Stop Analyzing The Soil

I don’t have a green thumb, not even in the slightest. The idea of me trying to grow any kind of vegetation is a laughable concept. Now, that being said, my mother did buy my oldest daughter a “living plant” kit for Christmas, and so far 3 of the seeds have sprouted and are growing (We’ll ignore the fact that kits came with like 20 seeds).

Thankfully for me and my daughter, this kit came with the soil we needed to plant the seeds in. To be honest, if I needed to go get soil, this kit would probably have never been used. But, I never knew the importance of soil until a couple of years ago when we were trying to plant some grass in the bare spots in our backyard.

In my non-professional opinion, I did everything right. I went to Lowes bought some grass seed (sun/shade mix). I also bought some fertilizer, top soil, and straw to layover the seed I was laying down. I did what any novice to grass planting would do, I pulled up videos from YouTube University to learn to properly lay down seed. At the end of it, I felt confident that I did everything right for the seed to produce lush free grass in those bare spots.

I still have those bare spots.

In the next season I reached out to a friend who does lawn maintenance, among other things, for a living and asked him for some help. He came over and aerated our backyard and laid down more seed. Still, no new grass. He then made a suggestion that I had never heard of before. He asked me to bring him a sample of the soil from where the grass wasn’t growing to analyze it for PH levels among other things.

I still need to get him that sample.

Now, would you believe me if I told you that through this process I learned something about being a disciple maker?

Jesus commissioned his followers to go into the world and to make disciples, teaching those new disciples to obey all the things that Jesus taught them. Pretty simple right?

In the early days of Christianity, the movement spread like wildfire. Everywhere the disciples went, the gospel was preached, disciples were made, and churches were planted. There was a passion and a burning desire to make Jesus known.

Today, Christianity seems to be more like a contained fire in a fireplace rather than a wildfire burning out of control. Why? Well, maybe it’s because many of us have become soil analyzers rather than planters of seeds.

In Matthew 13, Jesus shares the parable of a farmer scattering seed. In the parable Jesus shares about a farmer who goes out and scatters seed, and the seed falls on four different types of soil. Rocky, shallow, weed riddled and fertile. What I find interesting about this parable is the carelessness of the farmer. You would think that someone who farms for a living would be more careful about where he would scatter the seed. You would think that he would spend time cultivating the land and taking care to note where the most fertile location is as to not waste any seed. Yet the way Jesus tells this story, it’s as if the farmer just threw the seed out with no care as to the fertility of the soil or the condition of the ground.

I think when it comes to sharing our faith in Jesus, we too often look like analyst of soil rather than the farmer scattering seed. We look for the conditions to be just right.

“should I or shouldn’t share my faith with my co-workers?”

“Surely now is not the time to tell the waiter about the love Jesus has for him. They simply want to do their job”

“I don’t want people to think I’m a “Jesus freak” so I’ll wait until they get to know me a little better before I let them know that there is a God who is for them and not against them.”

Jesus didn’t call us to be soil analyzers, he called us to be people who scatter seeds of hope. It is not your job to determine whether or not a person is ready to hear the good news of Jesus Christ, it is simply your job to spread that good news everywhere you go. There will come a time that you will need to take the next step  and water what you have sowed, and sometimes water the seed someone else has scattered, but remember, God does the growing (1 Corinthians 3:7). So, stop analyzing and get to scattering.