Ears Ready for Planting

 Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop - thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times what was sown. (Mark 4:20)

There are people you pour your life into and they just take and take and produce nothing. This does not stop us from continuing to fill that hole. Sometimes it is out of love. Sometimes it is out of habit. Sometimes it is merely a willfulness to make someone else into what we want.

The parable of the sower and the seed talks about such relationships. There are relationships like black holes, their are fair-weather friends, there are people who love beginnings, but have no interest in enduring to the end. But then there are some people who seem ready to hear and respond and grow. Here, the seed easily received by these people is a word from God. The smallest encouragement draws such people into deep feeling and great deeds. They do not seem to have been inoculated against Jesus and his words, but drink them like water in a desert.

Receptivity needs two wings to fly. One wing is knowing good news when we hear it. The offer to place the control of our lives under God does not sound like good news to everyone. That is because the other wing is not functioning correctly. We need to know what kind of person God is so we can understand what kind of control he desires. The scripture speaks of God like this:

"My thoughts are not your thoughts, 

  neither are my ways your ways," declares the Lord. . .

You shall go out with joy 

  and be led forth in peace.

The mountains and the hills will burst into song before you

  and all the trees of the field will clap their hands." (Isaiah 55)

It is also possible to know somewhat how good and great God is and not receive word from him. This is also flying with one wing. Such people usually try to walk with God merely from obeying commands and applying rules from the Bible to their life. The good news is that God's control is not like a writer with a pen, but like a father with his child. It is guidance with growth. God doesn't merely want people to do his will; he wants people who want to do his will with joy. This kind of shaping takes something more like raising a child than pounding on a stone.

This is shown clearly in Jesus. He came to do what his Father and he wanted to do. Ultimately the control was and is in his hands. But he did not come so much as a king who needed servants, but as a teacher of apprentices. His instructions to them were as detailed as they needed to be. They can only be carried out be someone who can both hear God personally and joyfully obey him. Without these two wings the good news of Jesus does not produce much fruit.