The Fertile Soil

February 7, 2025

And the seed that fell on the good ground is like those who hear God’s teaching with good, honest hearts and obey it and patiently produce good fruit. Luke 8:15 NCV

“Christian” is a big term. It is used to describe and cover a multitude of diverse people. Because of that, we have added adjectives and descriptive phrases like “a good Christian,” a “Christmas and Easter Christian,” a casual Christian, an unfaithful Christian, a Christian in name only, a traditional Christian, a contemporary Christian, and on and on, to infinity, it seems.

Jesus didn’t have that problem. He didn’t call people Christians or even believers. The people He believed in He called followers. He didn’t invite us to be believers or members of anything. He challenged, called, and invited us to be followers. Followers are the ones He describes as good soil in the parable of the soils.

Followers start with the same soil everyone else does. Soil is soil. The challenges of life work to affect our soil, but God, the Creator of the soil and the Sower of the seed, wants to work with us to make our soil as productive as possible.

The fertile soil responds by eagerly receiving the seed. We are open and available to hear and gratefully receive the Word of God. Fertile hearts and minds are regularly, consistently making opportunities to read and meditate on God’s Word, hearing it taught, spending time with other believers, and spending time in worship through song and prayer.

Fertile hearts do more than receive the seed of the Word. They obey it. They don’t debate it. They don’t just find it an interesting study. They don’t check off their reading and hearing on a list and move on. They realize that followers are active. They obey. That’s what those with fertile hearts do. They believe that when God gives them His Word, it is not casually given. It is to be obeyed for their own good and the good of others. They develop deep roots that keep them standing strong no matter the weather and circumstances around them. They are honest with God and themselves. They patiently persevere, discerning and weeding out the wrong things that are trying to work their way into priority position, strangling their focus and productivity.

And that’s it. Fertile hearts stick with it and produce good fruit. This means that our hearts – our stories – don’t end with just us. God wants to use our lives to impact others and draw them to Himself. So, as we love God through receiving His Word, developing roots, and uprooting weeds of distractions, we share His love with those around us and THAT seed gets planted in the soil of the hearts around us. It’s the way He works.

• Jesus, help me consistently receive the good seed and persevere to produce good fruit. Help me see where to invest in good seed to grow in others also.