“So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground.” Let us think for a little while of some more of the lessons of the kingdom that the seed teaches us.

Do you get any flowers in your garden just by wishing they were there? No, you must put in the seed before anything will grow. And then you do not sow any kind of seed that you can get hold of, and expect to get from it the particular flowers that you want. You must sow the right kind of seed, the seed of just the flowers that you want, just where you want them, for everything is sure to spring up “after its kind.”

If you should very much want some roses, and should sow poppy seeds, would you get any roses? Oh, no; all your wishes could never make roses grow from weeds, nor from anything but rose trees. You cannot “gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles.”

And just so, nothing will grow in your hearts, either good or bad, without seed. Just as you can have in your garden the flowers that you want by putting in the right seed, so you can have your lives just what you wish them to be by having the right kind of seed sown in your hearts. If you want, and I am sure you do, to have the gentleness and kindness of Christ blossom and bring forth fruit in your lives, you must have the good seed of the Word of God sown in your hearts.

When God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass,” in that Word He was putting into the ground the seed of all the grass and flowers that have ever sprung up. When He said, “Let the earth bring forth . . . the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind,” that was the seed of all the fruit that there has ever been in the earth.

He has made you from the dust of the ground, and you are His garden where He plants the seed of His Word, that you may bring forth just what He wishes. When He says to you, “Little children, love one another,” He is sowing in your hearts the seed of love, from which all loving words and actions will spring forth like sweetest blossoms. And then Jesus says to you, “Be ye kind one to another,” and that is the seed of kindness that He puts into you. He says also, “Children, obey your parents,” and this Word of God is the seed of obedience that He sows in your hearts.

When you sow seed in the earth you do not have to try to make it grow; neither does the earth try to bring it forth, but it springs up of itself because the life of God is in it. Jesus says, “The words that I speak unto you, they are Spirit and they are life.” Listen, then, to the precious words of Jesus, and so receive them into your hearts as the earth receives the seed, and you will not have to try to love one another, to be kind and obedient and gentle, but these graces of the Spirit of Jesus will spring forth in your lives as naturally as the flowers spring from the seed that you sow in the ground.

But there is something we have not yet spoken of that must be done before the seed is sown. You know that the ground must be dug up and watered and made soft and ready to receive the seed. If it should only lie on the top of the hard ground, or be put just below the surface, it would he lost. In the Parable of the Sower, which you may read in the fourth chapter of Mark, Jesus shows how important it is that the ground should be prepared to receive the good seed. It must sink deep into the soft ground, and then it will spring up and bring forth fruit.

So your hearts, which are the garden of the Lord, must be prepared by Him for the seed of the Word which He sows in them. If you ask Him, His Holy Spirit will work in you, and make your heart soft and tender and ready for the good seed. Do you remember what David said about this good seed? “Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee.” Just as the seed is buried in the soil, so must the Word be hidden in our hearts and kept there. Then we shall be among those of whom Jesus says, “These are they which, having heard the Word, keep it, and bring forth fruit unto perfection.” “Whoso keepeth His Word, in him verily is the love of God perfected.”

The Present Truth – September 29, 1898
E. J. Waggoner

Story in pdf  After its Kind