Will Those Seeds Ever Grow?

When you were a kid, did you ever plant seeds and then stand there waiting for them to grow? Eventually, your mom or dad would come and tell you that it would take time, care, water, sunshine, and many other factors for the seed to sprout and grow, so you would go on and play. As a parent, why don't we follow our own advice?

I hope you had a great Mother's Day. It was wonderful to get to celebrate it with my mother, my mother-in-law, and the wonderful mother of my children. It was a full day. I am so thankful that God allowed me to be born into a home with a Godly mom. I shared on Sunday that 1. Godly moms really love their kids; 2. Godly moms plant seeds of faith in their kids; and, 3. Godly moms entrust their kids to God.

I want to talk a little more about the second one. Godly moms do plant seeds of faith, but what happens after that? Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." I know that we are always hoping that our kids will turn out the way God wants them to, but sometimes - especially during the teenage years - we begin to wonder. Then we usually go through doubts about the decisions we are making and about whether or not we have raised them correctly. Did we pray with them enough? Did we yell too much? Did they see Jesus in us? Am I the only one who beats myself up regularly about how I am raising my kids?

Then, I thought about a parable Jesus told. It is found in Matthew 13, and it is incorrectly titled in my Bible, "The Parable of the Sower." Now, I realize that the sowing of seeds is important, and that we must be sowing seeds of faith in our kids, but I think the point of Jesus' story was the soil. You had four different soils described by Jesus - the hard path, the rocky shallow ground, the thorny patch, and the fertile soil.

Here is the point... are you ready for it? The quality of the crop is totally dependent on the type of soil the seeds are planted in. In other words, your kids cannot become all that God intends for them to become if they don't have a fertile, receptive heart. You have some responsibility in this - preparing the soil as they are growing up and even now - but if you have planted seeds of faith in your children, keep watering... keep nurturing... keep working the ground... keep pulling weeds (that's boys for you parents with teenage daughters)... keep exposing them to the Sonshine... and watch what God does to cause increase.

By the way... thanks mom for planting those seeds of faith and for continuing to nurture the soil of my heart. Thanks, Renee (my mother-in-law) for planting seeds of faith in my wife, Sharla. And, thanks, Sharla, for continuing to plant seeds of faith in our children, Lauren & Nick. I am eternally grateful for the mothers in my life... and I am eternally grateful for the God who continues to cause growth in planted seeds!

Does My Life Count?

Erwin McManus said, "God's will for us is less about our comfort than it is about our contribution. God would never choose for us safety at the cost of significance. God created you so that your life would count, not so that you could count the days of your life." Does my life count? Does yours?

I shared the story of a church that grew to 2000 and then has shrunk back to around 1500-1600. One of their members told me that when they grew, it was because the area they were in was booming, and so they didn't have to do anything... People just came to them! As a result, they forgot to "make disciples", and so therefore, the church has been declining. Isn't that what happens in most churches? We grow when we're new, but if there is not a passion to fulfill the Great Commission (to go and make disciples of all nations), we become complacent, and see a decline. Does my life count? Does yours?

Jesus final words to his disciples are great instructions for you and me. If you want your life to count, you need to follow there marching orders... "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28:18-20). We must connect to God through worship and we must connect to people by investing in their lives if we ever want to make a difference. Does my life count? Does yours?

Who do you need to invest in? Someone once said, "To the world, you may be just one person, but to one person, you just may be the world." Make your life count... starting TODAY!