Spoiled Seed

Our local supermarket had a promotion running recently. Every time you spent more than a certain amount, you would be given a miniature gardening kit with a small container, a soil pod and some seed – a flower seed, a herb or a vegetable. The idea would be to plant the seed in the small container, water it regularly and once it started growing well, to transfer it to your garden or a bigger pot for it to continue flourishing.

Soon after this promotion started I had a humorous conversation with my daughter-in-law about the collection of little plants I’d started with the help of this new promotion. She was telling me that she’d tried to plant some of these seeds but got impatient when she didn’t see progress quickly enough, and then dug up the seeds to see if they were growing. Of course, the effects were disastrous, and nothing came of that venture.

I think we all carry some of that impatience within us. We understand the law of sowing and reaping in the natural. If you sow seed, water and nurture it, growth and fruit is usually the end result. But many times, we grow impatient when it comes to trusting God for our own life situations. We pray for the salvation of a loved one, breakthrough in a financial situation, healing for a friend, change in a job situation, but when the answers to our prayers don’t come within our desired time frame, we become discouraged or upset with the Lord’s timetable. We may even try to make things happen – give God a little ‘help’ to bring about some results. This most certainly is never a good idea and may, in fact, delay God’s blessings or create bigger problems for us.

God promised Abraham that He would make him a great nation, but when Abraham and Sarah remained childless, and without the heir God promised them, they took matters into their own hands, and arranged for Abraham’s concubine to provide him a son. This son, Ishmael, was not the son of promise, born according to God’s plan (Genesis 18), and this created problems for Abraham and the generations to come. The descendants of Ishmael would become the Canaanite clans that surrounded, harassed, and plagued the nation of Israel. God made a promise to Abraham at the age of seventy-five that He would make him a great nation. He renewed His promise when Abraham was ninety, but Isaac, the promised heir, was only born when Abraham was a hundred years old. But oh, the blessing God’s original plan brought about! Jesus, our Saviour and Redeemer, came from the lineage of Abraham, and through Jesus, we are all the seed of Abraham (Galatians 3:29).

When God gives us a promise or a sound, prophetic word, it usually comes in seed form. That means that it may need to be kept in our hearts, nurtured by faith and prayer, and left to God’s timing for it to blossom and come into being. It requires trust in the Lord that He knows the perfect conditions in which it would flourish and bring glory to Him. The Christian author, Elizabeth Elliot said, “Don’t dig up in doubt what you planted in faith.” Don’t spoil that seed that God planted in your heart and that you received by faith. Don’t dig it up, doubt God’s ways and devise your own plans to force a premature outcome which is not God’s best for you. Wait patiently on the Lord.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, please forgive me for the times that I doubted Your good plans for me, and the promises You gave me for my life. Please help me to remain patient and to trust Your timing and Your perfect ways, in Jesus’ name.