The Kingdom of God | The Parable of the Sower

So friends, today's teaching scripture comes from Matthew

Matthew 13:1–9

chapter 13, verses 1 to 9. It says that same day Jesus went

out of the house and sat beside the sea.

Such great crowds gathered around him that he got into a

boat and sat there. One things in parables saying,

Listen. A sower went out to sow, and as

he sowed some seeds fell on a path, and the birds came and ate

them up. Other seeds fell on rocky ground

where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly

since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were

scorched, and since they had no root they withered away.

Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and

choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil

and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some 60, some 30.

If you have ears, hear. This is the word of.

The Lord, the comedian Pete Holmes once said there are some

truths that are so big they can only be told with lies.

The reference here is to a metaphor.

That's what he's talking about. That's what he means.

He says metaphor means always true, sometimes happened,

generally speaking. Actually, most metaphors don't

happen in the most literal plain day-to-day sense.

Metaphors are not true. Time is not money.

Life is not a box of chocolates. And despite Billy Shakespeare's

claim, all the world is not a stage.

And yet somehow, as I say this to you today, something within

me twists up like but those things are true.

There's something that's importantly true about those

things. You can't say that's not true.

And the truths that are in those statements that that time is

money and the and the life is like a box of chocolates.

They're hard to convey. In another sense, I took a swing

at it. OK, so here's time as money.

But in a literal sense, OK, the time that we spend, although we

have to acknowledge that spend here is a metaphor, could

potentially be time that we are being paid a wage or, or if we

spend less time on a task and that task has a remunerative

commercial value, we could earn more money by being more

efficient with our time. Or we could say, even if we are

not literally making money a metaphor, our time has some

other kind of value that can be recognized.

Rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

Delightful. Why don't we just say that

instead? It's exhausting.

And when you say it, when, when I crush that nonsense out, it

doesn't even seem true or right, does it?

Like you find yourself. I find myself like, wait, wait,

what are you even talking about right now?

Whereas when I say time is funny, we can get a sense of

what that means. Although there are literal ways

in which it is not true, there are important ways in which it

is. I couldn't even say it without

saying other metaphors. So metaphor is baked into our

language. Baked.

I'll stop. Especially around things that

are abstract or complex. When we find places where plain

language fails us, we turn to metaphor.

We need something more out of our language.

So why is this? Why do we need lies for our deep

truth? Why do we need stories and

metaphor? And it's because in the reality

of what it is, to be truly human is something more than the

plane. There's something more to us, to

who we are, to what we are. It's so clear that even writers

and thinkers who are outside any faith tradition see it.

My very favorite author, Terry Pratchett of the Discworld

series. Thank you.

A scrupulous atheist. And yet he writes in his book

Hog Father, which is about Christmas, obviously, he says of

humanity that humans are in the place where the falling Angel

meets the rising ape, and there's something true about

that and what it is to be human. I think this one forgets at

something the very important that we are neither beasts, we

are not just animals, neither are we beings of pure spirit

hovering above the world, right? There's something integrated,

something about those things smashing together.

We are in skin and we are imbued with spirit.

We see this in the Scripture. Genesis 2 verse 7 says the Lord

Genesis 2:7

God formed man from the dust. He embodied humanity and

breathed into his nostrils. The breath of life imbued that

body with the spirit, and the human became a living being.

So we are not just one thing, we are a complicated and abstract

thing, a thing that cannot be talked about without metaphor.

We need metaphor for the big stuff and to begin to understand

concepts that are bigger than the frame of our mind, right?

Really complex and the really important things need metaphor.

One of these things is God. This is where the Jesus is the

correct answer to the Sunday school question.

God is a place, a person who desperately needs metaphor to

begin to have any understanding. In his book A More Christ Like

God, Bradley Jersack writes a a God who is real and alive must

exist beyond my own puny understanding, bigger than any

box in which I try to contain him.

There's just no way that God, the creator and sustainer of all

existence, can be explained and understood in plain language.

It's he's just too big. If you could, if you could hold

God in a tiny box, what kind of God would he be?

Would you want your God to be in a little box?

Does that make any sense? God knows that we can't

understand God very well. And so God has made it his

business his way throughout the history of humanity to be

seeking us all the time. God doesn't say you come to me

and understand. God says, let me break this down

for you. Let me explain.

He starts in the Old Testament with some common sense, a lot of

common sense rules, like here's how to try not to be a terrible

person a little bit, like just try to get a little bit of what

I'm talking about in here. Hey, treat the stranger like

people. How about that?

Let's just take a swing at it. Just understand a little bit

because God in his character is a welcoming God, right?

And so ultimately, God knows that even in the words and the

stories and the miracles, the ways he shows up in the Old

Testament, he cannot be known as well as he could most fully be

known, right? What's the best way for a human

to get a sense of who another person is?

It's for them to show up in person, right?

And so God comes as Jesus and is embodied himself and lives and

walks among us. Amen.

There's a ton of scripture about this Hebrews.

Well, you're going to get some. Here comes some.

It's in case you don't believe me.

Hebrews one one through 3 A long ago God spoke to our ancestors

in many and various ways by the prophets.

But in these last days, last days, it turns out, is a little

longer than we thought. He has spoken to us by a Son

whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also

created the world's. He is reflection of God's glory

and the exact imprint of God's being.

Jesus is the exact imprint of who God is.

Colossians 115. He, Jesus, is the image of the

invisible God, the first born of all creation.

Colossians 29. For in him the whole fullness of

deity dwells bodily. One of my very favorites, John

11 and 14, in the beginning was the Word referring here to

Jesus, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

And then in 14 and the Word became flesh and lived among us.

More on this Word metaphor later.

Jesus himself says, if you know me, if you have seen me, if

you've experienced me, have you met me?

You've met the Father. John 14-7 If you know me, you

will know my Father also from now on.

You do know him and have seen him.

And so Jesus's work, God's work on earth and Jesus is to reveal

the nature of God to humanity and to reveal the mission of

God, the Kingdom of God, to show us what it looks like when God

makes everything right, when God restores everything to himself.

This is the Kingdom of God. To reveal the Kingdom.

Jesus himself says it's his mission.

Luke 443 He said to them, I must proclaim the good news of God to

the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose.

So Jesus comes in some ways as a metaphor because there are Jesus

is the fullest expression and the very imprint of God, but

there are spiritual ways in which God the Father and God the

Son are different. This is a deep matter for much

discussion that I've got like 10 more seconds for.

So if you have questions about that, we're happy to talk.

But if Jesus is like a metaphor, like a way of revealing some all

of the truth about God that we can apprehend in human form,

right? And in so doing, he reveals the

Kingdom of God. And how does he talk about the

Kingdom? Well, as are spoilers in

parables, and we're going to do a whole series on parables.

Parables, if you've never heard of them, there's stories that

that Jesus and other rabbis would have told that are

particularly metaphorical. They're especially non literal.

They're just thought experiments, thought sketches

that give us a picture of a piece of what something is,

because that's what metaphor does.

Metaphor is about. Can I grasp a slice of this?

Can I see a little image of it? Can I get some sense of what

this thing is? Because I can't get the whole

thing. So we are beginning a series on

the parables in Scripture. Throughout the series, every

week we're going to be asking the question that Jesus was so

often answering. What is the Kingdom of God like?

And we're going to explore the parables to find the ways that

Jesus answers this question, giving people these glimpses,

these snapshots and angles on the Kingdom of God.

The beautiful thing about this is a series, I'll tell you is

I'm doing 1 parable today, right?

You're going to get this slice and then next week, is it Tori?

Next week you're going to get this slice and you're going to

get all of these different angles.

And in the aggregate, you begin to understand more and more

about what the Kingdom is. It's a beautiful thing.

So today's text is it's called usually the Parable of the

sower. I think it would more properly

be called the parable of the soils and we'll talk more about

that later. I think it is a good jumping off

point for the series because in addition to getting the parable,

we get Jesus explanation of the parable.

So this is the this is the parables for dummies section,

which is useful for all of us, right?

This is the place where where Jesus really holds our hand

through. OK, this is exactly what this

means for those of you who are here through the minor prophets.

We had to do a lot of that interpretive work ourselves.

It was a little bit more challenging to try to find the

truth. What is this story about in the

minor prophets? What are we really talking about

here? Jesus is like, this is exactly

what we're talking about. So it's useful because we're

going to get the lesson that Jesus teaches, the glimpse at

the Kingdom, but also we're seeing his methodology too.

OK, so we're going to we're going to return, I'm going to

read the the text again. I'm going to read the reread the

story as Jesus told it to all the people.

And then I'm going to read Jesus explanation which we didn't get

last time. OK, this is Matthew 13.

The first section is one through 9.

The second section is 18 through 23.

OK, that same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the

sea. Such great crowds gathered

around him that he got into a boat and sat there while the

whole crowd stood on the beach. I love this picture.

Jesus like, like, of course people show up.

It's not like a a surprise, but he's like, I guess if I go out a

little bit, maybe they can hear me preach.

Makes a a boat a pulpit. Sign me up if we want to try

that sometime. And he told them many things in

parables, saying, listen, a sower went out to sow, and as he

sowed, some seeds fell on a path, so a hard place, and the

birds came and ate them up. Other seeds fell on rocky soil

where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly

because they had no depths of soil.

So the roots go short distance, so there's energy to shoot the

shoots up real quick. But when the sun rose, they were

scorched, and because they had no root to draw that cooling

life and water up from the soil, they withered away.

Other seeds fell amongst thorns, weeds, and the thorns grew up

and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil

and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some 60, some 30,

if you have ears here. OK.

And the explanation. So Jesus, his, his disciples

were like, why do you do that? Why do you even talk like that?

And he's like, basically what he says is because this is the only

way that you have a hope of getting it, He's like, and most

people aren't going to get it. In fact, you guys are lucky that

you are getting some of this and that I'm explaining some of it

to you. Because if you don't have a

receptivity to these stories, if you don't have an imagination

for understanding them, they don't hit more on this.

So OK, so then Jesus says here then the parable of the sower.

When anyone hears the word of the Kingdom and does not

understand it, the evil 1 comes and snatches away what was sown

in the heart. This is what was sown along the

path. And As for what was sown on

rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and

immediately receives it with joy.

Yet such a person has no root and endures only for a while.

But when trouble or prosecution rises on account of the word,

that person immediately falls away.

How many of us have been this person or know these people?

Where you you get it, but it's so hard that you don't have the

maturity to live in it. And what was sown among the

thorns? This is the person who hears the

word. But the cares of this age and

the lure of wealth choke the word and it yields nothing,

right? So this is, I love that this is

a continuum because it's all just cares of the world.

It's just that you can be full up and good and you're still

cares of the world in all the way into wealth.

But where will my second plane be?

My first plane breaks down. It's real.

And we all have different measures of what wealth looks

like on our own lives. It's hard sometimes because the

cares of this age also seem pretty reasonable, don't they?

Like, I am going to need to eat today.

But As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears

the word, understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields in

one case a hundredfold, in another 60, in another 30.

So we have here, it's a great story.

It's a beautiful agrarian scene. It would do well in a little

fairy tale. You can imagine a farmer sewing.

And that that's this story to this audience would be very

familiar, right? They're much more connected to

the farming lifestyle. Many of them may have been

farmers who were there. You can even imagine Jesus at

the Sea of Galilee. There are terrace farms on the

banks of the Sea of Galilee. So he could be like, like that

guy over there sowing seed right now.

That could have been real. So these are people that are

well connected to this picture and even in the modern mind, the

central idea of a farming metaphor is pretty

straightforward. Like this isn't like, woah, what

is farming like you've heard of it, you've read Old McDonald and

I'm happy to take Jesus word on the rocky soil and the weeds and

we could add soil pH or something for the fancy

gardeners amongst us. People are asking questions

about till versus no till, farming before the service.

So the central metaphor, the farming metaphor, not not that

hard to understand yes, I hope so yeah, looking good.

There's two embedded metaphors. Remember earlier I was trying to

describe metaphor. I end up putting metaphors in my

explaining A metaphor metaphor. We nest these things always.

This is the nature of language. So the two embedded metaphors

within the story we do need to unpack and understand well, the

the metaphors embedded in the parable are word and heart,

right? Because word is not a seed.

A seed is not a word. That's not a thing literally.

And the heart is not a soil, right?

Again, you might already be feeling what what kind of is

though. Yes, you got it.

Good job. So how can we understand the

word word in this scriptural context?

At the beginning of the text, the explanation, Jesus says the

word of the Kingdom. So when I think about this, I

think about this word of the Kingdom being the idea, the

concept of of the Kingdom of God and maybe maybe even more than

just that as an idea that abstract.

Earlier we talked about John 1, right?

One of my favorites. The Word was with God, and the

Word was God. The word here for the word of

Kingdom. Logos is the same word word.

That's in John one, right? There's this concept that Jesus

is the Word. This is a metaphor that is

explored throughout the Scripture in beautiful ways.

This time I'm not going to run you through a whole bunch of

scriptures. You just have to take my word

for it. The beginning was the Word.

The Word was with God. The Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through him, and without him

nothing came into being. So there's something about Jesus

as Word that is about the creating impetus of this world,

of all of creation, of all of the existence of the Kingdom of

God, Something about the making of it in the Word.

And there's something about the fact that Jesus is called the

Word. And so I would say we talked

about the word of the Kingdom. We're talking about an encounter

with Jesus. But again, not just literally

like like people heard Jesus talking to them at this place in

time, but any encounter with Jesus, with God, with the

presence of God throughout history, that there is a, a deep

presence, truth and metaphysical reality of the Kingdom that you

can encounter in many ways. So understanding what the word

is, the context of the parable is this is the place where the

Kingdom is revealed in the heart, whether that is something

that you did read or hear or in an action, you saw the Kingdom

of God, you saw an encounter of God expressed in the kindness of

a human to another human, in something beautiful in nature,

right? There's many ways to experience

the goodness of the Kingdom of God.

Anytime you have encountered something, you thought, this is

right, this is how things should be.

This is an encounter with the good Kingdom.

Amen. And remember this, this is so

important to me. We talk sometimes about like the

Kingdom and earth like like coming into and crashing into

each other. Not a bad metaphor, but I prefer

this. The Kingdom, the creation comes

first. God created everything in a well

ordered and good way. And so the reality of everything

that is creation as it is, it is centrally the good Kingdom of

God that has got a little obscuring goo on it.

Everything that is bad is the thinnest veil, the flimsiest

thing that is gets getting in the way of seeing what is really

there, which is the Kingdom. All right, so we're going to see

that Kingdom poking through, that obscurant, that veil, that

mess lots of times and places, the mess, the darkness cannot

overcome it. So an encounter with the

Kingdom, anytime we see the Kingdom poking through, that is

the word of the Kingdom. That is you experiencing that

seed. So the second metaphor then is

heart, the heart. We still use heart as a metaphor

in our culture, right? And in Greek, the word here,

cardia, it's the same as our heart.

Like it's, it's just a word for the organ that pumps blood

around. So they're, they're using the

metaphor in really similar ways. It's interesting.

It helps Word study tool says that the word heart is used over

800 times and the Old and New Testament throughout the Bible.

So it's a huge metaphor, but is only ever used figuratively,

never used literally in the whole Bible, only ever as a

metaphor. That is important.

There is a little tweak that I think is important in the way

that the Greeks would have seen heart versus the way that we use

heart right when we use heart today.

Generally, we're speaking about like a love heart, like

Valentine's hearts like emotion, right?

Like you would you would like, I love that you push your little

heart button on your phone. Great.

In the Greek context, there was much less of a split.

We put a split between heart and mind where we are in our Western

culture, right? It's not even scientifically

accurate. That's not how anyone thinks.

Like I have my pure thoughts and sometimes I have feelings.

Like everything is mixed together.

And amazingly, the Greeks without the science for it, knew

this already. There was a sense the heart is

the center of of thought and feeling together, desire and

volition and will. Choosing to do something,

wanting and doing and choosing, it all goes together.

So for the Greek, it's not just feeling, but it's thought and

action all together. So when we talk about the heart,

that's the way you're going. You want to take your love

heart, make it into El Arrow. That's what we're talking about.

Does it make sense? I think when you look at heart

in this way, it's interesting because it can be used

collectively as well. This is something that Jesus

does in Matthew 15/8. Here Jesus is quoting from

Isaiah. He says this people honors me

with their lips, but their heart, their singular heart for

these people is far from me. So as a group, the heart of a

people is the thing that can exist.

They might with their lips do lip service.

We've heard of lip service. Another great metaphor, right?

We, we say a thing, but which, where are we pointing?

Where is our chosen desire and and motion and our thought and

feeling together? So that's the kind of heart

we're talking about here. So if we think about the heart

as an integrated way, we think about the word sown to the

heart, what we have here is an encounter with the Kingdom of

God. And then how is your heart, your

your thought, feeling, direction, desire, going to

respond and turn and be pointed as a result of that.

And that's what the parable is about is different soils,

different kinds of hearts that that Jesus is talking about.

In the case of the path, the heart is, for whatever reason,

hard. It has become hardened to the

Kingdom. Maybe it's because something has

happened to compact that soil. Unfortunately, we can have

experiences which harden us to the Kingdom of God, whether

those are negative religious experiences or hardness in life.

And seeing places where it looks like God did not show up can

make your heart hard. It can also be that you have

never cultivated an imagination for the Kingdom of God.

You have no frame of reference for it.

So we'll talk more about what to do about that.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Sometimes the word can be

received, but only goes so deep in a heart that is not ready for

it. This is the the rocky soil.

This is just a kind of faith that is seeing a truth and yet

doesn't have the maturity to stick with it.

Because the reality is that it is hard to do things counter to

this world's way. That obscurant that veil is, is

pervasive. And the reality of the Kingdom

is opposed to the main way of things being.

So it's hard to live that way. The word sown in the weeds, OK,

maybe your heart, it's got no pads in it.

You got the deepest, most fertile, mature soil.

All of us got weeds, friends, because the cares of this world,

no one is insulated from that. This is what I was trying to

talk about earlier with wealth. Wealth does not insulate you

from the cares of this world. There will always be something

that comes up that worries you about how life is going to be,

whether that is a very simple sustaining thing, whether it's

about meaning in life, whether it's about desire or you're

worried you don't even have the right desires.

Like there are cares in life that we all face.

I think that this works in the metaphor.

Can you tell me, gardeners, what where do weeds show up?

Everywhere. Weeds are the natural state of

things. They have to be removed.

OK, so that's just, that's just how that works.

Jesus wrote it when the heart is ready, when it is a rich and

fertile soil, and when the heart is tended.

And this is something that God does.

We don't make it ready. God will do the work.

We can grasp the Kingdom as we receive it.

We have that encounter and it will sink deep and we will

automatically in the same way that a seed will grow given

nutrients and sun and water, right?

It's going to happen. You don't have to make it

happen. The goodness, the good fruit of

the Kingdom of God will come forward.

And what's great about fruit is fruit produces fruit which you

can eat. And what's in fruit?

Seeds. So the word goes forth.

That's where we get into this 3060 a hundredfold.

Amen. All right, I have more good

news. God's Word, Jesus, the word of

the Kingdom Never ever fails. We heard this as our our

gathering scripture this morning, or welcoming scripture

just by chance, Isaiah 5510 and 11.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do

not return there until they have watered the earth, bringing it

for bringing forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower, and

bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my

mouth. It shall not return to me empty.

It shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the

thing for which I sent it. The word of the Lord will not

return empty. The encounters of the Kingdom

will bear fruit. It is guaranteed when the the

God, the Creator who spoke existence into being speaks

again, it's going to create all right.

When when our Messiah, when Jesus comes and shares himself

with people, they're going to get it.

Even if you don't all get it all at once, even if different

people got it then we thought would get it, it's happening.

It will not return bearing. And so we know individually and

even as a group, we are not free from the weeds and rocks of this

world, but we know that the Kingdom which has come is still

coming and will come in the same way.

The word of the Lord, it's it's still happening today.

God came, God created, God came in Jesus, and God is still

coming today to be in our lives. The metaphor still works.

Tell me, friends, does the sower sow seed once in a field and

then walk away, never to return? Or does the sower come again

season after season, planting the right crops for the right

season, letting things sit fallow in the right times, and

then returning again and again? Does the sower, the good

gardener who knows his land, our hearts not see where the path

has become hardened, not see where the soil is, is thick with

rocks? Won't he care to to tell up

those rocks to break up that hard soil?

And won't he work season on season as things change?

So this is not a one shot deal. Sometimes in certain traditions

we have made this parable into a one shot thing.

Like I told you, I told you the gospel.

Are you going to hear it or not? As though that was it.

For starters, the good news to the Kingdom of God is an

everywhere everyday thing to those who have been blessed to

see it and and hear it as God opens our eyes.

Secondly, the soil of our lives is not a one shot thing like

you're fully converted everything arable all at once.

So that's the metaphor. What does it mean for us?

How do we do something with this story today in plain language,

in real life, what do we do? We know that God is a good God.

We we call him the Good Shepherd.

He's a good gardener too. In in John 1415, one through 4

in the NIVI am the true vine and my father is the gardener.

He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every

branch that does bear fruit he prunes or cleans, so it will

even be more fruitful. You are already clean because of

the word I've spoken to you. Remain in me as I also remain

day after day in you. No branch can bear fruit by

itself, it must remain in the vine.

Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

God wants to help us. He wants to tend to us.

He wants to cultivate our heart soil and all we need to do.

It's going to sound easy. The concept is easy.

The metaphor is simple. It's turn to him in willingness

to do that. And that's in the complexity of

is that we are a vast heartland with many kinds of soil.

There are places in your life where you are fully ready to

hear God's word. You, you see it.

You walk down the street and you can't help but see what God is

doing right. And there are places in your

life where you are hardened and not ready to see it.

And that's across the breadth of who you are.

And what's great about it is that we're all different too,

and we're all going to bear slightly different fruit and

God's wondrous diversity in US, and that God is going to work

with us at different times on different places.

You don't have to be like dredging up flogging yourself,

like where? Where's my worst soil?

If the Lord leads you to a time of finding something, then

that's God bless it. But I guarantee there's enough

in you to work on. You can take his leading for

what? What's, what's the job for the

day? What are we doing today?

Maybe today's the fruit day. Maybe today we're making good

fruit. Maybe today and the season, it's

the season of deepening our maturity.

There's room for more and more and more of God's Kingdom.

Farther up and farther in the bag can come up second.

Peter 39 says the Lord is not slow about His promise, as some

think of of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting

any to perish, not wanting any to perish, not wanting anyone or

any part of you to perish, but all to come to repentance, every

part of you over time in His patience.

He's ready, like the sun shines on all parts of the land.

He's already there and He's going to guide you to the places

and He's going to work with you. Will you stand with me?

The Lord is waiting patiently and happily for us.

If our hearts are hardened against the word of the Kingdom,

we can in prayer ask God to soften our hearts and ask for an

imagination to begin to understand His Kingdom.

Read some George MacDonald, get some stories that will make a

space for the Kingdom in your heart.

If our hearts are shallow and rocky, we can ask God for a

deeper faith. This is vital step.

If you're going to make it, you're going to have to have

more and more deep soils. But I want to tell you in all

honesty, this is going to be one of the hardest ones because you

get deep soil through suffering and walking with God in that if

our heartlands are choked with weeds from worldly cares and

wealth, we can begin simply by telling God about it.

Say God, will you help me with my I'm really worried about all

this stuff and then you can start to do some things about

it. I will be honest.

A great hack for your heart and mind together.

Give some money away because you can just do that with real money

and then it's you don't have it anymore and you have now trusted

God with $0.50 or a dollar or $10.

Whatever it is, as a practice, it will begin to dig up the

weeds of care and the lure of wealth in you to engage in this

practice. And as we do this, as we just

turn to where God is already drawing us to do this good work,

God, the good gardener, and as we prepare, we allow him to

prepare the soils of our heartlands.

We will find day by day, more and more you're going to

encounter the word of the Kingdom, the seeds of the sower,

the Kingdom of God everywhere, and naturally the fruit of the

Kingdom will grow 3060 a hundred times.

Let's pray God. Thank you for being a good

gardener and thank you for being a present God, a God with us, a

God who seeks us always. Thank you for being the God who

will wait for us. God, even now by your spirit, I

just pray that you would begin reaching out to all of us

present for us to know what is the part of our heart soil you

want to talk about today. What do you want to encounter us

today? God, I pray for you to be moving

us in conviction and I'll remind you friends, conviction is never

feel like guilt or bad. Conviction is an encouragement

to change. It should feel positive.

If you're feeling bad about yourself right now, that ain't

Jesus. So God, pour out your your

conviction on us and encourage us to take steps today for

whatever soil is our lives. And and we pray God too, for the

fruit that we would begin to see your Kingdom come out of our

lives as well as in the world around us and that we would see

it God in this church and each other, by your grace, going to

invite the prayer team up. God bless you.