I’m not a farmer, but I do know that it takes a lot of hard work to get a crop to grow. Every farmer needs to prepare the soil so that the seed will grow deep roots and the crop will produce fruit. A seed will not grow in hard soil. That soil needs to be softened for the seed to grow. It’s the same with us. We are meant to bear fruit… not just a little fruit, but big and juicy fruit.
Jesus says the same thing in His parable of the Sower and the Seed. He mentions several different kinds of soil, but the only soil that will produce a crop is the one that is fertile: “And the seed that fell on good soil represents those who hear and accept God’s Word and produce a harvest of thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times as much as had been planted” (Mark 4:20). Our verse today identifies that soil… our hearts. We are farmers and we need to prepare our hearts to receive God’s Word.
Yet many of us have not done that. We keep coming with the same old hearts as before. Hearts that have walls built up, hearts full of stuff we haven’t gotten rid of… like things in our past, hurts, wound, unforgiveness, bitterness, unconfessed sin, mistakes, failures. Hearts that are full of stuff haven’t made room for God’s Word. That’s why Jesus said that our hearts need to be ready, prepared to receive His Word. As farmers, we need to work at preparing our hearts.
Maybe we should start each day as a brand-new day… yesterday behind us and today before us. Maybe we should ask the Lord what things are in our hearts that are in the way of us hearing what the Lord is saying. Maybe we should start each day by saying, “Lord, I want to hear You. I want to receive the Word. So, please cleanse my heart out.” Let’s not be like so many others who say the right things, go to church, call themselves Christians, but their hearts are far from the Lord. Let’s get our hearts right so that we can bear incredible fruit… fruit that will last.