In Ephesians 1, Paul writes in verse three that God has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Sometimes when reading that I have felt frustrated because the blessing felt inaccessible. I yearned for God’s blessing to be part of my everyday reality, but I’ve had to learn how to access it. How we bring what God has already provided for us in the heavenly realms into our earthly lives is through the word of God. The word of God is full of promises and every single one has been given to us in Christ. The word tells us what our spiritual blessings are and it’s the power in the word itself that brings the harvest of God’s blessing into our lives.

In Matt 13, Mark 4 and Luke 8 Jesus tells The Parable of the Sower, this story reveals to us the way God has made things to work in his kingdom. The power of the promise is in the seed, the word of God, and when we plant that seed in good soil in our hearts, we will reap a harvest ie. receive the promise into our everyday reality. If we look at this passage where it appears in each gospel, Jesus clearly indicates the qualities of good soil that we must cultivate in the heart to reap a harvest. Farmers actively ready the soil and we also need to proactively prepare the soil of our hearts to receive the miracle blessing we long for.

The good soil refers to someone who…

⁃ Hears the word and understands it (Matt 13)

⁃ Hears the word and accepts it (Mark 4)

⁃ Hears the word, retains it and perseveres to produce a crop (Luke 8)

When the good soil is described, it always begins with someone hearing the word and the end result is always that person producing a crop. But there are different keys revealed in each gospel on how we need respond to the word after we have heard it. I spent some time looking at these words in the Greek on Blue letter bible to get a deeper understanding of how to put these words into practice.

A) Understand – To join together in the mind, put together, comprehend, consider

B) Accept – Receive, delight in, take up

C) Retain – Hold fast, keep in memory, possess, seize on, keep secure, keep firm possession of

D) Persevere – Steadfastness, constancy, endurance, patiently, cheerful/hopeful endurance

In my next post I’m going to give a practical example of how we put these words into practice when planting a seed, a promise of the word, in our heart.