The Pickaxe

 I said, ‘Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you.’ Hosea 10:12

As I look back upon my childhood, I realize how frustrated my father must have been with my brothers and me and so many of our ways. One of the things he loved having was a beautiful yard. He and my mother planted many trees and bushes, and sought to have a well maintained lawn. For the most part it was.....except for one bank leading up to the front of our house. Though there were steps right beside the bank, my brothers and I ceaselessly ran up that bank when we came home. The result was a well worn path. Time and again my father would put up stakes and string, spread seed, and seek to grow grass. He would get the grass, and then threaten us with death if we once again made the path. In a short time, we beat a new path, and though there was grass all around it, there was none on the path. The ground was much too hard. Nothing would grow on it, not even crab grass. Somehow, my brothers and I survived, even though the grass never did.

It's been more than a half century since those days, but I still remember how rock hard that path became. Many a time my father broke it up and replanted it, but eventually, he gave up. No grass grew there until my brothers and I had grown up, and we no longer beat a path to our house. Finally, the grass grew. There' a lesson in this, and we see it in Hosea 10:12. Too many of us have allowed too many other things to beat a path upon the face of our hearts. Anger, unforgiveness, bitterness, unhealed wounds, self-centeredness, and just plain apathy, have all worked to bring a rock hard surface to our hearts. Nothing really grows there. Nothing can grow there. We may read our Bibles, listen to sermons, and quote Scripture, but nothing penetrates our hardened hearts. The saddest part of this is that we often are the last ones to realize just how hardened our hearts have become. We've become so used to having such a heart that His Spirit is no longer registering upon it. Often I have seen a rain shower come down upon such hardened ground, but the water never really penetrated the ground, but runs off and does no good to the soil beneath. How much of the rain of His Spirit has done so upon our hearts?

The rain of His righteousness is always falling, but until we, you and I, take a pickaxe to the hardened soil of our hearts, through confession and repentance, and break up the hard, unfruitful ground, it will simply run off and away from us. The rain of righteousness that He means to penetrate through the hard soil covering our relationship with Him, with others, in our marriages and homes, and yes, over whole congregations, will simply run off of us. And the ground simply gets harder.

It is past time for us, as individuals, as husbands and wives, parents, young people, and professing members of the Body of Christ, to break up our hardened heart ground. It is time to turn the hardened clods upwards, that they may not only receive the rain of His righteousness, but also the sun of His love and presence. What we will discover is that upon ground that previously produced nothing, now comes the fruit of His Spirit; love, joy, peace, and more. God will not forcibly break up our hard ground. Only we can do that, but He can and will provide all the grace and power we need to do so. It will begin on our knees, at the cross. The ground we thought beyond fruitfulness will give way to a rich soil where the things of the Spirit may flourish.

Where does the hardness in your heart exist? Will it grow harder, more barren, more dead than alive? Or will it produce a crop of righteousness? Before us is a cross and a pickaxe. The first will give us the desire and grace to lay hold of the pickaxe. And then the ground of our hearts, which one translation calls fallow, will begin to produce the fruit of His righteousness in response to His showers of blessing upon it. Break up the hard ground. Have that hardened heart become one of tender flesh again.

Blessings,

Pastor O