Ever listen to a powerful sermon or teaching that just seems to open up God’s truth to you in a way you’ve never seen before? Ever think to yourself in those moments “I’ll never be the same!”? Ever wake up the next day surprised to find out you’re in fact exactly the same? Why is that?

How is it that we can hear a powerful and revelatory proclamation of God’s word, receive it with faith, feel so transformed in that moment, and then wake the next morning to discover we haven’t been changed nearly as much as we had hoped?

One of my favorite teachers, Dutch Sheets, explains it this way. “All truth comes to us in seed form.”

It may be revelation in the teacher, but when I receive it I receive it as a seed.

Matt 13:3-9
3 Then He spoke many things to them in parables, saying: “Behold, a sower went out to sow.  4 And as he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds came and devoured them.  5 Some fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth.  6 But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away.  7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them.  8 But others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.  9 He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
NKJV

There are so many truths in this passage that perhaps we sometimes miss the most obvious one: the word is delivered to us like a seed. When I receive the word it is a seed. Before it can bring forth fruit in my life there must be good soil, water, time, sunlight, pruning, etc. I believe there are times where we come to the conclusion that God’s word doesn’t work for us when the reality is simply that we haven’t cared properly for the seed planted to bring it to a place of mature revelation and lasting fruitfulness.