Spiritual Soil Samples

All of the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: "Amen!  Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever.  Amen!"  --Revelation 7: 11-12

Where to start?  I have much to share, dear friends, and do not want my words to get in the way of my meaning.  I, like the angels in the above passage, want to fulfill what Jesus said was the first and greatest commandment, to wit: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  Why?  Because Praise belongs to God forever; Glory belongs to God forever; Wisdom belongs to God forever; as do Thanks and Honor and Power and Strength.  All seven belong to Him.

It is Wisdom and the Mind that I want to focus on here.  The Bible says that wisdom belongs to God.  So how can we give Him wisdom?  By focusing our mind solely and completely on Him.  By meditating on His Word.  By defending Him in the court of public opinion.  I think we are all called to be Christian apologists, defending the Gospel at every opportunity.  So why don't we?  The answer, I think, can be found in the Parable of the Sower.

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, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times. --Mark 4:3-8

Jesus went on to explain the parable.

The farmer sows the Word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown.  As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them.  Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy.  But since they have no root, they last only a short time.  When trouble or persecution comes because of the Word, they quickly fall away.  Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the Word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desire for other things come in and choke the Word, making it unfruitful.  Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop--thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times what was sown. --Mark 4:14-20

 Growing up in an evangelical church, this parable was always associated in sermons about evangelism.  You want to sow the seed, the Word of God, and some will accept it, others will reject it, but you still sow the seed because you never know who is ready for salvation.  But I think it is more than the word of Salvation.  We live in a time where there is more access to the gospel than at any time in history.  In the United States, as in most industrialized countries in the world, there is almost universal literacy.  People can read it for themselves.  Not only that, but every media platform, from television to Twitter, has people proclaiming the gospel.  You almost have to stick your head in the sand to keep from hearing it.

So the point of the parable is not necessarily the sower, but the condition of the soil.  I don't know about you, but I want to be productive in my Christian walk.  I want to bear good fruit.  In order to do that, I must prepare my mind.

The Path
Every gardener knows that hard-packed soil is difficult to plant in.  As people and animals trample along the path, they push the soil down so that it becomes dense.  Anything that lands on it will sit on top of the soil, not be absorbed into it.  It will sit there until it dies, or until it is washed away or carried off.  It could become trampled underfoot.  None of these situations is a good thing for the Word of God.

So if I want to absorb the Word of God into my life, I need to do some preparation.  I might want to aerate the soil, plow it up so that it is loose, and not so dense.  That way it can absorb water and nutrients after it receives the seed.  I don't want to be so hard-headed, so rigid in my thinking, that nothing can penetrate my thoughts.  The plow may not be pleasant at the time, but without it the Word of God will just bounce off, and be swept away.

I might also want to divert the path around my thoughts.  I wouldn't want to have people continually trampling through.  Their boots may make lasting impressions, but the upshot of it is that either the soil will need to be re-sifted, or the seed will not take root.  So not only do I want to prepare the soil, but I also want to build a hedge or a fence around my mind.  I can decide who and what I let in, and everyone else can be shut out.  I want to let the Sower in, the one who brings the Words of Life.  I want to leave the Philosopher out, as he will sit in my garden and pack the soil down with the seat of his pants.  I want to feed the soil with the Scriptures, and water it daily with prayer.

The Rocks
We all have a world view, a series of truths we hold to be self-evident.  The foundation of your thinking might be science, or logic, or laws.  These hard and fast rules of our life are like stones in our mind.  Some may be just on the surface, like stepping stones.  Others may be deeply held beliefs, difficult to dig around.  So when the Word of God appears like a seed in our minds, the roots compete with the rocks for space in the soil.  The rocks are hard.  The roots are tender.  Guess which one wins?

The thing is, rocks don't produce fruit.  If you want to be fruitful, especially in your spiritual life, you might have to gather up the stones and throw them out.  You might have to dig deep, and loosen the deeply held beliefs that stand in the way of your receiving the Word.  The stone may be heavy, and it may be difficult to remove.  So you have to decide--does it stay or does it go?

What do I mean?  Well, if your world view centers on the principles of evolution following the Big Bang, then that doesn't leave much room for the concept of Creation, does it?  If God did not create the world in six days, then Jesus' prayer in John 17:24 kind of rings hollow: "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world." (Logically, if there is no creation, then there is no glory, no heaven, no power of the Father, and Jesus is a liar.  Think about it.)  If there was no creative act by God, then marriage isn't meant to last forever, because Jesus made this analogy: "Haven't you read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh"?  So they are no longer two, but one.  Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." (Matthew 19:4-6).  See, the world does not hold to the scriptural world view, thinking that man is a random gathering of cells and matter, and therefore lasting relationships don't matter--the only thing that makes a heterosexual relationship important is procreation, and then you can go on your way. Does that sound like a fruitful way to live?

If your world view is founded on logic, then the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ does not fit into your rock garden, because that just could not happen in real life.  But if you want to be spiritually minded, and fruitful in your Christian walk, you might need to dig up the logic stone and throw it away.  "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God." (1Corinthians 1:18).  Why, even the laws of mathematics are subject to him.  Where else but the Bible do you learn that you can live more fruitfully with 90% of your income if you are faithful with a tithe than you can be with 100% of your income without being faithful?  I don't mean to say that when you accept Christ your intellect goes out the window.  I'm only pointing out that truth, when viewed through the prism of faith, takes on a different hue.  So called "white light" can be separated into different colors and the various wavelengths explored.  So, too, is the prism of faith used to open up a whole new world of knowledge and wonder to us, if we are willing to keep an open mind.

The Thorns
Many of us accept the Word of God, and let it grow in our lives.  But because of worries about "what will people think" or "this is just not politically correct", the Word does not bear fruit in our lives.  Fear strangles the Word, and makes it unproductive.  And what good is the Word if it does not produce fruit?  Some of us have it for "fire insurance" to keep us out of hell, and it is as ineffective as a pot-holder in a drawer by the stove.  No one can see it; it's only important if you handle something hot; and it is hidden away 99% of the time.  Pot holders do not bear fruit.

I read an essay about novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson.  She is quoted as saying:

I hate to say it, but I think a default posture of human beings is fear.  What it comes down to--and I think this has become prominent in our culture recently--is that fear is an excuse. "I would like to have done something, but of course I couldn't." Fear is so opportunistic that people can call on it under the slightest provocations.  "He looked at me funny."  Fear has, in this moment, a respectability I have never seen in my life.

She goes on to say:

One of the things that bothers me is that there are prohibitions of an unarticulated kind, that are culturally felt, that prevent people from actually saying what they think.  If you're Jewish or Catholic, you can make all the jokes about your mother or the nun, but in terms of saying on one's deathbed, "what will it mean to me that this is how I would have described myself, how does the cosmos feel as it nestles in my particular breast?"--they are completely inarticulate about that.

So the fears of the world, both spoken and unspoken, keep most people from speaking out about their faith, from being fruitful in the Word. 2 Timothy 1:7 says, "For God did not give us a spirit of timidity (of cowardice, of craven and cringing and fawning fear), but [He has given us a spirit] of power and of love and of calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self control." (Amplified Bible)  These things overlap what is known as the fruit of the Spirit--love, discipline and self control. (See Galatians 5:22-23).  We don't share our faith, because we don't want folks to look at us funny.  We don't bear fruit as God intended, because we hide our light under a bushel.


So, friends, prepare your minds for the Words of Life.  Plow up the fallow ground so that you can receive the Word and absorb it.  Gather and remove the stones and stumps that trip up your Christian walk, and that prohibit the Word from taking root.  Weed out the thorn bushes that would choke your message, and keep the Word from producing fruit in you.  Only then will you be like the good soil; only then will the Word of God be fruitful in your life.  Give God praise, and glory, and the wisdom that is His, even though it may be folly to the world.