It’s March—the season of sowing.

The gardeners in our lives are planting seedlings in soil that was carefully prepared by them last fall. At least that’s my recollection from watching the way my mother so faithfully cared for her garden each year. As I recall, there were two seasons in which she was very busy: Spring and Autumn. Winter was a time of dormancy while the earth was frozen and God forced rest on both the soil and the sower. Summer also seemed to be a time of quiet watchfulness, as the work of planting had mostly been done and she waited on the miraculous work of the Creator, Life Himself, to crack open the seeds under the surface and send shoots and roots in the directions which would produce the fruit for the harvest. There’s a marvelous beauty in the rhythm and harmonious work of the Sovereign Vinedresser and the man He made, in not just the toil of the soil but of the soul as well.

This week I was looking over an inductive study I did a few years ago of the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-9). Back when I originally studied this passage, I discovered Jesus was modeling for us what it means to be sowers of God’s Word. I saw it in the way He got in a boat and simply taught. He did not agonize over what He wore to His teachings, proper hand gestures, pace and volume control. He simply got in a boat, sat down (indicating He wasn’t concerned about projecting from His diaphragm), and taught. As He was teaching, He knew that what He taught was falling on hard hearts as well as soft fertile ones. No matter. He taught. This was a profound lesson to me at the time as I was preparing messages for large fellowship events. But today as I looked at the same lesson I caught a glimpse of the very last application I had written—almost an afterthought:

“Praying for the hearers to hear should not be overlooked.”

He cared deeply for those who were listening. He wanted his listeners to hear the Truth; “Whoever has ears, let Him hear,” He prayed. This wasn’t a prayer He tossed up to heaven and hoped for the best. This was personal. He literally desired ears would be open to receive the Truth and the dead souls would receive eternal life.

I think of the rich young ruler who walked up to Jesus and wanted to know what he must do to be saved. He had done all of the things and followed all of the laws, but deep down he knew there was more and so he asked, “What more must I do?” And Jesus looked at him lovingly and told him he must go and sell all that he owned and follow Him. The man walked away deeply grieved because he owned a lot; this was not a cost he had prepared to pay to be saved.

I actually think about this story a lot. There are a lot of stories told in the gospels that seem very sad but we don’t actually know how they ended. But I often wonder if we will find out in heaven what kind of soil these seeds Jesus planted were actually sown into. Nicodemus did, after all, help take Jesus’ body down off the cross and bury Him. Did he end up believing? Was this conversation with Jesus a seed planted in this rich young man’s life and did it one day burst open and take root and ultimately bring eternal life?

This week I have been praying hard for someone I love who is being confronted with the very real cost of following Jesus.

The parable is much more tidy written in a few verses of Mark than it is in real life flesh and blood. Sometimes the cost of following Jesus is actually walking away from everything that means anything to us—as was the case with the rich young ruler. When this reality applies to someone you truly care about, it’s not as simple as scattering the seed and letting it fall where it may. There’s a desperation of the soul for that person you love to receive it, to let it sink so deeply in that soft soil that they don’t miss out.

But we’re merely sowers. We don’t control what happens under the surface. As Paul says: We plant. God grows. “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So, then, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s coworkers. You are God’s field…” (1 Corinthians 3:6-9).

And so we pray and we pray and we pray that Life Himself would do the miraculous work of creation under the surface in the dark places we cannot access. We pray that He would crack the hard shell of the seed and send shoots and roots out in their proper directions. Once we plant the seeds, we can prayerfully watch for the signs of life and do the tending and watering throughout the summer, but the growth is miraculous and out of our control…except for prayer.

“Praying for the hearers to hear should not be overlooked.”

He does hear our prayers to prepare the soil. There’s nothing He desires more than softening hearts to know Him more. That’s why in these times I cling to the promise in 1 John 5:14-15 as I pray:

“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of Him.”

Regarding our prayers for others, Scripture tells us we can be certain of this: He has ears to hear.

This Spring we rejoice in the collaborative work of God and man. What a privilege to work beside Him. May we plant and pray throughout this season with the hopeful expectation that He will bring forth a harvest and the fragile saplings will one day grow into deeply rooted oaks of righteousness. Because every time we see a new sprout spring forth from a soul, it moves us to worship Him for His work in our lives is marvelous.