God's Laws of Process and Growth

John 12:24 - Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone: but if it die, it brings forth much fruit.

   Jesus speaks to us of a seed and its process; it must fall into the ground and die. Both of those ideas are rejected by our positive-thinking, you-can-do-it culture. Firstly, we do not want to fall and, secondly, we certainly do not want to die, but Jesus says it is essential that both happen. The seed will remain an isolated and solitary seed if it does not surrender to this seemingly contradictory route. The seed has to leave one environment and enter another environment in order for it to change and grow. Do we wish to continue to cling to what we know? Are we going to hang on to the comfort of familiarity? You have probably heard people say, ‘I would rather stick with the devil I know than the devil I don’t know’, meaning that even though circumstances may be hard and undesirable, many times we are afraid to step out into something that we do not know so, we stay with the undesirable thing that we do know. Sadly though, we will never know the possibilities of what could be if we remain in the same known place, abiding as a seed. There was an Abraham within Abram, but, he would never have developed into the father of a multitude had he not left the familiar status quo behind. Elisha left his parents and his oxen, David left the sheepfold, Peter and John left their nets, Saul of Tarsus left the Pharisees and all of God’s men and women must leave in order for the promise of Jesus to be fulfilled; ‘he shall receive an hundredfold’.

    The seed represents astounding potential. The DNA of a full-grown oak tree is in the acorn, but there are laws of process that need to be observed, submitted to and obeyed. It is the will of God for that seed to grow and to become all that lies dormant within it, but there are laws of God that determine the unfolding of his will. If that seed never falls into the soil, thus surrendering itself to the death procedure, the capabilities and possibilities of the seed will never be released. The fall, the yielding, the surrendering of the seed must take place first; we must say with Jesus, ‘not my will but thine be done’. The seed, by remaining a seed, controls what it will always be; however, we need to release control if we are to become what God wants us to be.

   The seed must enter into the ground, into the unseen territory and into a new environment. God works through environment; nothing develops on its own. Neither the seed nor the man will ever grow without being placed around the right people and within the right setting. Once the seed has fallen into the soil, it must begin to die. Oh! How we recoil from that word and from the idea of death, but when we understand that death simply means a separation, then we gain a new appreciation for the method that God has chosen. It will be necessary for the seed to be stripped of its protective shell in order for the nutrients of the soil to penetrate and do their mysterious work. We will never reach the levels of development that are written into our DNA until we remove our self-defense systems and become vulnerable.

    If we do not submit to this God-ordained way, Jesus informs us that we will abide alone, which is another way of saying that we will remain a single, solitary seed; lots of potential but sadly, no change and no results. However, if we do yield and surrender entirely, placing ourselves in the soil of God’s choosing, we can expect a life of consistent growth, undeniable influence, multiplied productivity and deeply satisfying fulfillment.