Embracing God's Presence: Cultivating Fruitful Hearts

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If you've been in church for a while, you might be familiar with this passage and you may have heard somebody talk about the four types of soil. But I want us to sort of bracket our discussion of the Word of God with what I had you repeat. Consider the sower. And we're going to learn some things from the Word of God about this. But I want us to recognize that the sower is sowing into your life. And it's usually the sower who is also the tiller of the soil. And so as we talk about the four different types of of soil, I want us to first consider that our good and gracious Heavenly Father was sowing the Word of God into our life. [00:40:12]

Consider the sower. Consider that Jesus is actually sowing his life and light into us. And he has an expectation of fruitfulness in our life. And so as we dive into this series, the what of this series is we're going to study all the stories that Jesus Christ told. The brilliance and genius of Jesus in that. And why we are studying the stories that Jesus told is because in those stories he conveys the principles of the kingdom of heaven. [00:43:06]

We have, in the Americanized Christian church, we have minimized the doctrine of salvation to the simplistic idea that heaven is just the place we go to when we die. But really, Jesus is ushering in and introducing us to the kingdom that we actually become conduits for. So Jesus is saying, hey, I came to bring life and life abundantly, and that is the kingdom of God. And by the way, I am going to then delegate my authority to those who follow after me, and you will have the right and the privilege of ushering in the kingdom of heaven into your life here and now. [00:43:50]

All of us have access to the kingdom of heaven that some of your neighbors, your co workers, your families, they don't have access to. And so we're going to talk about that because Jesus describes the kingdom of heaven by telling these stories that we actually call parables. [00:46:11]

There are secrets of the kingdom of heaven. And you and I have access to those secrets if and when we decide to surrender our life to Jesus and follow him wholeheartedly. But if you never get out of the crowd to follow Jesus, you Won't have all the secrets. So if we get alone with Jesus, he actually gives us access to the secrets of heaven and then we can establish heaven wherever we live on this earth. [00:47:25]

We cannot continue to expect the kingdom of heaven to be established on earth by us if we are not truly born again, water baptized and baptized in the Holy Spirit. So if our role is to understand the word of God and usher in the kingdom of heaven wherever we live and work, turning the world apart from Christ into an Eden like paradise where the presence of the Lord touches human beings, we cannot do that unless we're born again, baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit. [00:49:17]

So a lot of, a lot of Christians have surrendered their life to Jesus as their Savior. And they continue to live like heaven is their destination and only their destination. But if we surrender to him as Lord, which is actually what they called Caesar during that day, whatever Caesar said became the law that everyone followed. So if we follow Jesus as both he's my Savior and my Lord, then what he says is what we align our life to, right? [00:50:02]

Your faith is personal, yes, but it is not private. And so baptism, when we fill up a horse trough and invite those who are yet to be baptized to come on up here and be baptized, that come out of the water and they're covered by our elders who wrap them in a towel. When they do that, they are saying to all of us, I have decided that I will become a follower of Jesus. I have repented of my past life. I am going to do what he says to. To do. I'm going to try to not do what he tells me not to do. And every day I'm going to lean more into my relationship with the Lord and you're going to help me do that. [00:50:49]

I would describe it this way. An openness to and an acceptance of the infilling and leading of the Holy Spirit in every area of our life. And so Jesus is telling Nicodemus and us that we need to see the kingdom and then we also need to enter into the kingdom. Now all else is just religion and legalism. If we're not seeing the kingdom of heaven and we're not entering into the kingdom of heaven and then implanting that into our daily life, then all we're doing is talking about laws and do's and don'ts and lists and that feels icky. [00:51:32]

We must be born again, baptized, and filled with the Holy Spirit if we desire the kingdom of heaven to be established here on earth. That is your purpose. That is my purpose. I do it in the context of Colorado church and then in my neighborhood and then in my family. You do it in the place of that the Lord has established for you to do it. [00:52:22]

Wherever God has put you, you actually get to take it. Like your presence brings the presence of the Lord and it makes it smell like the fragrance of Christ. Come on, everybody. [00:53:31]

It's easy to concentrate on the four types of soil. I want us to always be centered on Jesus and realize he's working in us so that what he's working in us can be worked through us to establish the fruitfulness of the kingdom of heaven amongst us. [00:55:36]

I just would submit to you that I'll say it this way. I can have all four types of this soil in my life. And I wonder if there's a place in your life that has been worn. Like that trail that I walked to get to that well in Africa, that there's certain areas in our life that are not fruitful. And it's actually, we've actually hardened a portion of our life. And you know it when the Holy Spirit, like tells you about it and you're sort of like, can't hear you, I can't hear you. And he leans into it a little bit more and he's like, if you would just give this over to me. I could. I could do the work until that soil. [00:58:33]

Usually those places in our life that have hardened to the point of not being receptive to what God wants us to do, it's usually because the enemy has continued to lie. And we find ourselves, like, repeating his lie with our own words, meaning we've convinced ourselves that we don't believe the lie of the enemy. We just repeat it in a different way. So he says, you're not good enough. And then we come over here and we say, well, I was just created this way. And so this is. This is sort of how I. How I do it. And I don't, you know, I would never do this or he would never use me to do this because I just have this personality. [00:59:31]

Jesus doesn't want fruitfulness from you on a Sunday morning. He wants fruitfulness from you every single day of the week. He wants fruitfulness from you when you're tired and when you're fresh. He wants fruitfulness from you when you're surrounded by people that you love and you're laughing and you're having a good time. He also wants to fruitfulness from you when, like, this is the worst part of your week, right? And that's where Jesus, through you, gets to be that deodorizer. And all of a sudden you're infusing the fragrance of Christ. And all of a sudden you see fruitfulness, right? [01:01:07]

If we would just go, man, I'm going to open up that area of my life that I don't think that that's, like, the religious part of my life. This is not like the reading my Bible first thing in the morning or last thing before I go to bed. This is like, this is. I'm in my work truck, I'm in my shop, I'm in my cubicle. I'm living my life. And Jesus goes, kingdom of heaven on earth right there. And it's not information, it's transformation. Lives are changed, families are changed. Things are set into motion. [01:02:55]

The only way for us to give more of ourselves to Jesus is to allow him to till the hardened places of our life. Because we would have to say, well, Jesus, if you want fruitful, if you want more fruitfulness in my life, then the path has to move. And the only way the path moves is if I go, okay, God, this is gonna hurt. Like, this is like, I know that, you know, but that part of my heart hasn't produced fruit in a long time. And I'm sort of comfortable with that path being there, because in order for fruitfulness to be there, you're going to have to dig into that area of my life. And Jesus says, I know. [01:04:10]

If we consider the sower, then we will stop trying to dig the rocks out of our life and instead surrender to the sower and say, God, you know where that rock is. And I. And I know I, like, I don't want to mess with it because there's some relational garbage there. There's some emotional connection there. And, God, I've satisfied myself with, like, you know, sprout without fruit and then the witheredness of my life. And I'm sort of okay with that because I don't know if I'm ready to be vulnerable enough for you to do that work in my life. But if we consider the sower, he's always wanting more fruitfulness. And if you know the same Jesus, I know he loves us too much to leave the rocks there, you know. [01:07:40]

Do you know what's under the rock? It's like good soil. It's actually good soil under there. It's like the dark rich soil, bugs are crawling around it and all that stuff. And if you just sort of stirred it up a little bit and planted something right where that rock used to be, guess what would spring up? Life. Abundant life. [01:09:16]

How do we remove those rocks? We ask the Lord to remove the rocks. We invite the Lord to remove those rocks. We're obedient to what the Holy Spirit says as to how to move those rocks. We do the good work of counseling and finding counselors and getting into a small group where we can be vulnerable with somebody who used to have a rock right in the same place where we have the rock or the rock that's the same exact shape or weight as the rock that we have in our life. [01:09:41]

Maybe your freedom in that area positions you to help others be Set free. And then maybe there's somebody in the room. And when I talked about being born again, you knew in your heart that you know about God, but you don't know God. And so maybe for that person in this room or those watching online, maybe it's an opportunity for you to just say, either silently or out loud, jesus, I surrender my life to you. Be my Lord, be my Savior. Make me a brand new creation. I come into alignment with your will in Jesus name. [01:11:59]

For the rest of us, maybe it's an opportunity for us to know God in a fresh way. Today we just say, God, I surrender to you every area, every part. The crusty places of my life, the rocky places of my life. God, I give them to you. [01:12:57]

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