Heart Tracks - Wasted Seed

      In the book, Passion, a collection of writings from various authors, Beth Moore tells of an experience she had while ministering in Angola. She and her husband were involved in hunger relief work.  In one of the villages they went to, a missionary described how they had distributed seed to the villagers to plant that they might grow their food.  He said that they were so hungry that instead of planting the seed, they ate it.  Seed that was meant to supply them food on an ongoing basis, never did because they consumed instead of sowed it.  It was never able to fulfill its purpose to them.  Moore was brokenhearted.

     She then wrote that this experience caused her to dwell upon we who comprise the western church, and how we are supplied the seed of His word almost on a daily basis through an almost endless array of resources.  Like the Angolans, the seed is received, but it is never sown.  As she puts it, "We can eat it, our appetites can get satiated on it, and it can taste amazing.  We are spiritually full, but nothing changes. Our lives aren't any different than they were and nothing changes.....we ate the seed but did not sow it into the reality of our experience.  God's word was not meant to build up our theology but to change our reality."  The seed the Angolans received gave them a temporary fullness, but made no difference in the reality of their state of starvation.  How true is this of so many of us who populate the chairs and pews of the church, the seats in the Bible study, and the places in the conferences and seminars?
     Many years ago I heard a preacher describe such folk as "spiritual porkers."  People filled up with His word, even growing fat on it, but never having the power of that word exercised into the reality of their lives.  We can do a great job of looking like believers in our weekly gatherings, but in the reality of day to day life, the power of His word and life in us is mostly absent.  Like most others, we react to life instead of responding to it in His life, in His power.  As scripture affirms, we've got the form of godliness, but not the power.  We have the appearance of being His, but He isn't appearing in and through our lives.  The word talks of being among those who "love His appearing," but just where in our lives is He appearing?  Are we living in the power of His life before the culture and transforming it, or is the power of that culture transforming us?
     There's a simple prayer I wrote down in my journal some years ago, and I know I am not yet near having it fully done in my life, but it's my desire that it would be, and that prayer is, "May I not merely gain knowledge, but grow, confess, and change more into who I've been created to be through the power of the Holy Spirit, living a life that cannot be explained apart from the Holy Spirit."  As a man named Juan Carlos Ortiz put it, may I, we, not live out a system of concepts, but live out of and in His life.  Living in the power of His life....day by day, minute by minute, always.

Blessings,
Pastor O