Growing in Christ
Stephen Terry
Commentary for the August 9, 2014
Sabbath School Lesson
“He also said, ‘This is what the
kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day,
whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not
know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head,
then the full kernel in the head. As
soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has
come.” Mark 4:26-29, NIV
Have you
ever had the opportunity to live where you could grow a garden from seed?
Whether your garden is a farm of several acres or a planter on a balcony, it
seems a miracle to place something small, hard and lifeless into the soil and
have it grow to be a plant thousands of times larger than the original seed. Day
by day the plant grows, stretching toward the sun. As you water it and give it
nourishment, protecting it from insects and other harmful things, you can come
to feel deeply involved in the growth of this new life.
Each person
who comes to Jesus is like a new plant. A new life is sprouting from the seed
of love the Holy Spirit has placed in their heart. Watered in baptism and
planted by the Spirit, that seed begins to grow.[i]
How that happens is a mystery. It is like the hardened seed placed in the ground.
We can describe how it grows, but we cannot explain why it grows, why it has
the spark of life in the first place. For instance, how does a plant produce a
seed that can lie dormant for eons as though dead and then suddenly come to
life and sprout when the conditions are right? In the same way, we might ask “How
does someone, apparently dead to the love of God, suddenly come to life in the
kingdom and grow to produce a rich harvest for God?” Both are miraculous.
A seed has
an interesting life cycle. While it is dormant, life may be flourishing
everywhere, but the seed is unaware. In its shell, it goes on as though the
rest of the world does not exist. As long as the conditions are not conducive
to waking it from its sleep, it can remain unaware for a very long time. Then
one day, the seed suddenly comes to life. A sprout comes forth, and the plant
begins to rise from the earth. It then has one goal: to reproduce. If it is
successful in attaining that, it will produce many seeds, perhaps hundreds or
even thousands of seeds. Then those seeds will also do the same in turn.
It may be the that way for us spiritually. We lie dormant within ourselves,
perhaps not even aware of the Kingdom of God sprouting and growing around us. One
day, however, the same love of God that is producing abundant harvests
everywhere else, finds its way to that seed within us and the conditions are
right for love to begin to sprout. As it grows, it also has the same goal to
reproduce. Eventually, many other seeds are produced through our influence on
the lives of those around us. Those seeds also lie dormant in the hearts of
those we may have touched with love and compassion, until the love of God
awakens that dormant seed and the cycle repeats.
An
interesting thing about this process is that the seed cannot awaken itself.
When we buy a packet of seed from the store, unless an outside force has acted
on that packet in some way, none of the seeds will have spontaneously sprouted.
In the same way, we cannot have the seed of faith within us sprout on its own.
It, too, requires something from outside. Until the Holy Spirit brings the loving
kindness of God to our attention, it will not sprout.[ii]
This loving nurture does not end with the sprouting.
We cannot spiritually
grow and reproduce on our own either. The plant may stretch and stretch toward
the sky, but without water, sunshine (natural or artificial), and nutrients it
will not thrive and will have difficulty reproducing. No amount of desire on
the part of the plant can overcome these deficiencies. It takes the will of the
gardener wanting to provide these things and bringing them to the plant that
makes the difference. We may want to produce a harvest of righteousness for
God, but we do not have the will to bring it about. Every attempt falls short.[iii]
We rely on the Gardener’s will as well as His efforts to provide all we need.[iv]
Now the
difference between us and a seed is that a seed really is not aware of all of
this. It simply rests and waits. There is no concern on its part regarding its
ultimate fate. But for us, it’s different. We tend to worry about what is going
to happen. We ask ourselves, “If we respond to the love of God when it comes calling, if we begin to sprout for the kingdom what
will happen to us? How do we know the sunshine, water and nutrients will
continue?” The answer is as simple for us as for the seed we plant in the
ground.
We need only
be still and all will be provided.[v]
Jesus tells us that in the Sermon on the Mount. He tells us that those outside
the Kingdom worry about what they are going to wear, what they are going to
eat, and many similar things. But we should not worry. Just as we know what our
garden seedling needs, and we provide those things to keep it growing, so God
also is aware of our needs and will provide for them.[vi]
Just as the plant cannot add a single millimeter to its height by worry, we
cannot move one centimeter closer to God by adding anxiety to our lives.[vii]
Some would
have us believe, contrary to our illustration, that one must constantly strive
to grow to be more like God, to be perfect as He is perfect.[viii]
But what does that mean? If it is God’s will and work that do it all then what
striving remains for us? Perhaps it only requires that we surrender our will to
allow His will to accomplish its perfect work in us. We must stop the warfare
that says that our selfish desires are paramount. This is a surrender that must
be ongoing as moment by moment the lusts of the flesh will struggle to reassert
themselves. We cannot conquer them, we can only surrender and let the Holy
Spirit engage them. Our fleshly bodies and their desires will be with us until
the Parousia,[ix]
therefore the continual surrendering of ourselves to the will of God is the
work of a lifetime. We must do this as the alternative is death. The fleshly desires
of the body and its deadly miasma will overcome all desire for life when we
separate ourselves from God.[x]
If the seed
that has been lying dormant were to say to the gardener, “I’m happy here. Leave
me alone. I don’t want to acknowledge anything outside my shell. That world
doesn’t exist as far as I am concerned,” it would never awake to achieve its
purpose. Its selfish desire would eventually lead only to its death, when it
would no longer be able to reproduce even if it wished. However, it would probably
never know what it missed. Perhaps this is the eternal death referred to in the
Bible, to never experience real life and what it means.
Life does
not have to be that way. We can bar the door to keep God out, but He will
continue to patiently knock.[xi]
Perhaps this is His way of asking us, “How is that working out for you?” While
some would like to make the Christian life into a struggle of our will striving
to be obedient and righteous, the real struggle is in trying to live without
God’s love and presence in our lives. When we invite Him in, things actually
get easier.[xii]
Some might
point to the obstacles that Christians deal with and claim the Christian walk
is the harder one, but this is only because they do not know how the same
person would have been burdened without Christ in the equation. We are not told
that we will avoid the Valley of the Shadow by being Christian. Instead, we are
told that Christ will be right there with us in that valley. He will be
providing for our needs, even while surrounded by enemies who are seeking to
destroy us.[xiii]
That knowledge has sustained many Christians through difficult trials as they
surrendered all to God and turned those trials over to Him.
We need not
doubt. We need not fear or become anxious. We need only to rest in God. He will
fight our battles for us.[xiv]
We need only “to be still.”
