How’s Your Christianity Working for You?
Matthew 13:23
“But the one who receives the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the Word and understands it. He will produce a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown.”
“How’s that working for you?” is a question I often ask my teenage daughters when they crash and burn after making a bad life choice. They obviously know that the choice they made didn’t achieve the desired results they were hoping for. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the mess they’re in. However, by asking them this question, they have to think about the false expectations/assumptions they entertained that caused them to make that wrong choice in the first place. They also have to look at the lie they believed that resulted in those choices and their consequences. This question can also shed light on the faulty beliefs we entertain and the consequences of those beliefs.
A Divine Revelation
So, let me ask you, “How’s your Christianity working for you?” Are you living the results that prove that it is actually a good life choice to follow Christ? Do non-believers around you clearly see the benefits of following Christ? Has the choice to follow Christ produced all that you expected it to? How’s it working in your marriage, your job, or in your home? Before you answer these questions, I want you to think from an internal point of view and not just from the external performance of your Christianity.
As Believers, we often live lives that consist of spiritual duties that create picture-perfect facades so everyone around us thinks everything’s OK. We need to shed that facade and take a deeper look and be honest with ourselves for a moment! Is our relationship with God working for us? Are we experiencing the abundant life that Christ promised us when we made the decision to follow Him?
If these questions strike an uncomfortable and rather painful chord in you, it would be a good time to figure out why. If you are living a life that isn’t producing a harvest of peace, joy, love, and patience. It’s time to reexamine what you believe.
A Divine Challenge
Isaiah 61:3b calls us a “planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.” Jesus often used parables about farming to illustrate to us the importance of abiding in Him so that our lives would produce a harvest of 30, 60, or 100-fold. The pure milk of the Word is designed to nourish us as babes in Christ so we can grow rapidly as our children do when they are infants. Yet solid food becomes necessary for a child to grow and mature into an adult. So, it is for us as Christians. Paul talks about this in Ephesians 4:14-15 which says, “As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of people, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, that is, Christ.”
You may be saying at this point, “I read my bible every day, I pray, I try to do the right things, and I serve in my church or in ministry. It’s not working!! My marriage is a mess, my children are out of control, and I’m an emotional wreck so where is this 30, 60, 100-fold harvest or this abundant life that Christ promised?” Sadly, the problem is the source you’re drawing from which is “I” and the key to resolving this is the tree! It is the act of abiding in Christ, the tree, that produces a harvest of 30, 60, and 100-fold. It’s not doing what we think is right or good. It’s not doing all the “Christian” stuff that makes us look good either. It’s also not; the condition of our marriage, the obedience of our children, the success of our career, or all the worldly comforts that defines the “abundant life” either.
It’s abiding in Christ alone that brings “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” to our lives. “Being in Christ” and in His Word is what produces the character that testifies to the world around us that Christ truly does live in us. How we deal with a difficult marriage, disobedient children, and emotional hardships allows the world to witness firsthand what we’ve placed our hope in, and that the abundant life is not the absence of sorrow or hardship, IT IS THE PRESENSE OF GOD in the midst of it!
Call to Action
If your tree is not producing a harvest of a 30, 60, or 100-fold crop, maybe the seed got choked out, or maybe it hit a rock. Beloved, it’s time to face the lies that may be robbing you of the abundant life Christ promised and allow God to plow up your ground, find some good soil, and plant a new seed.
Father, when our Christianity isn’t working, help us to detach from the world and re-attach to You. You are the source that the abundant life flows from. Therefore, when we abide in You, we will bear much fruit! In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen!