Welcome to this course unit called life. We are in the first semester, this endless first semester. We have done some tests and few have passed. Today we want refine some of what we’ve been preaching for years. We want to try and start putting these concepts together. Sometimes it’s not easy to make sense because we come from different backgrounds. We were born on different days, have different traumas, fears and different ambitions. So, it’s not very easy to find speech and language that harmonizes us. Some of us fear cockroaches, others fear snakes. Others fear poverty. Others are like, you know, I fear nothing. God is speaking to us and he’s not saying anything different from place to place because human beings, we are dealing with the same issue.
If you find a mother and a young girl when they’re having a conversation, The conversation may be around hair, but when you find grandmothers, their concern, and conversation might be about the grandchildren. Where we are in life affects what we hear, how we hear, our ambitions or how we understand life affects what we pay attention to. For instance, you say you’re praying to God to save you from poverty, but you can’t hear a money conversation. When they’re talking about interest rates, treasury bills, bonds, and markets, you stop paying attention. You say for example that you have a vision to be rich selling grasshoppers but fail to realize There’s no futures market for grasshoppers. Grasshoppers are not traded on the stock exchange. You don’t understand how the economy works, and just complain when your ideas fall flat. see what I’m trying to say. You see how disconnected we are from reality?. On one hand, we spell out ambition and, on another end, when there are platforms to help us manage that ambition, we are removed from them. For instance, how long is the business part of news every day? Isn’t that business news segment the part where you walk away to go get a glass of water? When business language and numbers, figures start flying on the screen, you are not interested! that’s how deluded we are about life.
Here is another example. Younger people, want to do life better, but don’t want to listen to older people and think their life is going to be unique. You think your life is going to be very unique and different. As far as the Bible is concerned, life is spiritual.
Let’s make a list of the things we consider to be “the harvest of life” say Health, peace, children. So, in the context of parable of the seed and the Sower, you have you have elements. What are those three elements? You have the Sower ,the Seed, the soil and, the harvest.
Now that we have the elements in the parable clearly listed, we’re trying to see how can we use the word to get what we want in life. Remember we have The Sower and the seed on one hand and on the other hand we have the soil and the harvest.
Which of these elements listed in the parable are the variables and which ones are the constants? We do not contend with the integrity, the love, the quality of the Sower who is the lord. The seed is the word of God. God has no favorites, that means that the word from God to us is as efficacious from person to person.
It is not less powerful in a certain jurisdiction. So, the seed and the Sower are the constant. That means the Soil and the harvest are the variables. They are the elements that are prone to change.
WHAT IS THE SOIL?
It is your sense and the spirit. Question, how does the word get into the human spirit? Through faith, and we know that Faith cometh by hearing. So that means we need to examine how mobilized your senses are. How alert are your senses in attending to the word? When the word is going forth are you physically present but your senses are elsewhere.
So, we can see that quality of the soil is a trained soul. Trained as in, the art of learning to be taught, do you know that learning to be taught is an art?. In my younger days when I went to church, with my parents I was at church physically but by inside was anticipating lunch back at home. Physically present in the sanctuary but my senses elsewhere.
Take the example of your children. Do you, think they come to church for the word? No! they come to meet their friends that’s where they are in in life. when I got saved properly, finally, I had to learn to be deliberate in attending to the word. So, if you can’t hear, can’t see, and understand the messaging of the word those are soul challenges. until your senses are arrested to actually pay attention to even just hear basic hearing. So that affects the quality of the of the soil, your senses and then obviously your spirit.
LET’S BUILD OUR FORMULA.
let’s combine the Sower and the seed, these are the constant factors of production. That means the variables we’re dealing with are just the soil and the harvest.
Now, let’s deal with the qualities of the variable called the soil. The Bible tells us that there are those who hear the word because they can’t understand it. What happens? The Bible says that the devil steals the word. What is what does that look like? how do we describe somebody who doesn’t understand the word and the devil is stealing it?
HARD SOIL
What the Bible is really talking about here is somebody who is carnal, that hard soil is carnality. This parable cannot be dealing with an unbeliever because God has nothing to offer to an unbeliever because his spirit is dead. He has no Holy Spirit.
To be consistent, the parable is actually dealing with a believer. It’s dealing with the different conditions of our senses whether in the soul or in the spirit. So that first soil that hears and doesn’t understand is carnal. Carnal means somebody is hearing the English of the bible, they’re hearing the words or the language. But what they’re hearing is not translating into spirit as understanding.
Understanding is not for the mind. It is for the for the spirit. That first soil that is unable to produce anything is talking about a carnal man. Now, what is carnal? Or What is carnality? That is somebody who is ruled by the senses. To them, the messaging of the gospel only makes sense but not spirit.
SHALLOW SOIL
The second kind of soil, what is rocky ground. What does that look like? . Shallow soil would be a good description of rocky ground. Why? Because in the narrative of the parable, it says that the seed had no root. When the plant was growing it had no depth of root, so you have a thin layer of soil. The Bible describes such a person as one who hears the word, receives it with joy, gets excited. But when they tested for that word’s sake they cannot hold up. The Bible says they get offended for the word’s sake. That second kind of soil are people who are presumptive. They think they have arrived spiritually. They think they know spirituality but conditions test them and they get frustrated. They are always found wanting when conditions test.
So, we can take for instance, we can have an evangelistic meeting and the evangelist will say a wonderful word and somebody will lay hold of it. They’ll be excited for two days about the word. They’ll have an expectation based on that word for about two days, after a while that word will wane. When you meet them two weeks later, you’ll think they have never been to that meeting. You’ll say, “But the man of God said?” They’ll be like, “What did he say?”. So, we’re talking about somebody who is shallow spiritually. That means that their quality of understanding is very shallow because the big subject in the parable of the seed and Sower is understanding.
DISTRACTED SOIL
So, the third kind of soil the Bible talks of are those who receive the word, and can produce a harvest. The problem is that it has anti-harvest elements. Thorns and thistles, they choke the word. How would you describe such a person? So, that is somebody who is actually spiritual. Unlike the shallow presumptive soil, they have some depth. They can actually hear and understand the word. But their other pursuits compromise the quality of what the word can produce in them and for them.Technically speaking such a person is spiritual. The problem is they have not settled the matter of wants and needs.
So, these wants end up taking their attention. Okay. So how does that work? You can’t say I’m praying. I have a money issue. Then you get into prayer and start praying about money. If you obsess about some need, a job, a spouse, a house or any one of those, they will take you over. These wants take away attention. In any engagement spiritually, your senses are nearest to you, and you have an enemy who the Bible calls “the prince of the power of the air”. He’s nearest to your ear and has the ability to minister to you and dilute the power of the word. So, the word does not make sense. Life and its wants start to make more sense than the word.
Here is an example. let’s say I left from the village and came to the city to prosper, now I find I need to build a house in the village to show people that in the city we are making Money. it sounds like a good pursuit, but the hidden devil in there is if mammon and God contend in your heart, Mammon wins. Jesus asks “can you make your one eye to look up and one eye to look down”? you cannot serve God and mammon. If you make a mammon pursuit, mammon wins. Now, how does mammon win? It wins by the means. It wins in what it takes to make it. in the spirit realm, the means matter! You say “I don’t care how the money comes”. It will come at the expense of your spirit’s life. The bible Says “will you gain the whole world and lose your soul?”. So, all those are ideas related to thorns and thistles. Every time you are unable to pray your way out of the world of cares, your cares will choke the word and that word will not produce a harvest.
Remember now we are we’re using health as an example of harvest. So, if you had the word for healing, but at the same time you’re reading journals about your condition. you will have more information about your sickness, than the revelation about God and how he can heal you. The information about your health issue will choke the little revelation there is about your healing. That’s why later in the parable, the Bible says that “those that have little, even the little they have will be taken away”.
In regard to the soil filled with thorns and thistles, I like to put the blame on us, the ministers, who build your ambitions in the world, not ambitions in the Lord.Let me give an example. If I stand here on the pulpit and tell you how you can be great, how you can build apartment blocks, how you can set up airlines, how you can set up corporations, I would be wishing you well. But in the same breath, I’m not inspiring you and have unknowingly set you up for disappointment.
GOOD SOIL
So, we have the fourth kind of soil. The Bible says “these are they that hear the word and they understand it”. And what happens? They produce a harvest , some 30 fold, 60 fold and some 100 fold. This is how I like to help Christians, if the word is producing nothing, then check the quality of your soil. because let me tell you, many of us would like to think you are good soil, but evaluation would like to suggest that we are not good because we’re producing nothing.
People who will tell you, their problem. They’ll tell you what they’re doing and say, “Ah, these days, you know, I’ve been praying about this and this, I meditate on the word.” But Your inputs don’t match the product. You tell me you’re praying. You tell me you’re fasting. You tell me you are sowing your seeds. You tell me you’re doing all these things but on the production end there’s not even 30-fold. That last, type of in the parable soil is giving us hope. It’s telling you the moment you begin to understand the least you can produce is 30-fold.
So let me shock you. There may be some things about the word, where I’m hard soil carnal and un-receptive. You see when you are dense on a subject and you cannot produce a harvest on that subject, you are on hard ground in regard of that word or spiritual concept. I want to help you to evaluate yourself properly. when having a conversation about why the word is not working, nobody ever thinks about the parable of the seed. Everybody straight away thinks about how much I’ve prayed, how much I’ve not prayed, how long I’ve waited. nobody evaluates themselves from the angle of this parable. That parable is the evaluation mechanism.
I wanted you to first understand the soil number four is good soil. The good soil we’re talking about can be described by a simple word “spiritual”. There might be people who are just thinking I’m a good person. Good is not what qualifies you for productivity in the spirit. The standard for productivity and harvest in the spirit is being spiritual.
Let’s go back to our example the word for health, right? “With his stripes I was healed”, that’s the seed. The Sower is speaking right now. What does it take to mobilize faith for a harvest in regard to this promise?. Okay. So, let me help you now. Now, understanding is the ability to grasp. So, when the word is spoken, understanding is your grasping power. Now, only after you have understood are you in position to implement or apply. That is what we call faith.
The Bible says “faith cometh by hearing”. So now we know that between when the word is spoken and when faith happens there are elements such as revelation and understanding. You must have a sense of ownership. You must have grasped that word. So, if God is telling you that with his stripes you were healed, do you get healed immediately? It’s not a trick question! It is to help us to think. When that word comes, what is between you and the experience? Do you have a responsibility?
Now, we are not addressing this from that angle of an anointed man helping you., we are speaking from the angle of you making your own pursuit spiritually. So, I ask again, when you hear the word “with his stripes you were healed”, What does it take to have confidence to stand on it, to see it through?. The answer to that question is the Word of Life! That’s what I’ve been trying to communicate since October. There is the word that prepares the soil before your soil to be good soil. It’s called the word of life. The word for healing needs the word of life first because the word of life is what gives you the power to own, to implement, to stand, to take, to resist.
Under the Element of the seed or the word, you have the “word for the thing” and “the word for life.”. The word for life is what makes you spiritual. You need to be spiritual first before you get a word for a job and it works., or before you get a word for spouse and it works. That is the hardest thing for Christians to comprehend. I’ve met pastors, apostles, prophets who don’t know this foundational truth. Its the word of life that you received, the word of life prepared your soil. The words of life, Grace! that’s what makes you spiritual. Nothing else. Many people think grace is one subject, anointing is another subject, words for marriage are another subject. That is a disjointed approach. That’s why we’ve come this way.
Now we’ve known that the harvest depends on the quality of your heart. Now you’ve known what the heart is, It’s both your senses and your spirit. How much they are in tune to God. We have concluded very simply our pursuit is we don’t need all these other types of soil. Who wants to be carnal? Who wants to be shallow, or crowded out of life by the care of this world? Those are not our pursuits. Our real pursuit is to be spiritual, that is the soil that produces 30, 60 and 100. People think you become spiritual when you pray. No, you can pray all you want and You’ll have moments of being in the spirit, but you can’t keep it. You can’t retain it because you have not the words of Life in you.
You can be very intentional and grow to know when you’re not spiritual. We don’t want to have to do a sermon here on “How to un-shallow your soil”. We don’t have the time for that. Our pursuit is simply to be spiritual because that is the war.
When the devil is contending with you, that’s the first thing he seeks to removes you from, being spiritual. The enemy of being spiritual is information. this the dark spirit realm is always bombarding you from every front, you’re a failure. Etc. You see, young people have hope because they say, “I’ll get rich sometime in future.” Then one day it becomes the future and they’re not rich yet, other religions have found ways to cope with such disappointments.
God is telling us that He loved us, that Christ has washed us in his own blood and has made us a kingdom of kings and priests unto our God. Again, the Bible is telling us that “he raised us up” that “he gave us life even though we were dead in our trespasses”. God who is so rich in mercy he loved us so much that he gave us life when we were dead by raising Christ from the dead. Not only did he raise us up from the dead with him, but has raised us up together with him and, seated us together with him in the heavenly places.
Precious saints, it would have been good enough if Jesus had stopped at paying our debt at the cross, because on the cross your sins are forgiven. He foresaw the world that we would be in and he sought to equip us comprehensively. In John 16:33 the Bible says that in this world, you’ll have trials and tribulation. But what did he say? “Take heart, I have overcome the world.” There you don’t have a better deal than that in life anywhere. Jesus says, “If you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will our father in heaven give us everything we need especially the Holy Ghost.”
Now we see spiritual is the soil that produces. Instead of being worried about productivity you should be more concerned about creating an environment to become spiritual. Once you are spiritual, (Good soil) productivity is organic. I’m trying to draw to your attention. Away from today’s business and worrying about things that are trivial and unconnected to your destiny. If you are worrying about why your prayers are not working, the simple answer is you’re not spiritual. It’s a diagnosis of your condition. So that’s the big war. It’s how can we desensitize ourselves from material and become more oriented to the spirit. So, these are the two things you need to understand there’s the word that makes you spiritual. Then there’s the word that comes and works in you when you are spiritual.
So, now we come to our big point. There’s what God does in you and what God does around you. This is where the anointing becomes dangerous for most of you. The anointing will help and things may happen around you regardless of the quality of your soil. You may assume you are good enough for productivity, yet, it is an anointing upon the man of God that is at work, independent of your unbelief.
Then There’s what God does in and I’m telling you today that what God wants to do first is in you. But most of us are not patient. We are disobeying the laws of the spirit and want the word to work. We don’t want to be good soil first. How is that going to work?
We are like modern farmers applying all these new methods of planting things now, Agri- engineering looking for a bumper harvest, by passing process to arrive at a quick yield with the least effort. But if we are talking about the organics of the spirit, divine processes can’t be by passed. If you don’t get spiritual first, you will keep hearing the word and you be unable to produce fruit after it.
Unfortunately, when most of us go to the bible what you’re mostly looking for is not the word that forms Christ in us, The words of life.
That’s why I gave an example earlier. who pays attention to business news? It is all Greek to the uninterested Why? Because you are illiterate in those matters. That’s what the word of life will be to you. When you don’t get spiritual, the word will be coming to you in forms that could help you, that can rescue you in the moment, but you won’t be able to hear it. The word will be there. It will be present, but it will not be it will not be making sense to you because of unbelief.
Unbelief is when you’re struggling to believe a word because you’re in the senses. The word doesn’t make sense if you’re going through a tough period as often is the case. We go through tough seasons and when the word of the Lord comes to them to help us understand what going on we fail to see what God is doing.
So now if you’re struggling to make such a word as with his stripes I was healed. If you’re struggling to make it work. First of all, does it make sense that by his stripes healed you? Here is another if you read it that “surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”. Does it make sense? It doesn’t make sense. Can you see where the struggle is?
So, you have a word, it is spiritual. Right? It is addressing a spiritual issue and it is it can only be understood spiritually and it is easier implemented in the spirit but your senses are what is struggling to grasp it. You see, imagine this. You have pain and then the word says with his stripes you are healed, can you see the disconnect when you are in the senses?
So, you need to be in the spirit to have a vision of him bearing your diseases and carrying your sick. Only in the spirit can you get that vision and once you get that vision now it is easy to see that with these stripes I was surely healed. Suddenly it makes spirit reality. But once you’re in the senses, it does not make spirit reality.
A spiritual person has no problem forgiving, one in the senses pursues justice. You see, now because a spiritual person will have gotten a vision of having been forgiven by grace. And they say to themselves, how can who be forgiven much fail to forgive? you only first have that vision in the spirit.
All spiritual advice is sweet, it is wonderful, it is peaceful but it makes no sense to carnal people. When you meet people and they’re going through things, you give them spiritual advice and because they are spiritually dense, they cannot discern the hand of the Lord and how it works.When you are in the spirit, you can be led. the ways that God leads do not make reason. Can you see where our conflict usually is?
Do not forget the seed does not work independent of the soil. The seed is not an airplane that just flies past soil. and comes out on the other side as harvest. Jesus said, “What shall we liken the kingdom of God unto it? It is like sowing seeds. You sow them in soil. You go to sleep. You wake up. You don’t know how they grow. But when it’s time for harvest, you bring the sickle of harvest.” He’s describing spiritual processes.
If I gave you spiritual advice for where you want God to take you, you will reject it flat out. You will not receive it. Your senses will argue with it. that’s why I’m saying our real war is getting spiritual. That’s what church is about. Church is not about stories and extra extracurricular activities.
The Bible declares, there’s therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, to them which walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. I’m telling you there some people when they’re ministering to you, they’re orienting you towards the Flesh they say “I see you’re great” …that is ministry to your senses. Why?
The Bible, tells you are more than a conqueror through Christ. Its Christ is who makes you spiritual. So, the precursor for the word to work in our life is the knowledge of our union with Christ. Those are the words of life. Jesus says it, it’s given unto us to understand the mysteries of the kingdom. What he’s basically saying is once you’re spiritual, this stuff is not mysteries anymore. The starting point is, becoming spiritual, that’s what grace is for. Now, most of us want to hear what God is saying. When somebody has been fashioned by the words of life, they will discern and know what God’s mind is in every matter. For example, they will know who their suitor is. It’s not a prayer matter. Every time I see people praying about that matter, I marvel.
When you know who you are, you know what’s good for you and you know what you cannot coexist with. It is embedded in your system. The witness was simple. When you are carnal you are already deceived, you are un-spiritual. Then your dreams are lying you even the more. But when you are spiritual, the word which is spiritual becomes alive. It makes spiritual material; it makes spirit to you.
Understand the words that first make you spiritual are those words about your union with Christ. Before you receive a word about some conquests in the spirit, first receive a word about your identity. That’s how easy is it.So, it’s easy now to evaluate your situation. when you are overwhelmed mentally bombarded from many fronts Or, you feel lost. like you’ve lost your bearings. It’s just an identity crisis. You don’t know whose you are, where you are, whose spirit you have. So, you just need to start with simple meditation. “I am not of the flesh; I am of the spirit because the spirit of Christ dwells in me”. Simple statements. “In Christ, there’s no condemnation. I walk not after the flesh. I walk after the spirit.” You see, you’re rehearsing. “I am raised up together, together with Christ into this newness of life. I’ve been set free from carnality. Now I am of the spirit”. You see that’s the first thing you need to resuscitate.
The devil’s main goal is simply to disorient you first. That’s all. So, some of you think your contentions are about a job, about marriage, about health, etc. No, those are secondary. The enemies real target is your soil, the quality of your spirit man.
Now we know what it’s all about. Look, it’s a simple it’s a simple trick. When you’re participating spiritually, whatever you do be deliberate. the Bible says “looking unto Jesus the author and perfecter of your Faith”. The purpose of prayer is to first help you exit the realm of care. When you meditate, focus on the scriptures that unite you with Christ and take you out of the picture and place Christ’s advantages before you and your disadvantages behind you. That is the words of life.