Ok - this one is going to take a minute to answer.
After hearing why the farmer still spread seed on the stony ground, Margaret Feinberg shares where she has stony areas in her heart yet is still seeing some growth. This made me think and also be so grateful that God, our gardener is still striving to plant seeds even in our hardest areas.
So here's the question... where are the hard, stony areas in your life???
When it comes to the ground, it pretty much is going to stay the way God made it. But people can change; I think that is why God plants in our stony areas; He hopes one day--with enough work--that all of our ground will be soft, fertile soil.
ReplyDeleteAs for the stony areas of my life:
those would be the ones where I don't want to hear Him--I don't want to hear Him tell me I need to change. I separate these areas, telling myself they don't have anything to do with God. They are just the weedy fields way in the back, and they are fine the way they are. They are mine; they've always been there; and I'm comfortable leaving things the way they've always been. But God is loving enough not to leave us alone; He wants all our fields to be beautiful and clean and useful, so He pulls the weeds, even when we want to keep them, and He breaks up the big rocks, even when they were hiding things that we wanted to keep hidden.
Most of us, if not all, have stony places in our heart. Places we do not like to admit we have. Places we think are hidden from God and others. Actually, that place is not hidden from God because He keeps planting seeds knowing that some day all His seeds will take root and grow.
ReplyDeleteThat stony place in my heart is trust. I have a difficult time trusting God completely with my problems, such as my family. I feel that I could probably get the job done a little faster, however it would not be better. This untrusting heart carries over to my friends and others. Probably because of the previous events in my life, I have allowed this part of my heart to be filled with rocks.
The Master Gardner, my Lord and Savior, is so kind and patient with me that He keeps sowings seeds of love, telling me to “be still, Ruth, and know that I am God.” One Sunday morning, many years ago, the Lord planted those words of love in my heart. (Psalm 46:10) He is still reminding me, knowing that some day I will actually be still and allow Him to do His perfect work in my life.
My goal is to toss out those rocks so my whole heart will be fertile ground for the Master Gardner to sow His seeds.