Lay The Foundation With The Word
If we do the things Jesus says, we will have a firm foundation laid on a rock. When the stream beats upon our lives, the storm will not be able to shake us! However, Jesus said that if we don’t do His sayings, we will be like the man who built his house on the sand. When the stream beat vehemently upon that house, immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great.
Some people have thought this scripture meant one of the men was saved and the other wasn’t, but both men could have been saved. Both knew the truth, but only one did what Jesus said to do. The stream beating against his house couldn’t shake it! He did not say it didn’t shake it; He said it couldn’t. It was impossible to destroy the one who was doing what Jesus said-he was resting on God’s Word.
Doing the sayings of Jesus will transform your life! When floods and streams come against your life, you will remain immovable. The floods could be inflation, high prices, sickness, or any other problem. But God’s promise is: No weapon formed against you will prosper. (Is. 54:17.)
God’s Word is eternal. If you plant the incorruptible seed in your heart and do the things Jesus said, you will not fail!
Do The Sayings Of Jesus
No one will be really successful in life unless he puts Jesus’ sayings into action. Jesus said:
Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he is like:
He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock.
But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth: against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great. Luke 6:47-49
Jesus is not talking about housing projects. He has revealed secrets that will make you successful in life. The Word says, The secret things belong unto the Lord, our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us (Deut. 29:29).
The Spirit Never Sleeps
The Apostle Paul said, The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God (Rom. 8:16).
You can’t contact God with your body. God is a Spirit; therefore, we commune and fellowship with God through our spirits, even while we are asleep. Your spirit can commune with God twenty-four hours a day.
Whether you sow right seeds or wrong seeds, the principle of sowing and reaping will produce in your life. Learn the principles of how the Kingdom operates and apply them daily. They will not work for you just because you know about these principles. You must believe them and put them into action.
Things to Remember:
God’s Kingdom operates on the principle of sowing and reaping.
Your heart is the soil.
The words you speak are the seeds.
You sow God’s Word in your heart by speaking it out your mouth.
Each time you speak, you are sowing words-God’s words or the Devil’s words.
You will reap the harvest of your words, whether good or evil.
You plant the Word; the soil will do the producing. If you sow seeds of poverty and sickness, the soil cannot produce prosperity and health. To change the harvest, you must change the seed you are sowing.
Don’t Sow Seed of Trouble
When you understand that your spirit continually produces what you speak, you realize why some bad things happen in your life. You can see that by saying things like, “Lord, we won’t ever get these debts paid; we’ll never have the money by the end of the year to make the house payment,” you open the door to the Devil and allow that very thing to come to pass!
Some people say, “Trouble and sorrows follow me all the days of my life. I just get out of one, and another comes along. Every time I get ahead a little, something bad happens and it takes all our finances.” These people don’t realize that they have been saying this same thing for twenty years and the Devil has had a heyday.
For several years Johnson grass was a problem on a portion of my farm. Johnson grass is a real problem to farmers and requires special attention. Suppose I had said to my workers, “Since we’ve had trouble with Johnson grass in this field, we’re going to plant some more Johnson grass. It would be foolish for me to plant more grass or weeds just because I had been having trouble with weeds and grass. That doesn’t make any sense at all, but many Christians are doing that very thing: praying and talking the problem. When you say, “Lord, I prayed and it’s getting worse. What are we going to do?” you are sowing weed seed in the soil-and those seeds will produce. Faith cometh by hearing. They are hearing troubles and problems; therefore, they will have faith in the problems and troubles.
Some people continually sow seeds of doubt, fear, and unbelief. They talk sickness and disease, then wonder why they can’t walk in prosperity and health. They may be crying out to God to change their situation; but as long as they continue to say the same things, God can’t help them.
Everything produces after its kind. If they would speak according to the Word by making statements such as, “All the blessings in Deuteronomy 28 are coming upon me and overtaking me; goodness and mercy are following me all the days of my life,” they would change the direction of their life. To turn your ship, you must turn the rudder. To change the harvest, you must change the seed you are sowing.
The Heart Produces The Kind Planted
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 knoweth not how (Mark 4:26,27).
Jesus is telling us that the heart, or spirit, of man was designed to operate in the same way that the ground produces crops. According to the Law of Genesis, everything produces after its kind.
We are seeking first the Kingdom by finding where the Kingdom resides, then how it works. We don’t have to understand all the reasons why it works. We need to know how to plant the Word in the heart (soil), then once planted how to care for it to keep it from being choked. The soil will do the producing.
Your human spirit was designed to search the avenues of God’s wisdom day and night-for years, if necessary-to lead you to the things or position you have been confessing.
Seeds Produce After Their Kind
You don’t sow radish seeds in a garden and hope for cucumbers? When I was farming, I didn’t plant cotton and expect to reap soybeans or rice. It just doesn’t work that way.
While I was plowing the soil to plant cotton or soybeans, the ground never yelled at me and said, “I’m not going to raise soybeans this year. I’ve decided that you need cucumbers, so I’m going to raise cucumbers!”
It couldn’t do that; it had to produce whatever I planted-whether it was cotton, soybeans, rag weeds, or oak trees! The soil had no choice but to do what the seed demanded.
About six months after a soybean seed is planted, it will produce a handful of soybeans that look just like the one planted. You can’t plant soybeans and get apples, or plant cockleburs and get roses. The soil was not designed to decide what should be produced. God designed it to react to the demands of the seed that is planted and to bring forth an exact duplication of its kind.
Sow A Seed-Reap A Harvest
You sow seeds (words you speak) into the soil of your heart, into your spirit man. Every time you speak, you sow either God’s words or the Devil’s words. Each will produce after its kind.
Conceiving in the spirit is like planting seeds into soil. Just as a particular type of seed will bring forth that same kind of plant, so will a particular type of word produce after its kind.
This is the Law of Genesis. It has never changed, and it never will, for God made a promise to creation. In Genesis 8:21,22 the Lord said in His heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake…While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
In the covenant God made with Noah and the animals of the earth, He said that as long as the earth remained, the process of sowing and reaping would never cease.
Through the parable of the sower, God is telling us how the Kingdom of God operates, setting the stage for understanding how God’s Kingdom works inside us. It works by the sowing of words, We plant words in the Kingdom of God which is in us.
Faith Comes By Hearing
The first time you heard your voice on a tape recorder, you probably said, “That can’t be me! It doesn’t sound like me.” But it was you, and it did sound like you! It sounded exactly the way you sound to everyone else. You were probably embarrassed by the way you sounded to yourself.
Why is that? The reason your voice does not sound the same to you on tape as when you are speaking is that on tape you are hearing yourself predominantly through the outer ear.
You have two sets of ears: the outer ear and the inner ear. The inner ear is a bone structure inside your head. When you talk, you get some sound through the outer ear; but most of the sound you hear comes through the inner ear. When you plug your ears and talk, the sound is louder because you are stopping up the outer ear.
That should tell us something. Paul wrote: But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh…But what said it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart (Rom. 10:6,8). Notice the Word is in your mouth first, then in your heart.
I am convinced that God designed the physical body in such a way that the words you speak are picked up by the inner ear and fed directly into the human spirit. This is why the words you speak are so powerful.
Words spoken by someone else don’t have that kind effect on you. If I preached the Word of God to you and confessed what God said, you would get some faith from it if you accepted it into your spirit; but you would get it much faster if you started speaking it yourself. The words you say have more effect on your spirit than the words of another person.
Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Rom. 10:17). One of the major keys to confession and faith is that what you hear yourself speak produces faith inside you.
Chapter 18 of Proverbs states: The words of a man’s mouth are as deep waters (v.4); A fool’s mouth is his destruction, and his lips are the snare of his soul (v.7); A man’s belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth; and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled (v.20).
As we have already seen, belly means “human spirit.” A man’s spirit shall be filled, or satisfied, with the fruit of his mouth. The way to fill your spirit is to speak. What you speak will get into your spirit.
When your words get into your spirit, they will get back into your mouth. Every time they go through this process, they will get stronger. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh (Matt. 12:34). The confession of God’s Word is necessary to build faith.
The Soil
The sower is sowing words. Jesus said the soil that these words are sown into is the heart of man or the human spirit. The heart is the production center. It is the soil that will produce what you plant.
The sower sows the seed of the Word of God. You are a sower. You sow God’s Word into your heart by speaking His Word.
Good Ground
Matthew 13:23 describes the man who received the seed into the good ground as one who hears the Word and understands it. Only one planting survived and brought forth fruit: the soil (heart) that received the seed. In other words, that soil was prepared; it had no thorns or stones in it.
