of Who the Lord is.

Here’s the punchline … God’s Wisdom is so-oo-oo BIG we will spend eternity discovering new things about Him every single day. Angels continually fly around His throne saying: “Holy, holy, holy, holy …” over and over and over again, forever!! That’s because they can see something new and incredible about God Himself every single time, from every angle! What they see, compels them to cry out in worship. Is your view of Almighty God getting stretched a little? Good! Our Heavenly Father is not limited by what anyone says or writes. Somebody once commented that the world could not contain the books that detail everything Jesus said!  He is a magnificent subject, but we have iddy-biddy brains!

Your pastor and the guy with the multitude of books, podcasts, and grabs are not at odds with one another, they are simply looking at the glory of God … Who He is … from a different angle! Praise God for it. The more we comprehend just WHO we are serving, the easier it will become to lay aside the things that simply don’t matter. Let’s pray to see Him through the Holy Spirit’s eyes. However, I think the person we need to trust and submit to, is the one we call when the roof falls in and we are staring at the rubble of our lives wondering if we will survive … our pastor.

He’s also the one we need to regularly pray for. If you don’t like what your pastor preaches – then first of all check to see if he is hitting a nerve in you that you don’t want to face! And then pray for him. He is human, and the enemy specifically targets pastors with discouragement and despair. They have become well acquainted with trouble too. Begin to pray that  the Lord will give your pastor, His wisdom, Sunday by Sunday. If you don’t go to a church, then start going. We need to be planted in the soil of His Grace.

The bible tells us not to forsake meeting together  — that means don’t skip church. It says that for a good reason!  We can be easily picked off, distracted or led astray, when we are wandering about, reading this and doing that – flying solo. We need each other. Yes, even longwinded old people like me, who have a story longer than you have time to hear it. We all need to learn patience. Trust me, going shopping on Sunday morning, is worshipping at another kind of church, and I’m very sure that one is not on your side!

It is up to us to cherish what the Lord has given us, and our faithful pastors, and writing friends are gifts from God. Just because they don’t turn up on Sundays wrapped in fancy wrapping paper and bow, that does not mean they are not His gift to us. Let’s actively appreciate what God has given us — He is so much bigger than we think. We need a compass! Bye 👋.

P 2837 What we do with what God tells us daily, matters.

/ DVH

I know that many people, past and present, have had a great deal to say about this parable, I personally love the clarification the Lord Himself gave, which comes directly after it in Matthew 13:1-9:

“He (Jesus) taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.” Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”

Almighty God gives us seed to sow from His Word – hopefully… daily!! His book is a fantastic source of life-giving seeds. We need to take those seeds He has personally given to us, and share them with others. That seed that His Spirit kisses, especially for us, has His life in it. Its power lies in the fact that God revealed His truth to us.

It may have been something someone said when they were preaching, and it struck us in the heart like an arrow finds the target. Or it may have been something that stood out as we were reading the bible. It could even be when we were talking to the Lord and suddenly a scripture fell down from our thinking and meditating —- where we had hidden it while we were renewing our minds – and it sank down deep inside us, into our heart where growth can begin. Wherever or however it happened, that fresh seed is now ripe for planting. It can produce a crop.

The seeds of His Word that we sow into our lives – as we daily read the bible and act on it — can behave exactly like this parable describes. Sadly some seed doesn’t even make it past 2 seconds of thought, because it has fallen upon a well worn pathway of previous knowledge, and so it is whisked away by the birds of the air … those thoughts and words that are constantly flying past us, because of everything we are exposed to in a single day. It is so easy to think: “I know that already.” Now we have a seed immediately stolen by pride.

Also in our daily bible readings, if we take the time to treasure His voice, we can sometimes discover “rocky places” in our hearts. They are not like the well-worn pathways that we barely notice, these are hard places that we try to skim over and ignore with thoughts like this: ‘The truth is, I don’t think I have to change, I think the other person should.’ The scorching heat of that bad attitude kills off the power of His precious seed, and it is killed off by negligence. Always remember that true forgiveness doesn’t keep accounts, be-ca-use … hallelujah!!… fortunately for us, Jesus doesn’t keep them either.

“The thorny ground” seeds are the places in our hearts we haven’t bothered to weed and keep watch over our wrong thinking. ‘Weeds of unbelief, or discontent or disappointment’ have flourished there. What we haven’t realised is that, spiritually speaking, any one rotten attitude can take over our thinking. So the possibility of a harvest from any seeds that are sown into the weed-filled patch, is negated. These spiritual seeds won’t receive their share of nourishment from any water and good soil, because the weeds of our wrong thinking are crowding them out, and soon the whole plant of His word, becomes sterile and unproductive.

Now let’s look at “good soil,” the stuff we are to cultivate and watch over in our hearts. Good soil not only gladly receives the seed of God’s Word;  as we act on it, that seed begins to flourish, and grow into a healthy plant. The increase in our seed production, is always up to the Lord, our part is to cultivate the soil of our hearts with humility and love. And take the time to prayerfully water and feed these His seeds with tears of repentance, and acts of sacrifice as the healthy plants begin to grow. Now we have seeds that will bear fruit and can be harvested.

As you can see, there are four different results from exactly the same seed. The seed does not change, but how it is received does. Even if we sometimes feel unsure about what we think the Lord is saying – it is our responsibility to watch over His seed and act on it accordingly. What we do with what God tells us daily, matters. How we receive it matters. Preparing our hearts to be open to change and transformation matters. A huge harvest can come from our dedication and our willingness to yield to His Ways, even to the death. Bye.  👋“They triumphed over him (satan) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” Revelation 12:11.

P 2309 Grab a cup of something you like and … enjoy what He is saying to you!

/ DVH

1 Thessalonians 1:3&4 “We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing. Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.”

I figure if my life is difficult day by day, then perhaps your life is too! And then I read the above verses in 1 Thessalonians and the matter was confirmed. I thank God for you and your life laid down for His sake. It is good to read what the Lord has recorded in His book, and kept through the ages for all of us… and now, we need to personalise it! I urge you to read these verses like the Holy Spirit is speaking to you… because… He is! He is using Paul’s words to help each one of us with the hard bits of this life. These verses are a prophetic word of loving encouragement.

I have also included today, something I read recently from The Passion Translation blog called: “I Hear His Whisper.” Hubby passed it on to me. As I read it, I cried and cried. Life can be so very tough, and loving encouragement from our brothers and sisters in Christ is essential, so words like these mean a great deal in difficult times. Meanwhile, personally, physical therapy for a shoulder broken in 3 places can seem endless, plus typing this blog with one hand using my index finger for the past 7 weeks, is painfully SLOW! 😂

This lovely piece below has been written as if the Lord Himself is speaking to us. It is called – 

‘There is Beauty in your Pain.’

“Your pain has become the birthing ground for the beautiful.  In your greatest devastation, your worship has become a fertile, healthy womb.  From the seasons of sorrow now come glorious gifts for you to share.  Nothing has been overlooked.  Now you will see what I will do through you, because of what you endured while you bowed before Me in surrender.  In your place of your pain, I have poured out My beauty.

Heartbreaking tears of surrender have made you beautiful – so very beautiful to Me.  This is the most perfect offering of your yielded heart.  I haven’t forgotten one single prayer.  I have seen every movement of your heart toward Me in your suffering.  For every tear, I give you a seed to sow in someone’s life.  I have taken your sorrow.  I have cleansed your tears with My love.  Now I pour these tears back to you as rain upon dry soil – golden rain of a new season where flowers bloom and the air is clean and fresh.  Breathe deeply, My love.  The season has changed. “

(“I Hear His Whisper” by Brian Simmons and Gretchen Rodriguez.)

You might want to just sit a while and let that sink in, it is worth meditating on. 😶 

Sometimes doing nothing and holding on tight to Who He is, is the best answer of all. In Genesis it tells us that the Lord Himself rested. I think there is a time when it is good for us to hold on to what we know, and just keep hanging on, and let His great Grace carry us. I can remember during my accident, sitting awkwardly at the bottom of our stairs … having just bumped my way all the way down to the bottom,… and marvelling that I had such great peace. If I didn’t move my shoulder about I could almost pretend I was OK…⚡️ … I did say … almost! 😂

So I exhort us all to take the time today to remind ourselves  that Almighty God knows what is going on … even when we don’t. Take the pressure off and just BE …   He knows what He is doing. 👋🏻 

P 2102 What kind of soil are we working with?

/ DVH

Mark 5:4-17 “Those tending the pigs, scared to death, bolted and told their story in town and country. Everyone wanted to see what had happened. They came up to Jesus and saw the madman sitting there wearing decent clothes and making sense, no longer a walking madhouse of a man. Those who had seen it told the others what had happened to the demon-possessed man and the pigs. At first they were in awe—and then they were upset, upset over the drowned pigs. They demanded that Jesus leave and not come back. …”

The people in this story were so ticked off about losing their pigs they sent the Lord Jesus Himself away! Imagine what they missed out on!!?? They could have had a revival on the spot! Isn’t it kind of sad, that the pigs mattered to the townspeople more than the actual person who needed deliverance? If that thought doesn’t convict us about missing the mark somewhere, then nothing will! 

Some times the lessons we need to learn from the Lord are about the way we view this life.It is not what you see, it is the WAY you see it. That frames everything. What that means is this, if whatever is going on, good or bad, is not important to us, then it is dismissed by us, because it won’t improve OUR lives. We end up tolerating or ignoring things, because we’ve rationalised what we believe, to suit our own world-view. Jesus was pretty clear about what His Heavenly Father’s world view was. People. People. People!! He didn’t seem to care much about personal happiness, instead He spent much more time preaching about personal sacrifice, love and faith. When we presume that our own ideas about comfort is all there is in this world – that hardly ever works out well for other people! 

When I think about this time we are living in – practically everything around us is more important than people! Obscure insects, sharks, koalas, plants, aeroplanes, electric cars, the environment, or even the need for a new road or tunnel – to mention a few things  – these things are regarded as being more essential than human beings! We conveniently forget about the people that Jesus died for, even while we are merrily celebrating HIS birthday. We have also forgotten the people who at this moment are being bombed, starved, frozen to death, tormented, ripped from their homes and families, as well as sold into slavery – world-wide. But that’s OK because we are supposed to be comfy in our own little lives! 😱 It’s time to start weeding and getting rid of rocks.

This life has been reduced to its supposed monetary value, and if you have no value, then apparently this world is better off without you. Unfortunately this kind of stuff has come from the sort of selfishness that has been allowed to reign everywhere. Selfishness produces lousy soil. Spiritual stuff will not grow in it. Human selfishness includes: “my own health and comfort, followed by my family, my friends and my job and my house and my car.” And we get quickly incensed if someone even implies we might sort-of-kind-of be selfish. 

SELFLESSNESS is so rare today, that it is reported by and commented on by the media! Like it is some kind of happy accident. We don’t expect people to be the best version of themselves any more.

As Christians we need to pray, read and DO the bible, and deliberately cultivate good soil in our lives so the weeds and rocks won’t choke the life out of God’s Word and His purposes. Those pig owners had terrible priorities… instead of rejoicing that a human being had been utterly restored, they got ticked off because they lost their livelihood. And yet Jesus sent this very man back to preach to the people who were angry about the drowned pigs! Sometimes I think that our view of the Lord’s kingdom is very badly skewed, especially by our own needs and preferences.

The type of ground or soil, in our hearts, is actually formed by our own choices. Listen to the Lord Jesus talk about the results of bad soil: “…some seed fell on stony ground .. some was choked by the cares of this world.” We simply can’t grow good stuff in bad soil. Any place we have not relinquished to the Lord, is a place where the enemy of our souls can stick his big toe on. And the other guy wants domination! The safest place for us to live is in the place of total relinquishment – then me, myself and I, fall off the list of priorities and we live to serve Him and do what He wants.

Our primary passion needs to be the will of God – that will give us good soil for His word to be planted in. 👋🏻