Episode #65 God Plants (and Plans) Too – Seed Sowing Summer

Hey friends. I hope your summer is off to an incredible start. If you're listening to this episode on the day or around the day that it first airs, we are entering into summer here, and as a mom with two young kids, summer means a lot of changes to our normal everyday routine. My life ministry business season allows me to stay home with my kids over the summer, but that wasn't always the case. And so whatever that looks like for you. I know there's often a lot of different activities and vacations and plans and boredom to beat as we navigate these summer months, and the series that we are entering into is something that I've actually never really talked with God about as we went into summer.

But this year, as we started approaching this time, I started talking with God about his goals, his plans for my family's summer, and he started talking with me about planting seeds. To make this a season of sewing and investing into my kids, into my marriage, and even to receive what God wanted to invest into me. What if God wants to use these next few weeks or months as a way to invest in deep-rooted growth and transformation for you? What could that look like?

I think for a lot of us, me included, we tend to think of summer months as fast paced and busy and full of fun activities, and even in the times where we're working and we're finding activities for our kids, or we're trying to plan family vacations, a lot of those things require expediency too.

How can I quickly prepare for this aspect of my work to be carried through while I'm out of the office?

How can I make arrangements for my kids and coordinate play dates?

How can I be intentional with my summer and play catch up if I feel like I'm not as prepared as I would want to be?

But what I have been encouraged with, and what I want to encourage you with too, is even as we enter into this season, God has plans and ways that he wants to invest in you.

I'm going to read for us from a passage in the gospel of Mark and it's Mark 4:26-29. This is Jesus teaching, and the heading in my Bible is "The Parable of the Seed Growing."

Starting in verse 26 "And he said, 'The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.'"

This is such an extraordinary example to use for the kingdom because a farmer planting and harvesting grain is so commonplace. It is so ordinary, especially when you're thinking about those who were listening to Jesus teach these parables back in the New Testament days.

He didn't say the kingdom of heaven is like this grandiose thing that you can't hardly comprehend. He said, the kingdom of heaven is like this ordinary thing that you see happen all the time where the human has a small part and the rest of it is carried out independent of human activity.

You don't know how it happens. It springs up. It goes from what is imperceptible to suddenly being perceptible and having a human role to play again, now it's time to harvest.

I love considering that analogy when it comes to the planting of seeds, because sometimes we can put too much ownership on ourselves:

It's up to me to plant all the seeds.

It's up to me to figure out the growth my family needs or the entertainment or the way that we can bond together.

It's up to me to make all the plans.

And yes, there are a lot of pieces that we can steward and that we get to be responsible for. But there are also things where we get to have a small part to play and then God does this imperceptible work of making it grow, and then we get to participate in the harvest.

Independent of our own human activity, God has things at work in your life and in your family. There is an imperceptible work that God is already at work executing in you, in your family, in your children right now. I wonder what he wants to show you about it. Let's ask him.

God, what's something that you are sowing into me and sowing into my family this summer?

I encourage you don't just default to the things you already know are important or significant in your season. Ask God. He might have something different he wants to show you.

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

Connect with Jen on Instagram