Breaking Up Your Fallow Ground (Title is link to sermon)
Many who are following me on social media have seen that I have been busy turning over the fallow ground around my house.
I am preparing the area for a fall planting.
I have started early so I can turn the soil a few times as well as prepare it with a good fertile mixture.
I will be pulling out weeds and grass all summer long in preparation.
Any good farmer will tell you that before one can grow any kind of a garden, one must first plow up the ground where the garden will be. Amen?
It is only after the plowing that one can begin the process of sowing and reaping. Not before!
It would be a waste of time to just dig holes and plant my shrubs among all the grass and weeds in the fall.
Jeremiah 4:3 – For thus saith the LORD to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.
This has such a spiritual application for us, amen?
Do you know what fallow ground is?
Fallow ground is that ground that once was tilled and planted but has been neglected for some time and lay uncultivated for way too long!
Many people have quit going to church since the panic-demic started. That is exactly what satan wanted. Those hearts have become fallow ground because there hasn’t been any preaching and teaching to break up that fallow ground in their hearts.
What about your heart?
Has it become contaminated with some weeds and grass?
You see, the Church breaks up her own fallow ground, when she stirs up anew the decaying righteousness of her own members.
This is caused when preaching the unadulterated Word of God causes the Holy Spirit to bring conviction to the hearer, and the church is compelled to repent.
Just like with my ground around the house, we must keep cultivating the ground or it will become hard and full of grass and weeds. The beautiful flowers and other plants will die.
Once the fallow ground of the heart is broken up by repentance, and righteous seed is planted, the church will naturally begin to reap a harvest of new people hungry for the life-changing experience of the Holy Ghost. Amen?
No one must not be satisfied with a mere stirring of the heart – there must be a true change of thought and life. Amen?
Fact is, too many of us have been long uncultivated in righteousness…
It is time to let true repentance break up our fruitless and hardened hearts; and…
When this is done – and when the seed of the Word of Life is sown in them – worldly cares and concerns will not arise and choke out the good seed like thorns do.
James 1:21 – Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.
James sees the human heart as a garden; and if left to itself, the soil would produce only weeds.
He urged us to “pull out the weeds” and prepare the soil for the “implanted Word of God.”
The phrase “superfluity of naughtiness” gives the picture of a garden overgrown with weeds that cannot be controlled. (Just like the plots around my house!)
How is your "garden" today?
Break up the fallow ground today.
Have a blessed day.
Comments
Amen. I pray that we all turn over our fallow ground for fresh new growth. We all can become stagnant and stale even when we are going through all the routine of going to church. If we don't let the Word in the is no growth. I especially pray for those who stopped going to church that the Holy Spirit woo and draw them back in.
Yes! I'm in agreement with you and claim a movement of the Holy Spirit to draw them in