{"id":8852,"date":"2012-03-11T20:45:23","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T01:45:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/?p=8852"},"modified":"2012-06-14T19:21:26","modified_gmt":"2012-06-15T00:21:26","slug":"sowing-seed-seeing-fruit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/11\/sowing-seed-seeing-fruit\/","title":{"rendered":"Sowing Seed, Seeing Fruit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/11\/sowing-seed-seeing-fruit\/sower\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8853\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-8853\" title=\"sower\" src=\"http:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/sower.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"201\" srcset=\"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/sower.jpg 400w, https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/sower-300x150.jpg 300w, https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/sower-280x140.jpg 280w, https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/sower-90x45.jpg 90w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a>There is an interesting parable that Jesus told about a farmer and his field. It was really a story about the word of God and our lives. Here&#8217;s the story explained to the disciples,<\/p>\n<p>Mark 4:13\u00a0Then Jesus said to them,\u00a0\u201cDon\u2019t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?\u00a0The farmer sows the word.\u00a0Some 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.\u00a0\u00a0Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy.\u00a0But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.\u00a0Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word;\u00a0but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.\u00a0Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop\u2014some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Any farmer worth his pay will know that if you don&#8217;t put seed in the ground you will never see a harvest. Somehow, in our day, many Christians I meet don&#8217;t believe this is true. They have the strange idea that somehow God should just make fruit grow in their lives without any attempt on their part to, 1. put some seed in the ground or, 2. to be a field that can grow something.<\/p>\n<p>The story Jesus told speaks to an interesting reality- it&#8217;s easy to get distracted and end up without any fruit in your life. There&#8217;s a lot that catches a life and makes it unproductive. If you know that you will realize how important this sowing seed thing really is.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s another thing to note- all this soil, these different kinds of soil, are all in the same field&#8230;.in the same life. I have times when nothing grows and other times and places in my life that are wonderfully fruitful. It&#8217;s all part of a life lived with distractions. A life lived in a fallen world.<\/p>\n<p>But the key for me is this- I have to throw some seed in my field! If I don&#8217;t do that then nothing can grow. In other words I have to get into God&#8217;s word and read it! If I don&#8217;t put his word in my mind, in my heart then the world will put it&#8217;s seeds there. My life is like that field, ready to grow whatever I throw on the soil. It doesn&#8217;t care what kind of seed it is, it&#8217;s job is to produce fruit. And so, each life will see a harvest. Some rich with produce and other lives full of thorns and loss.<\/p>\n<p>The key for me is this- that I get God&#8217;s word into my life, my field. If I do that then God can make something grow&#8230;.there&#8217;s a harvest coming. There will be a harvest IF I plant good seed.<\/p>\n<p>Visit Mike at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/mikemesserli.blogspot.com\" target=\"_blank\">Finishing Well<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is an interesting parable that Jesus told about a farmer and his field. It was really a story about the word of God and our lives. Here&#8217;s the story explained to the disciples, Mark 4:13\u00a0Then Jesus said to them,\u00a0\u201cDon\u2019t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?\u00a0The farmer sows the word.\u00a0Some &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/11\/sowing-seed-seeing-fruit\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read more<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Sowing Seed, Seeing Fruit&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8853,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,25],"tags":[72,3996,1492,3992,66,3999,3994,3997,44,3993,1555,1428,3998,3995,201,684,3573,1209,119,69],"class_list":["post-8852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archived","category-mike","tag-christians","tag-deceitfulness","tag-desires","tag-different-kinds-of-soil","tag-disciples","tag-distractions","tag-good-soil","tag-hundred-times","tag-jesus","tag-kinds-of-soil","tag-parable","tag-people","tag-persecution","tag-rocky-places","tag-satan","tag-short-time","tag-strange-idea","tag-thorns","tag-word-of-god","tag-worries"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianrep.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}