God's Word: The Best Seed for Your Heart

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
Proverbs 4:23
Ever heard of the famous saying "Junk in, junk out"?
It puts into perspective the connection between input and output.
Good output depends on good input like a good meal needs good ingredients. However, as many good cooks will know (I am not part of this anointed group of people yet), good ingredients must be prepared well to produce a great meal.
Good input needs good processing to produce good output.
Your heart processes all the input that comes into your life.
That's why it matters to keep or guard our hearts with all diligence. We cannot allow everything and anything to go inside them, especially as followers of Jesus Christ.
In Philippians 4:8, Paul outlines the things believers in the Church at Philippi have to meditate upon in their hearts. These things include what they learned, received, heard and saw in him, which he encouraged them to do, promising the God of peace would be with them.
He told them to focus on truth, on pure, praiseworthy and lovely things of good report. Paul understood that this high-quality input would enable them to produce high-quality output in their lives.
Talking about pure input, the Word of God is pure.
In fact, in the book of Psalms, God's words are described as pure as silver, tried in a furnace and purified seven times (Ps 12:6). God's word is not only pure, but it is wholesome. It embodies everything Paul described in Philippians 4:8 and more. God's word is the Bread of Life and the Sword of the Spirit. It is also characterised by Jesus in the parable of the sower as a seed (Mark 4: 14-20).
Our hearts are the soil where God's Word can grow and produce fruit.
Yes. Your heart is like soil to seed.
When you hear or study God's word and receive it, it gets planted into your life, and from there, it germinates, sprouts out, matures and produces fruit. How awesome is that?
See why we have to keep our hearts with all diligence?
We must do so because the state of our heart can affect whether or not God's word produces fruit in our lives.

In the parable of the sower (Mark 4: 3-20), Jesus illustrated four heart conditions through the images of different types of soil:
The wayside.
The stony ground/soil.
The thorny ground/soil.
The good ground/soil.
The last type of soil, the good ground, is what we want our hearts to be like each time we encounter God's word. Here, we hear God's word, accept/receive it and bear its fruit (through obeying what it says and applying it practically in our lives).
We want the word to gain access into our hearts and to be retained (unlike the wayside). We want it to be established and rooted in our being when we receive it with joy (unlike the stony ground). We want it not to be choked out and made unfruitful by the anxieties of our everyday lives and the distractions our wealth or opportunities in life present us. That's a tall order, but there's good news.
God is willing, able, and available to renew our hearts so they can be fruitful in Him.
Then I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within them, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep My judgements and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God. (Ez 11:19)
In Ezekiel 11: 19, God promises to give His people new hearts of flesh that enable them to walk in His ways, keep His judgements and act on them. Hint, hint: sounds a lot like how the good soil/ground heart works.
This promise is every believer's heritage. We, however, need to be willing to ask our loving Father to renew and prepare our hearts to receive His word.
We have to ask Him to teach us how to keep our hearts in a manner that allows His word to sink in, germinate and produce the character, behaviour and actions that proclaim His loving and transformative presence in our lives.
Incredibly, these requests are not too big for our God. He wants us to draw closer to Him through His Word and loves it when we express our desire to see His Word bear fruit in our lives. So today, let's bring our hearts to Him and trust that He can make them fertile soil for His Word.
Scripture Reading:
The Parable of the Sower
1Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water’s edge. 2He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said: 3“Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed.4As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.5Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow.6But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.7Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain.8Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”
9Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”
10When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. 11He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables12so that,
“ ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving,
and ever hearing but never understanding;
otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!’ ”
13Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?14The farmer sows the word.15Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them.16Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy.17But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.18Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word;19but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.20Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”
Prayer
Father, thank You for Your Word. I thank You that it is Your provision for me to live life more abundantly and be fruitful in my knowledge of You. Please make my heart good soil for your word every day. Help me focus my heart's meditation on what You say in Your Word and what you do through Your Word and Your Spirit within the Church, my community, my family and my life. I thank you that every time I receive your word, it transforms how I see the world and think about life. Let your word continue to make me more like You. In Jesus's Name, I pray, Amen.
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