Last week my husband and I were cleaning a house of one of our clients that we happen to know fairly well. He is a very nice man, but has questioned our decision to be Christ Followers, and let us know that "No-one believes that stuff any more, it's just a waste of time." We continue to love on him and be examples to him of Christ's love.
As we were cleaning, my husband was doing an extra good job dusting some shelves and he was pulling books and things out and dusting behind them, when he pulled out a Bible. He called me in the room to show it to me, since we both know this man's opinion of "such things". I said, "Wow! I never expected to see one of those here." My husband opened it and a church bulletin fell out that was dated February 1994. "That was a while ago!" he said to me. Then he flipped to the back of the Bible and there was a pack of tomato seeds sitting between some pages. I thought to myself, "Now that's weird!"
As I went back to work God began speaking to me about that pack of seeds. They have been, as far as we could tell, sitting in that Bible for the past 15+ years. Then He said to me, "As long as those seeds remain un-planted, they will never produce the fruit they are created to produce. But the minute they are set in soil, and watered, they will sprout and grow and produce many, many more tomatoes, and many more seeds as well."
You see, as long as the seed remains unplanted, it will remain dormant and unproductive. Much like that Bible that sat on the back of that dusty shelf. The seeds in that packet had the ability to produce a crop of tomatoes and seeds, which would produce even more tomatoes and seeds, and so on! The Word of God is a seed! Jesus explained that to us in Matthew 13. But unless it is planted and watered, it will not produce what it is created to produce. Not in your life, and not in my life. The Word needs to be read, meditated on and studied. That is the planting and watering process. When we do that, we will begin to see an abundance of fruit produced in our lives, not only for our own benefit, but also to feed others. We can own as many Bibles as we want, in as many translations as we want. We can lay them all over our house, in our car, on our desk at work, and look like we have it all going on. But in reality, if we are not IN the Word, and allowing it to take root in the soil of our hearts, what we have is like that packet of tomato seeds sitting in that Bible for 15 years. Just a packet full of seeds not producing anything.
In all this that God was showing me about the seeds, He also showed me that some of those seeds are carefully handed to us. Placed right in the palm of our hands by our Pastors and teachers week in and week out. What do we do with those seeds that are handed to us? We can hold it in our hand and admire it. We can tell all of our friends what a great seed it is. But untill we allow that seed to be planted in our heart, and watered by meditating on it and studying it out further, it will not produce anything in our lives, and thus we won't have the seeds to hand to others when they need a seed from us. Instead, we stick the seed in our pocket, and a few weeks later we are in our Pastor's office getting counsel over an issue in our life that would be resolved already if we would have sown the seed that was handed to us and watered it.
I want to issue a challenge today. SOW THE SEEDS! Get them deep into the soil of your heart, and water them daily. I guarantee we will look more like the Church God meant for us to look like, and when someone comes along with a need for a particular seed in their life, you will have produced more than enough to meet their need!
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