Tag Archives: word of God

Managing Your Soil – (The Parable of the Sower Part 3)

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I’m a big lawn guy.  I love a good looking yard and I work probably too hard to have one.  There are a lot of keys to a good lawn and I’ll come back to this analogy at another time.  But today I want to talk about preparing the soil for seeding.

If you want to have a good lawn you have to prepare the soil.  If you just throw seed on top of the bare spots nothing will happen.  You can water it and everything else, but it won’t matter much.  What you need to do is till up the soil.  Get at least three inches deep.  You need to get rid of anything else growing there as well as any sort of rocks or debris.  Then you rake it smooth and if you’re really into it, which I am, then you get a roller and roll it smooth.  Then and only then do you drop some seed, spread evenly of course.  Then you gently rake it in to the loose top soil.  Then I typically throw some straw on top of it to protect it from erosion and getting washed out.  Finally you water it . . . . for a while.  You have to keep it moist until it grows.  This is to say nothing of the maintenance of the yard to keep out weeds and encourage deep rooting.  It’s a continual process.

The same is true of our hearts when it comes to the soil we become for the word of God.

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How Long Until You Know Which Soil You Are? (Parable of The Sower Part 1)

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In Luke 8:4 Jesus shares the parable of the sower.  Jesus tells of how a farmer spreads seed.  Some falls on beside the road and is trampled or stolen by birds.  Some falls on rocky soil and grows quickly, but withers quickly because it has no root.  Some falls in the soil where there are thorns and grows well until a certain point and then it is choked out.  Other seed fell on good soil and grew and produced much fruit.

Jesus later explains this to the disciples.  He says that the sower is God and the seed is the word of God.  Those on the side of the road are those who have heard the word but devil comes and steals it from their heart so that they can’t be saved.  Those on the rocky soil are those who receive the word with joy, but then, because they have no root, when tempted fall away.  Those who are among the thorns are those who receive the word and grow but are choked out by the worries, riches, and pleasures of this life and don’t produce fruit.  The final group are those who receive the word with an honest and good heart, hold fast and produce much fruit through perseverance.

This is a tough parable for a lot of reasons.  First, it appears that only 25% of people end up producing fruit.  Although to be fair, it doesn’t say anything about percentages.  Heck 90% of the seed could have fallen on any one of the soils.  But as someone who has tried to spread the word to people for over two decades, it sure does seem like 25% of people being the good soil seems about right.

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Sufficiency Of The Bible And Dating

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One of the things we are taught in Christian culture or at least the evangelical/protestant version of it, is that in every area of life we should ask what does the bible say about it?  In other words if I have a question in a certain context, I can look to the bible to find the answer to that question.  This is because not only is the bible inspired, inerrant, and authoritative, it is also sufficient.

This is supposed to work on all moral issues obviously, but the idea here is that it also works for everything else.  The bible is the “road map” that we are to follow. It is God’s instruction to us.  In it is everything we need.  Some will go so far to say that not only is a way to hear God’s voice, but it is the only way.

Now this works pretty well on a lot of moral issues.  It can even work when you think about how we as people are supposed to treat each other.  However, we can sort of start to run into some problems in certain contexts of life.

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