Only in Dying Can We Live.

Remember the parable of the sower?

I remember hearing it for years and thinking, “ Well, I am a believer so I must have good soil in my heart.” That immediately ended anything good I could glean from hearing the Word and applying it to my heart.

Beloved, as long as we are living it’s a good time to submit our hearts to a close inspection by the Holy Spirit. If we let Him, He will do a constant work in our hearts..
Don’t we want that? Don’t we want his Spirit to turn the soil of our hearts so that it is soft and ready for any seed He wants to plant in it. We say, “break our hearts for what breaks yours Lord,” but it begins with submitting to the Spirit breaking up the soil of our hearts.
I found myself in that place again recently. I may not have known that the soil of my heart needed turning but I knew I needed more of Jesus in so many circumstances. As I was working through a Bible study, I came to a place where I was supposed to pray and ask the Lord to prepare the soil of my heart.

I was surprised at the request that immediately flowed from it.The cry of my heart was, “ Father God, please use the dead things to nourish the soil of my heart!” I didn’t even know where that came from. But it was the cry that surfaced when he began tilling my heart.

We don’t value dead things much do we? Death is a part of life. For a crop to even grow and produce food, first a seed must die.

John 12:24 says it this way, “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” 

As believers, We know when a loved one dies, we will grieve for our loss but also rejoice for their gain!

Why then do we grieve when we lose other things?

We grieve at the loss of jobs, friendships, opportunities, and titles. I am not minimizing the loss of these things for I too have experienced the pain of them. But beloved if this is true;

 If we serve a God who can and does use the death of things to nourish the soil of our hearts and,I believe we do, then rather than dwelling and even setting up camp in the the grief,

or denying it, in hopes that eventually the sting will fade,

perhaps what will help is a shift in our perspective.

A bit of “lifting up our eyes,” just beyond the loss to the new life we know is coming!

It’s a bit of hoping.

As we have traveled this “grieving with hope” journey, I am realizing a few things. One, our hope is not in our circumstances but rather in our God. The God who brings life from death. Also, this journey is not an either or thing. You don’t grieve or rejoice. You do both and you do them in motion. What I mean by that is, the very act of “lifting up our eyes” in hope is, us taking a step of faith into the lives that God still has for us. It’s trusting that though we may have lost a job, a relationship, a title or a loved one, God is already in the act of bringing life from that.

In a forest when the leaves die and gently float to the forest floor or when a limb breaks off in a storm and crashes to the earth,there is no one there to pick it up and lay it by the street to be picked up.

No, it simply lies where it fell acting as a blanket for the new life that lies beneath it. Eventually it decays and pours nutrients into the soil that will bring forth a new and healthy plant. God is doing that in our hearts. Some way some how he takes the very things that we feel are the end and makes them into beginnings. Hope beloved. Lift up your eyes and hope!
What does God want to bring forth in you? Know this, it will be good and He can be trusted. There is no safer place to submit the soil of your heart than into His presence.

“Glory be to God, who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us”. Eph. 3:20

“For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” Jeremiah 29:11

* The Bible study referred to is “Flourishing Together” by fellow Hope Writer, Dorina Gilmore-Young, available on Amazon.