I used to wonder why people stay in churches for years, decades even, and never grow. They never stop sucking on the teat, and they never grow to be able to handle the real meat of the Word. They remain stuck as babies. Is it their fault? Is it the fault of the teacher? Is it both? I personally think it is both. If they aren’t being fed, they could go somewhere else where they will get fed something more substantial than watered down milk. Also, the teacher or preacher’s job is to teach and lead, so if the teacher or preacher were to preach and teach something substantive, the congregation would grow and be able to handle more challenging concepts, connections, interrelations, cause and effect, and the many layers of depth that exist inside the Word of Yah that has to be sussed out.
Understanding isn’t going to leap out and grab you by the hair. You have to desire it. You have to pursue it. You have to have a heart that wants to understand Yah and to obey Him.
Proverbs 4:5-7 (ISR 1998) says:
5“Get wisdom! Get understanding! Do not forget, and do not turn away From the words of my mouth.
6“Do not leave her, and let her guard you; Love her, and let her watch over you.
7“The beginning of wisdom is: Get wisdom! And with all your getting, get understanding.”
I love how Yahweh reveals things through real life situations, and I really love lessons gleaned from His Garden.
Yeshua gave a parable similar to this, and I certainly cannot write anything as eloquent as the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13), but this is something I learned by personal experience and observation this summer. I have found that Yah often will use our own eyes and ears, our own observations to expand our understanding of things.
These two okra came off of my plants!!! I only have two, and they are planted in different areas of my garden.
One poor plant struggled and struggled. It was riddled with ants and aphids for the better part of the summer. Then just ants attacked it. It had poor soil; too much nitrogen caused a lot of leaf growth and height but no blooms for most of the summer. It wasn’t allowed to bloom for the longest time. I wondered if it ever would. When a bloom would come out, the ants would devour it before the blossom ever opened. Finally, though, it did produce the okra on the left.
The one on the right is from a plant that is in a raised bed in good soil. This plant is half the size of the plant that’s in poor soil, but the produce is bigger and healthier. The plant is healthier too with no pests irritating it and preventing produce. However, just like the plant in poor soil, it took a long time to produce, too, because it was in the shadow of several indeterminate tomato plants that kept it shaded and prevented it from growing and producing to its potential.
How big your plant is, does not determine the size of your fruit or the health of your plant. The environment and the nutrition available play key roles in what happens in your garden as well as in your spiritual walk.
