God told the earth to bring forth all types of trees and plants, and Jesus said that we put a seed into the ground and don’t think about it, and it’s not for us to know what processes make a corn seed turn into a corn plant with the stalk and leaves and cobs. Woman’s womb receives a seed and through certain processes — including mother’s dedication and energy and food and care — a baby grows and then is born and is separated from its mother, and later will bring her own children into the world.
Our heart is a type of soil (Jesus calls it so). Our heart can receive a word or an idea, and by giving the idea time and energy and thought and dedication, our heart will grow the idea into a business, a ministry, a lifestyle, a marvelous scientific achievement, all of which can change lives of many people. God, give us mercy so we don’t grow things that will bring destruction to self or others.
God said that He has prepared certain works or tasks for people who are saved to perform, and He prepared them ahead of time (Ephesians 2:10). It appears that the work or the task will come to us in a form of a seed-idea or seed-thought (sometimes its a light idea, sometimes its a heavy burden for some peoples or an aspect of life) and we need to have a heart that is open and is able to receive the seed, a heart that has the time and energy and dedication to grow the seed, the idea. But if we are busy growing something else, we will not have the capacity to grow God-sent seed. Or if there is something already growing in the soil of our heart, and it will choke the seed that God is attempting to plant (remember the parable of the sower).
It appears that the year 2020 was a time of sowing (and it continues into 2021). God has been and still is sowing generously during this hard time into hears of our nation and all over the world. But there is a multitude of things that have been sown by the enemy during this time too and those things have the potential to choke all God’s seeds. I don’t want to sound dramatic and use such a word as Beware!, but I must! Beware!
You probably already know the things that are growing in your heart and have the potential to choke our God’s seeds, but here are a few examples to help you examine your heart.
~ stock trading, it is so very popular now and it consumes the mind like nothing else.
~ growing your reach on social media. and though you may think you have the best motives, usually it is done simply to find approval for the life you live
~ engaging in marginally Christian money-making (selling reviews on Amazon for free stuff, promoting things you don’t care for and don’t even like, buying and selling things in a win-lose fashion, having to do with items where you would prefer not to know their origin, etc)
~ playing games and using apps that simply suck you in and you live something that is designed and programmed to stimulate the right parts of you to keep you there forever, but it kills your time and kills your potential
~ politics and theories that never end and especially ones so very disconnected from reality, but they are so tasty and so interesting
~ theories and research within Christianity about end times and symbolism and history and other things that are far from Christianity and Godly things; people actually think that they are doing a Christian thing and a service to society by researching and spreading these things, but there is no God in it (I’m not attacking true God’s work, but check your motives and sources and outcome!)
The list probably goes on and there are many other things that I cannot think of or have no experience with, but you can find it in excessive work, cheating people, sexual fantasies and pornography, endless ideas that never amount to anything, discussions about nothing, music and music videos, tv series and movies, art and theatre with no boundaries, phantasy books, scary things…
I call you to clean up your mind and heart. Any of the things mentioned above or any other things that God showed you during reading this letter to your heart — drop them; ask God to help you drop them. Just recently I prayed and was asking God to ‘let His will win in my life, and not an addiction I had’, because I knew I was too weak to leave something that was growing in the garden of my heart. And God, being faithful and able, had done it.
Not everything is bad for us, but nothing should ever master (control) us.
I would add that God told us to love Him with all our heart, all our mind, and all our soul. And he said to love our neighbor as ourselves. It seems like He is asking us to surrender everything to Him and even give our body to the service of other people (the practical steps for that are found on your knees one-on-one with God, and in daily dying to self and looking how to serve others).
Read and think on His Word, His laws, His ideas, His plans — such lifestyle will lead you to a clean heart and a renewed mind and your heart will be ready to receive the seed of God’s plan and work that He wants you to complete. And you will be happy and satisfied doing so!
I really really like this; the scandal with Ravi actually really helped me understand this. It felt like the Holy Spirit was asking me to examine myself and thoroughly look through my life and especially the thoughts I’ve allowed to slip by because “they’re not that bad”….yet! But this also brings a good point that it not only could choke out the words of God, but also doesn’t really allow for those good roots to grow, since you can’t serve two masters. There have been some things in my life I have had to give up, which I never even thought were possible for me and yet because the same power that lives in me that resurrected Christ from the dead (Romans 8:11), its possible to actually live like you were saying and to actually examine ones heart because, He wants to show us and will! Anyways, it’s good stuff, thank you:).