BY Argie Simonis
If we do not settle within ourselves the integrity and the power of God's word, then every teaching we hear is useless. In chapter 4 of Mark Jesus spoke 2 of the greatest parables through which the Lord gave me great revelation. The parable of the sower and the parable of the seed that grows in a mysterious way. As for the parable of the sower, Jesus said:
"And he said to them, Know you not this parable? and how then will you know all parables?" Mark 4:13
Do you know what that means? That if you do not understand the principles taught by the parable of the sower, you will not understand any parable. In other words, this parable is the key that unlocks the truth of God's word.
It is so important that it should take one of the first places in your heart.
Before I get into the parable of the sower, I'll start with the parable that Jesus spoke right after the parable of the sower, where actualy the Lord is making the same point. It is in Mark 4:26-29:
"And he said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;
And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knows not how.
For the earth brings forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.
But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest is come." Mark 4:26-29
This passage that we read, is one of the most awesome revelations that Jesus gives us! He is talking about a seed here, but He is referring to the word of God. A little above we read:
"The sower sows the word." Mark 4:14
Jesus began to teach with the parable of the sower. At that time they did not dig furrows as we do today, nor did they have machines, but the sower went out and scattered the seed by hand. And this seed fell on 4 different types of soil.
Jesus here is not giving farming lessons. Most of the people he addressed were low educated, fishermen and farmers. That is why he uses this physical imagery for the kingdom of God, with the seed being the word of God.
"The sower sows the word."
In other words, it is not a lesson on how to become a farmer, but on how the kingdom of God works.
Have you ever wondered why Jesus compares the word of God to a seed? The modern city man is no longer so familiar with agriculture and nature. There are some who believe that lettuce grows in the grocery store :)
But it is not so. Someone plants them, grows them, and when they are ready brings them to the grocery store. The same is with the steak you get from the butcher shop, it comes from an animal that was slaughtered.
Did you know that it's not just plants that come from a seed? You were once a seed too. You may not have thought of it this way, but the entire universe runs on seeds. Everything around us is the product of a seed. Every plant, every animal, every insect, every human being is the product of a seed.
It is not so difficult to understand this in the physical. If you see someone sitting and watering in unsown soil, and praying and waiting to see something sprout, you will call him crazy. I understand it if you have sown and pray to God to bless it and bring increase, but you must have sown something first.
And yet, in the spiritual part, most people do what the one who I mentioned a little above does, and call him crazy. Let me give some examples:
Some pray for healing. I will ask: What seed have you sown for your healing? In the prayer group at our church that Peggy and I have been ministering for several years, we have prayed for many people who come to receive healing from the Lord. They believe that God can heal them, but many of them if you ask them on what verses they put their hope for their healing, they don't know.
This is not going to work. It's like a woman hoping to get pregnant by simply standing near a man. Am I close enough? Shall I stay a little longer?
If I drink water from a pregnant woman's glass, will I get pregnant too?
And of course not. I don't intend to teach you how a woman gets pregnant. I think you know exactly what I mean.
But what I'm trying to say is that you have to sow the seed first. And while you know that naturally it is foolish to believe in a harvest when you have not sown, there are people who do not know a single verse about what the word of God says about healing and they wonder why they are not healed.
The seed must come alive in you. It must be sown in your heart and for this to happen you must have a closer relationship with the word of God.
You pray for your finances. You pray to the Lord for blessing and prosperity. What scriptures do you base your hope and prayer on? What seed are you sowing in your heart?
You see people enjoying God's blessings abundantly in their lives, ministers of the Lord with blessed ministries that touch millions of people, and you wish you could have the same. But have you done the same sowing as they did? Have you medidated in the word as they have? And because you've been used to fast food, when you don't see immediate results you say that this doesn't work.
And yet, it works, as long as you give it time. In this parable it says that the word of God is like a seed that
"as if a man should cast seed into the ground;
And should sleep, and rise night and day"
This here is very important, because it shows us that it takes time between the seed and the harvest.
Seed - Time - Harvest.
Many believe that God can do anything and as soon as they have a need, boom! God makes it happen.
I want a miracle!
Don't forget: Seed - Time - Harvest. Did you sow the seed? Did you give it time? Even those people you admire didn't become that way overnight. It took them time to get to where they are.
Do you know why the Lord chose a seed to speak these truths? Because this is a system that He created. If he picked a human system, for example a school, and said that the kingdom of God is like a school. You have to study, do private tutoring, be at school, etc. This is a man made system, and in such a system there are always "loopholes" that you can cheat. During an exam you can copy from someone else.
Even without copying, how many of you remember studying just the night before the exam so that you can have the lesson "fresh" in the part called our "temporary" memory. Maybe you wrote well on that test and passed the class, but how well would you write if you were to take the same test today? You just beat the system.
But you can't steal in the harvest. You can't sow one day and stay up all night watering and fertilizing and expect to get a crop the next morning. You cannot cheat the system that God created. That is why Jesus compared it to a seed. There are laws that govern the function of the seed. You must sow the seed and
"and sleep and rise night and day;"
If you sow and the next day you dig it up to see if it grows, sow it again and dig it up again, you will destroy it. There are many people that in times of crisis read, study, pray and as soon as the crisis is over they go back to the flesh and the old bad habits that led them to that crisis in the first place. Do you realize that in this way you will never see the results these people have?
Remember the story of Joseph, Moses, the apostle Paul. You must be diligent, plant the word of God in your heart, and cooperate with God and the laws he has set. When you do this, that seed will begin to "spring and grow up, he knows not how."
See how exciting this is? you don't need to understand how it works.
Consider this too: Mankind, despite of all the progress and knowledge he has acquired thus far, may know how to use a seed, plant it, and get a harvest, but he has not understood how a seed actually works. We can't create a seed from scratch, even if we have all the money and technology in the world. We can create something that looks like a seed, it may taste the same as that seed, it may weigh the same, but if you plant it, it will never germinate, no matter how much water and fertilizer you put on it. So we may not understand the seed, how from a small seed we can get a whole tree, but that does not prevent us from using it.
Every seed is a miracle and in there God has placed everything necessary for that seed to germinate and reproduce. And it has such strength that a small seed when it begins to take root and grow in the cleft of a rock, can cut it in two. Something you'd need dynamite to do!
So you don't need to understand it. You just have to believe it, that if you plant this seed of God in your heart and sleep and rise up and wait, it has the power to change your life!
In the very next verse he says:
"For the earth brings forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." Mark 4:28
That is, the earth automatically bears fruit. It is simply the law that God has set. If you plant a seed in the soil, the soil will not analyze what kind of seed you have planted, nor will it choose what to grow or if it wants to grow anything. I understand that different types of soil will give different growth to the seed, but God made the soil in such a way that it will produce whatever you sow into it.
You see a big tree and you say "look what this seed had in it". But do you know that's not the case? The seed somehow collects the nutrients found in the soil, organizes them and produces the tree. The seed is essentially the catalyst, but the soil supplies the ingredients. If you put the seed in shallow soil it will not produce because the soil is not enough.
In this parable, the ground represents our heart. God has made our heart in such a way that every thought, feeling or emotion we have acts like seeds, which will automatically begin to sprout and produce fruit. If you sow fear, hatred, unforgiveness, pornography, jealousy, your heart doesn't know the difference and will start sprouting with all of these.
Likewise, your heart will do the same if you sow it with the things of God. It is impossible not to enjoy God's blessings in your life if you study His word day and night.
"I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.
Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart: wait, I say, on the LORD." Psalm 27:13-14
"I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.
He is ever merciful, and lends; and his seed is blessed." Psalm 37:25-26
See also what Paul tells us:
"For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." Romans 8:6
To be carnally minded does not necessarily mean that you live in sin.
All sin is a result of carnality, but all carnality is not necessarily sin. Carnality is based on our 5 senses and means operating only in the physical. If you think only in the physical, that is death. You don't have to be bad or a sinner for this to happen. Become normal by the world's standards and you will die.
But the mind of the Spirit is life and peace. What does this mean;
"It is the spirit that vivifies; the flesh profits nothing: the words that I speak to you, they are spirit, and they are life." John 6:63
Likewise, I don't need to be at your house and watch what you're doing every day. I can tell by observing your life. If you experience death, it means that you are carnally minded. If you keep the things of the Spirit, you experience life and peace. Your life bears fruit based on the seed you sow.
One might wonder:
"but I didn't pray to get sick, I didn't ask for any sickness"
You may not have done that, but you were thinking sick. You were thinking
"I'm just a man".
For example, you may have heard that cancer is incurable. So instead of focusing on the word of God he says
"No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, said the LORD." Isaiah 54:17
you have allowed fear into your heart and allowed that fear to grow and sprout within you.
You are not an ordinary person. The Spirit of God dwells within us. His Spirit is one with our spirit and we are one third Holy Spirit. The supernatural lives within us!
So if you're thinking:
"I'm just human, what can I do?" - This thought will kill you.
"For as he thinks in his heart, so is he: Eat and drink, said he to you; but his heart is not with you." Proverbs 23:7
Your life goes according to the way you think.
"I didn't have divorce in mind."
Maybe, but you were thinking in a way that ultimately led to divorce. If you can't figure out where the problem started, go back and think if the person you married was the one the Lord showed you, or did you just follow your own desire?
Please try to see the spirit in which I am speaking to you. I am not contemning anyone; we all make mistakes. What I'm trying to say is that God's word works and if you don't see it working in your own life, the problem is not His word:
"Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and stays for ever." 1Peter 1:23
God's word is incorruptible. So the problem lies in the way you think. You constantly face health problems because you think sick. Financial problems because you think poorly. The same with relationship problems. Your thinking is wrong. To have friends you have to become friendly. I say all this not to condemn anyone, but to encourage you. .
All the kingdom of God works with seeds. Are you praying for healing? Take the seed of healing and plant it in your heart. If you let it take root and wake and sleep with your mind on it, it is impossible not to experience healing. The power of God's word cannot act in your life if you do not accept it.
"My son, attend to my words; incline your ear to my sayings.
Let them not depart from your eyes; keep them in the middle of your heart.
For they are life to those that find them, and health to all their flesh." Proverbs 4:20-22
Part 2 is coming soon. To be continued ...
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