Mark 4:3 “Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed…”
For this parable from Jesus, we know the seed is the Word of God, and the ground is the person. The ground has the potential to be fruitful, but it’s the seed that determines the kind of fruit. If we receive the Word of God, then God’s fruit will be produced in our lives.
We don’t have the power to determine the kind of fruit, the Word (seed) has that power. So, if we let ungodly seeds get planted in us, then those seeds will produce their fruit in our lives. A seed of fear, a seed of lust, a seed of pride, each seed planted in us with the sole purpose of reproducing and multiplying after its kind.
So, what do we do when we’ve allowed an ungodly seed to be planted in us? We pray, as the Word says in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The cleansing is God pulling the weeds, the fruit of the seeds that are not of God, that we allowed and even asked to be planted in us.
He’s the One that can get those weeds and their seeds of sin out of our lives, out of the ground in which they were planted. Of course, some of the ground clings to the roots of those weeds. Sin is not without a loss. We lose something every time we let those weeds grow; the more weeds, the more loss. I’m not speaking metaphorically. Parts of us are lost when those weeds get pulled. Just look at a person that has lived a life of unbridled sin; it’s physically evident.
I wonder the depths of regret I will have when my Lord judges me, and I learn whom God intended me to be but was withheld by my missing parts?
Photo by Marissa Lewis on Unsplash