Valley Gospel
A Pentecostal church experience.
Valley Gospel
Fallow Ground
Imagine a once-thriving vegetable garden, now overgrown and hard as rock. What does that say about our spiritual lives when we neglect them? Join us on this episode of the Valley Gospel Church Podcast as we examine the profound message of "Fallow Ground," inspired by Hosea 10:12. Through a deeply personal story, we reveal how hidden debris in our hearts can hinder our spiritual growth and the urgent need for sincere repentance. By breaking up our spiritual fallow ground, we can earnestly seek the Lord and allow His righteousness to transform our lives.
In the following segments, we explore the powerful analogy of cultivating the soil of our hearts, drawing from scriptures in Hosea, Psalms, and Hebrews. Discover the divine tools provided by God—His word and the conviction of the Holy Spirit—that help us prepare our hearts for spiritual growth. We emphasize the necessity of continuous action in bearing fruit as believers. Lastly, we celebrate God's omnipotence and unwavering faithfulness, reminding ourselves of His eternal support and almighty power. Tune in to find strength and reassurance in God's ability to overcome any challenge and His call for a heartfelt return to Him.
God will open. He'll open up the windows of heaven and he'll pour you out of blessing. My God will open. He'll open up the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, and you will not have the room to know not because of you, but because he is good and you will not have the room to receive Him.
Speaker 2:Hello, welcome to Valley Gospel Church Podcast. We are an independent full gospel church, worshiping in spirit and in truth, located in Springdale Pennsylvania. In spirit and in truth, located in Springdale, pennsylvania. Our single mission is to present a message of truth and hope centered on Jesus Christ and him crucified. So let's go into a service recorded live at Valley Gospel Church.
Speaker 3:Our speaker this morning is long overdue to take the pulpit again. A musician, a worshiper, a teacher in whom I have full confidence, and she will be preaching the first message that we will broadcast worldwide. Let her know you're excited to hear what God has given her. Call Ed Quinton.
Speaker 4:Am I loud enough, as this word should be? We good, okay? Well, let's open with prayer. Father, I just thank you for the awesome privilege this morning of being able to bring your word to your church. I pray that the word that you have given would find lodging in our hearts and in our minds, and that this word today would truly transform our lives. And, lord, I pray that you would help me to clearly communicate what you've given, all for the glory of God. In Jesus' name, amen, amen. Okay, the title of our message today is Fallow Ground. It's based on the scripture in Hosea 10,. Today is Fallow Ground. It's based on the scripture in Hosea 10, 12. That says break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord till he come and rain righteousness upon you. This verse was God's call to repentance and a plea to his beloved children, but his hard-hearted children, to come back to him with their whole hearts.
Speaker 4:Years ago I had a beautiful vegetable garden, and that garden produced a bountiful amount of vegetables. I would put lime on the soil in the spring to keep the soil sweet. I would feed the plants miracle grow plant food. I would always make sure there was a thick layer of mulch around each plant and each furrow to keep the weeds down, to keep the moisture from being lost and to reduce stress on the plants. To keep the soil cool, I'd pull the occasional weeds. I would cut off any unnecessary growth so that the plants could grow better and that the fruit could grow better. The garden enjoyed full sun exposure. I made sure it got watered plentifully.
Speaker 4:But what made that garden so wonderful was the soil. I don't really know how to describe it, other than saying it was like silk. It was something you could work with your hands. It felt like topsoil, like somebody had dumped a load of topsoil there years ago. There were no rocks and no clay in that soil, so the plant roots could grow really deep. So every spring the soil needed tilled After the harvest of the year before, and over the winter the soil would harden over and weeds would start to grow again.
Speaker 4:So I would call my tiller guy and as he was tilling I would stand in my back door and watch him as he worked. And maybe it's just a gardener's thing, but that gave me such joy and happiness because I knew it was this first step him tilling up that soil to a bountiful harvest. So after the soil was tilled, I would get in there and break it up with my hands. I didn't even need a rake or a hoe to do that, I would just get in there and break up the soil with my hands, make my furrows for the seeds, make my little holes for the plants. And I think it was about the fifth year of having this garden.
Speaker 4:I was breaking up the soil and the Lord started showing me something. After I was breaking up the soil, I kept finding pieces of debris in the soil that the tiller had brought to the surface. And these weren't just little pieces of debris, they were hunks of cement, big pieces of glass and plastic and rusty nails. So after tilling this soil for four years, I started thinking why weren't these things brought to the surface before this? Where did they come from? How come? I've never seen this before in this soil?
Speaker 4:So as I was thinking all of those things and questioning that, and then throwing that debris out of the garden, the Lord started speaking. He reminded me of Hosea 10-12. And as soon as he did that, and throwing that debris out of the garden, the Lord started speaking. He reminded me of Hosea 10-12. And as soon as he did that. This whole scripture came across my mind and he said break up your fallow ground, colette, for it's time to seek the Lord till he come and rain righteousness upon you. He was showing me that my heart was the ground that needed broken up. He was showing me that my heart was the ground that needed broken up and even though I had been a Christian for many years, there was still ground soil in my heart that had hardened over and hiding underneath was debris, was sin. So as I was in the dirt with the Lord, he kept showing me one thing after another. He kept showing me the debris in my heart, the sin in my heart, and I'll tell you what. That was one of the most sweetest moments I've ever had. Almost my whole Christian life was the Lord, even though he was showing me sin and I felt the conviction of my sin. I did not feel condemnation. So that moment was sweet because of that.
Speaker 4:So too often, church, our spiritual lives become like fallow ground. We've tasted the goodness of the Lord, we've brought forth fruit, we're active in ministry, we pray, we study, but there are still areas in our hearts that are a wasteland, that are overgrown and fallow. So you know the Jewish people were a nation of farmers, and it was a common thing for God to refer in the scriptures to scenes from their daily lives for illustrations. He would talk to them in things that they knew about so he could drive his point across, and so he would. So they would get to know what he was trying to say. So they would get to know what he was trying to say. Hosea addresses them as a nation of backsliders and uses words that farmers are familiar with. So when he uses the words fallow ground, the Jewish people knew exactly what he was talking about. They knew exactly what that ground looked like and what it would take to plow it up. He wanted them to see that what they had become, they had become hard-hearted.
Speaker 4:So fallow ground isn't a term we commonly use. I never hear Colleen say time to break up the fallow ground so I can plant my tomatoes. We just don't use those words. So this is a description of what fallow ground is. It is ground which had once been tilled but has gotten hard and now lies in waste. It's a ground that could be productive but hasn't been broken up. It's ground that is dry and barren, unused, unusable, unworked, unfruitful and covered with weeds. So that's what it looks like in the natural, but what does it represent spiritually?
Speaker 4:Foul of ground is the way God describes the hearts of believers when they have become insensitive to sins that grieve the Holy Spirit. Foul of ground refers spiritually to a heart that is hard and calloused, a heart not cultivated daily through Bible study, prayer and worship. It's a heart that is just content to stay the way it is. It's a heart that the Holy Spirit, the water of the Holy Spirit, can't soften. It's a heart that the seed of the Word of God can't penetrate. It's a heart that is not producing the fruit of the Spirit and not operating in the gifts of the word of God can't penetrate. It's a heart that is not producing the fruit of the spirit and not operating in the gifts of the spirit.
Speaker 4:Okay, so how do we know if there's fallow ground in our hearts? 2 Corinthians 13.5, paul says to examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. When we examine ourselves and are honest before God, he'll show us the areas in our hearts where the soil has hardened over, that have become weed-covered and have been neglected, and we will recognize the debris or the sin that is underneath that soil. So what I'm going to read to you next is a personal self-examination list of how to know if there's fallow ground in your hearts. And when I was making up this list, there were a couple of things that the Lord kind of had me look at twice, and one particular thing on this list I actually said ouch.
Speaker 4:So when I'm reading this list, I want you to think about your spiritual life. This is how you will know that there is fallow ground in your hearts. It's because you've neglected your relationship with the Lord, you've neglected the word of God. We know that there's fallow ground in our hearts when my desires come before the desire to please God and him alone, come before the desire to please God and him alone. There's fallow ground in my heart when I want the things of this world to fulfill and satisfy me instead of the things of God. I know there's fallow ground in my heart when my motives are wrong, when pride and envy still rise up in me, when there's unbelief and rebellion against the word of God. And I know there's fallow ground in my heart when I have past wounds and hurts that still kind of haunt me, that still consume my thoughts and my emotions and I think that they have the right for me to be unforgiving. That's fallow ground. And the last one as Christian warriors, we know we're in a long, hard battle on this side of heaven and sometimes, when the battle gets long and hard, it causes us to lose heart and lose our joy and we end up just going through the Christian motions and we become lukewarm, like the church in Revelation, the Laodicean church that Jesus said he would spew out of his mouth. There are probably many more things I could add to that list, but I think that's all I could take. Okay, so we know we've identified fallow ground in our hearts.
Speaker 4:So why is it important to break it up? Why is it important for a farmer to break up fallow ground or a gardener? Why is it important for a farmer to break up fallow ground or a gardener? It's because the ground needs to be broken and made soft again before it is ready to receive seed. Unplowed ground won't let a crop grow. It's hard ground. It prevents the seeds from penetrating the soil, germinating and growing into maturity.
Speaker 4:The seed is the word of God. If the soil of our hearts is not plowed, fertilized, watered and workable, the word of God remains inactive and powerless. So when the word of God thrives in the good soil of our hearts, it takes deep root and grows bountifully and Jesus says it bears fruit some 60, some 30, some 100-fold. When Jesus uses that word bear, the tense of that verb is a present tense verb and it means bearing fruit is a continuous action. It's always happening, it's always ongoing in the life of good soil. And that's the key the soil has to be good for the fruit bearing to be continuous. The soil has to always be broken up and plowed, it always has to be fertilized, fed by the word of God, it always has to be watered by the Holy Spirit and it always has to be soft and workable, pliable toward God. I'm going to drink water, okay, so we've identified fallow ground in our hearts. We know why it's important now to break up that fallow ground. So how do we do it?
Speaker 3:Thanks, Ted.
Speaker 4:Hosea says break up your fallow ground. He didn't say that the Lord would do it for us. But just like a farmer or a gardener has tools to break the soil, the Lord has given us tools to break up that fallow ground. And one of those tools that we have to break up the fallow ground in our hearts is the plow of God's word. The word of God plows up that soil and brings up that debris that is underneath so that we can identify it and get it out of our lives. Hebrews 4.12 says For the word of God is alive and active and it's sharper than any double-edged sword. And active and it's sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing the soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and intents of the heart. Now here are just a few of the other tools from the word of God that will help us break up that fallow ground.
Speaker 4:Psalm 119.1 says I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. 2 Corinthians 7.1,. Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Psalm 19.12, how can I know all the sins lurking in my heart? Cleanse me from these hidden faults and Hebrews 12, 1, throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles us. And there are many, many other tools in the word of God. Another tool we have is the help of the Holy Spirit. We need to ask the Holy Spirit to bring a recognition and a conviction of sin. The hard soil in our hearts starts to break when there is a recognition and a conviction of sin. That needs rooted out. Just like a farmer needs a sharp plow that cuts through the earth, we need the sharp plow of the Holy Spirit to bring that conviction. And when the conviction comes, our hearts break before the Lord. That hard crust breaks. And I can tell you from experience when that conviction comes, my heart was broken but it was not condemned. So, even though there is recognition and conviction to sin, the plowing process is not complete. It's complete when we repent. Repentance, we know, is not just feeling sorry for our sins, it's realizing that we have offended a holy God and it's a complete turning away, a complete separation from sin and it's a returning to the love relationship we have with the Lord. I like how Ezekiel says it in 1831. He says I like how Ezekiel says it in 1831. He says Rid yourselves of all the offenses you have committed and get a new heart and a new spirit, amen, okay.
Speaker 4:So after Hosea says to break up your fallow ground, he says it's time to seek the Lord. For too long Israel had gone her own way. They were no longer walking in the ways of the Lord. So Hosea had to show them that their hearts were fallow ground. They were hard and crusted over, they were overgrown with weeds and they were barren. And he uses a lot of really harsh words. If you read the book of Hosea, he actually says that they were lazy, that they were sloppy and that they were disobedient in their service to the Lord. And to top it all off, they had become idol worshipers. But don't we see that same thing in the church today?
Speaker 4:The church today is going her own way. Many in the church are pursuing today a different gospel, a works-based gospel, a crossless gospel, a seeker-friendly gospel, a social gospel, a prosperity gospel and a self-centered gospel. And we wonder why the church is ineffective. The heart of today's church is hard, it's crusted over, it's overgrown with weeds and it's barren in the ways of the Lord. So Hosea said it was time for them to come and seek the Lord with their whole heart. They were to seek after him and to keep on seeking his favor. They were to search for him until he heard and answered them with his promise to come and rain righteousness on them. So the message is the same for us today. Now is the accepted time to break up the fallow ground in our hearts. Now is the time to seek the Lord while he may be found, and now is the time to get serious about serving God till he comes to rain righteousness on us. We've all seen how rain bounces and runs off of hard soil, but on ground it is broken and tender. It soaks in deep, nourishing the soil and producing life. When God rains down his righteousness on us, we in turn are a source of life for others. So, church, this side of heaven, and because sin so easily besets us, working the soil will be an ongoing, continual process. It's hard work. It takes spiritual strength and endurance. So let me leave you with one last thought. So let me leave you with one last thought.
Speaker 4:In the spring I would go to the store and I would look at all the beautiful packets of seeds and the pictures on those seed packets were pictures of beautiful, perfect and colorful vegetables and flowers. So my hope would be that my vegetable would take on the appearance of that picture that was on that seed packet. So I'd buy my seeds, come home, plant them in the garden and I would watch, because I took pleasure in watching each stage of growth of that tiny seed, as I gave it good soil to grow in, as I watered it and fed it and kept it free from weeds. I would watch it grow and mature and take on the appearance of what it should look like, of what it should look like on the front of that packet.
Speaker 4:I like to picture the Lord taking pleasure in watching us grow, watching as we plow, as we pull weeds, as we feed on his word and as we drink in his righteousness and grow and mature. We will take on his appearance and we will take on his word. And as we drink in his righteousness and grow and mature, we will take on his appearance and we will take on his likeness. Let me leave you with one sentence from Jesus, our Savior. Jesus said church, put your hand to the plow and don't look back. Amen, amen. That's it, short and sweet.
Speaker 2:Praise the Lord, we pray. This message is a blessing and encouragement to you, most of all that it fortifies your faith as the return of our Lord draws near. We encourage you to share the love of Jesus this week and invite you to listen to next week's podcast.
Speaker 5:God is able, he will never fail. He is Almighty God.
Speaker 1:Greater than all we need, greater than all we have. He has done great things, lifted up.
Speaker 5:He defeated the grave. Raised to life. Our God is able. God is able. In His name, we overcome, for the Lord, our God is able. God is with us, he is on our side and he will make a way, far above all we know, far above all we hope For. He has done great things. Lifted up, he defeated the grave. Raised to life. Our God is able. In his name, we overcome, for the Lord, our God is able. He will never fail. He is almighty god, greater than all we need, greater than all we have. Lift it up. He defeated the grave. Raised to life. Our God is able. In His name, we overcome For the Lord, our God is able. Lift it up. Lift it up.
Speaker 5:He defeated the grave. Raised to life. Our God is able. In his name, we overcome For the Lord. Our God is able. God is with us. He will go before. He will never leave us. He will never leave us. God is for us. He has open arms. He will never fail us. He will never fail us. He will never fail us. God is with us.
Speaker 3:He will go before.
Speaker 5:He will never leave us. He will never leave us. Oh, God is for us.
Speaker 5:He has open arms. He will never fail us. He will never fail us. Lift it up, oh, he defeated the grave Raised to life. Our God is able and in His name we overcome. For the Lord, our God is able. Lifted up. He defeated the grave Raised to life. Our God is able and in his name we overcome. For the Lord, our God is able. Lift it up. He defeated the grave Raised to life. Our God is able and in his name, oh, we overcome. For the Lord, our God is able. For the Lord, our God is able. Yes, lord, honor, god is able. Yes, lord.
Speaker 1:Yes, lord, hallelujah to the Lamb. Yes.
Speaker 5:And I'm gonna sing in the middle of the storm, Louder and louder. You're going to hear my praises. Roar Then up from the ashes. That's when hope will arise. Death is defeated. The King is alive. Yes, Lord, I raise a hallelujah. I raise a hallelujah in the presence of my enemies. Yes, Lord, I raise a hallelujah so much louder than the unbelief. I raise a hallelujah. My weapon is a melody.
Speaker 3:My weapon is a melody.
Speaker 5:I raise a hallelujah. Heaven comes to fight for me, and heaven comes to fight for me, and heaven comes to fight for me, and I'm gonna sing In the middle of the storm.