Sowing In Hard Places

Sowing in Hard Places

How many of you have heard a preacher somewhere tell you that you want to sow your seed into good soil so that you can receive a good harvest? Makes sense that we should sow our seed into the best soil possible doesn’t it?

No farmer in his right mind sows seed into bad soil. Why?

Because seed is precious and costly.

Seed is his future, seed is his income, seed is his livelihood. The seed he sows today puts food on his table tomorrow, and provides the income to put gas in his car. Wasting seed is tantamount to ruining your future.

Today in this message I want to show that when it comes to sowing by the way earthly farmers think, God is not in His right mind, because He sows into what we would call bad soil all the time.

I am going to show 3 principles from scriptures that reveal sowing is often difficult to do, and they are:

Principle of Death

Principle of Delay

Principle of Deceit

The overall goal of this message is twofold: To remind you to keep sowing, even when it seems difficult, and fruitless. Secondly to encourage you, that God continues to sow into your life even when you seem difficult and fruitless!

PPT 1 Image of flower growing out of stony ground

Mark 4 tells us that 3 out of 4 times His seed is sown into places where it will fail.

The wayside, stony ground, weeds and thorns.

We would call it bad soil.

Some of His seed fell by the way side where it was trampled down, and then the birds of the air came and ate it. Jesus goes on to explain that is talking about people who have hard hearts towards the gospel, and as soon as they hear the word of God the devil steals it.

I don’t know about you, but I thank God Jesus sows in places that are not very likely to produce good fruits. Because, there was a time that I was a hard soiled hearer, but something happened, a seed somehow got past the devils notice, God planted it deeper and further into my heart than the devil could ever get to, and praise the Lord, now I’m saved!

God doesn’t operate from the only good soil gets seed principle.

PPT 2 Basket of Fragments

God has a principle that is more important than being very careful where seed is sown. It is summed up in this phrase: "...take up the fragments that nothing be lost."

God wants nothing lost. God is not willing than any should perish.

Guess what?, there are still times that God sows seeds into my heart only to reveal that my heart is too stony to receive it.

God don’t freak out if every seed doesn’t take root right away.

BECAUSE SOWING BY ITS VERY NATURE IS ABOUT GETTING WHAT YOU WANT TO HAVE, NOT WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE.

You sow into dirt because you want strawberries. You plant what you expect to harvest, you plant what you are looking to get not what you already have. You sow into empty fields.

Some of you, in like manner, are sowing in hard places, where for the present you are seeing very little results. I want to commend you for that, and I believe God wants to encourage you to keep on sowing.

PPT 3 scripture

Ec 11:6 In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both [shall be] alike good.

I want to talk a little bit about sowing in hard places.

A hard place can be a:

Person

Situation

Location

Season

3 Principles about sowing that reveal it is often hard to do.

1. The Principle of Death

PPT 4 Scripture

Joh 12:24 "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (NAS)

Joh 12:24 "Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never any more than a grain of wheat. But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over. (Message)

The seed disappears and dies before it comes back to life. We have a hard time believing that which is dead can come back to life, yet that miracle is all around us. People are like tulips they can die in the winter and come back in the spring.

The bible says as much in Isaiah 6:13

PPT 5 Scripture

Isa 6:13 And even if some should survive, say a tenth, the devastation will start up again. The country will look like pine and oak forest with every tree cut down; Every tree a stump, a huge field of stumps. But there’s a holy seed in those stumps."