WATCH TODAY’S EPISODE ON YOUTUBE.
CONSECRATE
Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.
Jesus, I belong to you.
I lift up my heart to you.
I set my mind on you.
I fix my eyes on you.
I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice.
Jesus, we belong to you.
Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.
HEAR
Mark 4:26–29 ESV
And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
CONSIDER
I think about seeds—a lot—and the miracle they are.
Do you remember the last time you looked at a seed? It’s something so common we scarcely pay any attention to it at all. How could something so small hold so much potential?
When Jesus reaches for a way to teach us about the kingdom of God, he reaches for a seed. He could reach for the tree or the fruit that grows on the tree, but instead he chooses the seed to make his point.
Consider a single apple seed. This seed contains all the compounded possibilities of the entire tree. Every branch and leaf and future apple is contained in the one tiny singular seed. Residing in this one seed are all the trees that will come in the future from the seeds produced by this one seed. I once heard this African proverb, “Anyone can tell you how many seeds are in an apple, but only God knows how many apples are in a seed.”
Maybe I’m stating the obvious, and perhaps that’s the point. It’s so easy to miss the mystery because it is obscured by the ordinary. Maybe this is why Jesus is constantly calling forth eyes that see and ears that hear. The truth is shining like a candle on a lampstand yet somehow we can miss seeing it entirely. The kingdom is not meant to be hidden but revealed, yet it takes a certain kind of seeing to perceive it. This is why Jesus teaches in parables.
What could be more humble than a tiny seed, yet what could be more grand than the tallest tree? This is what God’s kingdom is like; on earth yet from heaven. In fact, this is what Jesus is like; full of humanity and full of the Holy Spirit.
“This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.” (NIV)
In that spirit, I wrote this short verse of a poem.
Seed
And shoot,
Leaves and Roots,
Flowers and Fruits,
And Seeds . . .
That is how God’s kingdom grows on earth as it is in heaven—by the seed of his Word—from seed to seeds and more seeds until every field of every life is flourishing with the goodness of God.
But did you notice how the text says we have one job? Scatter the seed. The seed will do everything but plant itself.
PRAY
Lord Jesus, thank you for becoming the Seed, and calling us to be the same. Thank you for sowing our lives like so many seeds. Open my heart and mind to the sheer possibility of what you can do with a single life yielded to your purposes. Make my life a seed sown, filled with your purposes for the glory of your name, Jesus. Amen.
JOURNAL
Have you given much thought to seeds and both their natural and supernatural implications? How are you waking up to the nature of the Word of God as seeds? How are you waking up to the power of your life as a seed in God’s hands? What is in the seed of your life? Ask Jesus to give you vision for it and be ready to freely write what comes in your journal.
SING
Today, we will sing “My Hope Is Built” (hymn 102) from our Seedbed hymnal, Our Great Redeemer’s Praise, with a surprise choir helping us. This is an edition you will want to watch on YouTube if you can.
For the Awakening,
J. D. Walt
John David (J. D.) Walt Jr. is the Sower-in-Chief for Seedbed and the pastor of the Gillett Methodist Church in Gillett, Arkansas.
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3 Responses
Spiritual Seeds Need Living Water
Week after week
Sermons scatter seeds
When preachers quote
From the Bible.
But those seeds won’t grow
In people’s hearts
Without living water
From God’s Spirit
That empowers people
And prompts them to do
What God tells them to.
(John 7:38-39)
Church should be
Something you do
Not just something
You sit through.
Let Christians gather
To listen to
And to do
What God’s Spirit
Tells them to.
(1 Corinthians 14:26)
When Christians are only hearers
Their religion is deceptive
Like a show of smoke and mirrors.
God doesn’t want Sunday sitters
Or mere shallow worship cheerers.
He wants people to be doers.
Do this: Read and actually do
James 1:22-27.
A church service that sets people down to hear the word but doesn’t give them time to do the word is in violation of James 1:22-23 and is helping people to deceive themselves. There is no logical or biblical reason why a church service couldn’t allow people some time to do the word every Sunday morning. But instead of training people to do the word, most church services seem like a religious talk do-over week after week.
I love that song! We sang it in the worship service at New Room. What an experience. I will never forget it, and I have the hymnal. I hope to ask JD, for everyone’s prayers. I am a nobody to most, but a jewel in God’s eyes, and so are all of you. Please pray that the seeds God planted in me and a yearly devotional book that will come out still this year, that it will seed a field full and continue to yield fruit beyond, until we all see Jesus. The book will come out on Amazon, +, “Life Song Journal and Devotional” by Gary Rawlinson. It’s all about God’s Word, life experiences and how He can change lives. Printed and audio versions, not for me but for a God who came to save sinners, the broken and the poor. “See you in the field”
I agree, Steve Simms!