Liz, my wife, has a greenhouse. She plants seeds in April with the hope that the seeds will germinate into seedlings and seedlings into plants that bear fruit. But seeds remain dormant until conditions are favorable for germination. All seeds need water, oxygen, minerals, and optimal temperatures to grow. The soil is the key.
Last year Liz learned of some new ways to amend her soil. The results were amazing, bordering on miraculous. After amending the soil, her plants exploded with new growth and new production.
A seed, any seed, needs good soil. And with the right soil, the DNA of that seed can germinate and grow into a seedling and a fruit bearing plant. According to Jesus, the seed of the Word of God is planted into the soil of our heart. And according to the health of the soil, the seed either grows or dies out.
The Soils of the Heart
In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus tells us that “the seed is the word of God” (Luke 8:11). He explains that there are four kinds of soil and four kinds of hearts. For my purposes I will call them the soils of the heart.
In the first soil of the heart, the seed falls upon someone who hears the word of God but immediately Satan comes and takes it away. Another seed falls upon the rock, and this person receives it with joy, but finding no root, the seed dies.
In my experience as a missionary, pastor, and counselor the third soil is the most prevalent in America. These are people who have heard, “go out and are choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity” (Luke 8:14).
Now Jesus comes to the “good ground” of the heart. Jesus explains, “But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the Word, accept it, and bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred” (Mark 4:20).
The Seed has Activating Power!
The Word of God—the Bible—has the power to activate the DNA life of Christ within you. When the Word of God is daily planted in the good ground of your heart, it naturally germinates and grows. It’s just what Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself” (Mark 4:26-27). In other words, the seed of the Word of God only needs to be planted in good ground (a good heart), and by its very nature, it will activate the DNA of God into one’s life!
You might say, I have trouble loving people, I’m an angry person, I can’t stop lying, etc. Those are to be expected in our natural way as a human being. But with Christ in our life we have been given a new spirit, a new life. We have the seed, literally the spora (Greek) of God living within us: “having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever” (1 Peter 1:23). The seed of God’s DNA has been planted in your heart the day you surrendered to Christ. You were born again into new life and the DNA of God lives within you.
So, let me challenge you to build up and amend the soil of your heart by daily reading God’s Word and believing it. Don’t just read it. Believe what it says. If so, you will experience the supernatural germination of God’s DNA into your life. Where there was hatred, God will produce love. Where there was lust, God will produce purity. Where there was a lying spirit, God will produce a truthful spirit.
It’s as you read, study, meditate, and believe God’s Word that the seed of the Kingdom of God grows. Some thirty times, some sixty times, some one hundred times greater than you could naturally produce!
Pastor Steve
