Jesus Is the Seed

A woman walks into a room full of people who despise her, and she washes Jesus' feet with her tears. She doesn't say a word. She doesn't defend herself. She just pours out everything she has, because she knows what her sin cost — and she knows the One who paid it is worthy of her all. The Pharisee watching her thinks his sin is smaller than hers, so he barely responds to Jesus at all. But Jesus, through a parable, explains that neither of them could pay for their sin — not the woman, not Simon — and asks a trick question that exposes the hypocrisy in Simon's heart. The price wasn't set by how big the sin looked. It was set by what it cost to forgive it: everything.

That's true for every person in your house tonight. However your sin measures up next to somebody else's doesn't change what it cost Jesus. He gave the same blood, the same life, for the sins that show and the ones that don't. Gratitude isn't about how bad you think you were. It's about how much you understand was paid.

Jesus tells a story about a farmer throwing seed on four kinds of ground — a hard road, a rocky patch, a thorny patch, and good soil. The seed is the same every time. It's the ground that's different. And here's what's easy to miss: none of that ground started out already decided. It became a road, or rocks, or thorns, or good soil by how it responded to the seed.

That means your heart isn't stuck being one kind of ground forever. Every time you hear God's Word, you get to decide what you'll do with it — hold it loosely, let life choke it out, or hold it fast and let it grow, even when growing takes a while. Good ground doesn't work harder to earn a good heart. It just refuses to let go of what it's already been given.

There's a promise buried in the middle of all this: if you abide in Jesus, and let His words abide in you, you can ask for what you need and it will be done. But that promise comes with a condition — abide, stay, hold on, don't let go. This is what marked a man like Smith Wigglesworth, and it's what should mark our family: refusing to turn loose of what God has said, no matter how long it takes to see it.

The Word doesn't go void because trouble comes. It stops because we quit holding onto it. Every family goes through seasons where the promise looks far away. The response isn't to try harder — it's to hold on tighter, and let the Word keep doing its work in you, even when it's uncomfortable.