Fruitful Christian Living

I must admit, that while I’ve read this little section of Scripture many times, I have usually read over it pretty quickly, not taking the time to understand it’s meaning. Here’s a man sowing some seed, and the next involvement he has with it, is when he comes to harvest it. Now, we understand that there are things that we can do to enhance the health of a growing plant, thereby setting up an environment for it to bring forth a greater yield, but the important point here, is that the real miracle of a seed going through its process and bringing forth a crop, is something that God does.

I read, the other day, that as advanced as we have become in our understanding of how things work, we really still don’t understand the miracle of the seed. We can analyze a seed and label all of its parts, but when we try and reproduce it from man-made stuff, it will look and taste like a seed, but it will not germinate and grow. Even in such things as cloning, which is somewhat unsettling to even think about, scientists have to begin with some parts that God made; in other words, they have to get God’s seed.

Jesus said that we, as His disciples, are to bear fruit. God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, replenish the earth, and subdue it. The fruitful, the multiplying, and the other things are not all the same thing; in other words, it means more than just go have lots of babies. That’s what the multiply meant, but the fruitful meant that they were to accomplish the will of God in their lives, and that’s what Jesus meant when He said that we are to bear fruit. Now, bearing fruit is not the process, but the end result. It is the characteristics that flow out of our lives, as detailed in Galatians 5:22-23, and it is other people coming to Christ, as a result of their inter-action with us.

With that said, let’s look again at the text:

Seeds must be sown

It doesn’t matter how good your ground is, it doesn’t matter how much you might water, weed, and fertilize it, if you don’t put down the seed, it’s not going to happen. Not only that, it doesn’t matter how good your seed is, if it’s not put to the ground, it’s not going to happen.

The context of this chapter is that the word of God is a powerful seed, and that the human heart is the ground into which it must be planted. Having a Bible in your hand is not enough. Even memorizing Bible verses and passages is not enough. The devil can quote scripture better than you can! In order for the seed of the word of God to release its power and bring forth its miracle of fruit-bearing in your life, it has to get to your heart, because that’s where the ground is. By the way, there may be a real significance in the fact that God created man from the dust of the earth (made him out of dirt,) in that He was making him to be ground for His precious seed, His word.

As important as prayer is, it is not as important as sowing God’s word into your heart. Prayer is like adding water and fertilizer to the ground of your heart, it will certainly create a more favorable environment for the seed to produce more bountiful fruit, but without the seed of the word, there’s nothing to bring forth. That may sound like a radical statement to you, but it’s true. To get a crop, you have to sow some seed.

Time must elapse

In the natural realm, we pretty much know how much time has to elapse for the seed to bring forth its fruit. A farmer, or gardener, knows when he sows his seed, the approximate time that he will need to be there to harvest the crop. There is a time that must elapse between the time of sowing and reaping. That’s why we are told in Galatians 6:9, “And grow not weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” In other words, we are not to get discouraged, or give up, if the crop doesn’t immediately come forth. Everything in life works under the principle of seed, time, and harvest. That’s the way the population grows: a seed is planted, nine months of time goes by, the harvest, or the birth of the baby takes place.

The elapsed time is more difficult to define, when it comes to sowing the seed of the word of God. There are times when God immediately brings forth a harvest. I have sowed the seed of God’s word in prayer, for instance, and have seen immediate harvest of results. On the other hand, I have seen time go by, while I waited for the harvest of results. In retrospect, I realize that in almost every instance where I had to wait, when the harvest came, I was able to understand why the waiting was necessary.