Cultivating the Soil of the Heart

Are you up for another little spiritual lesson I’ve learned from farming?

Oh good! So glad you’re still here. I was thinking about how conventional agriculture has proved that you can grow perfectly fine looking food in soil that is void of nearly all signs of life. Thanks to synthetic fertilizers, you can give a plant the minimum nutrients necessary to bear fruit. That fruit, however, is less nutrient dense for the eater. Bear with me for a tiny bit of science, but soil is much more than “fertility levels” of Nitrogen-Phosphorous-Potasium. It has an entire ecosystem of microbiology! The plants grown in it benefit (or are damaged by) the entirety of that microbiome.

And so it is with the heart.

It can be tempting to boil faith down to a sort of checklist. Ask yourself, “What makes a good Christian?” Maybe you come up with things like, reading the Bible and prayer, righteousness and trusting God or being a part of a church. The list might look different for each of us, but it’s safe to say that most of us have one. We have this unspoken expectation of things we “should” do. Cultural Christianity can certainly tempt us to add some things. Our upbringing, denomination and literary influences can all communicate expectations, whether spoken or not.

And then there are the “don’t’s”. We smile and clap and sing, “Oh, God’s grace covers sin. Isn’t it grand?!” And then we find out about a person with that sin. And we purse our lips and think, I’m not sure I see the fruit of a life in Christ there. In reality, it’s hard to recognize that most of us have as many expectations of things Christians just don’t do as things we think they should. (For ourselves as well as others.)

This rings true for God’s people in every era, including the first century A.D. Jesus took the recipe card for a good Jew and tore it to shreds. To paraphrase, “For all your dos and don’ts, you’re still missing the point. You’re missing the Father.”

In the sermon on the mount, He went through a few of those ingredients and one by one ripped them off the page. “You have heard…but I tell you.” And then He spent the rest of His ministry reshaping people’s idea of pleasing God. He showed them over and over examples of what the Father and His Kingdom were like. Most often, people still had questions. Even the twelve.

I had been thinking about the parables about growing: the sower, the wheat and the weeds, the mustard seed. And I was thinking about soil biology because, well, ‘tis the season. If we allow our “ideal Christian” picture to remain as is in our minds, we welcome the temptation to produce nutrient deficient fruit so to speak. It’s as if we’ve narrowed down a sort of spiritual N-P-K, a most basic fertilizer. These expectations aren't all wrong, they’re just not all there is. So we bear fruit and we grow. But in reality, we’re missing out.

Growth is good, don’t get me wrong. But cultivating the soil of the heart is so much more. If we grow according to a man-made list (even if it is all from Scripture), we will still deprive ourselves of important components for heathy heart soil. We’ll miss out on some of the beauty and growth that God has for us and we’ll miss out on opportunities to glorify Him more fully.

So what am I getting at? What is the solution here? Well, organic farming of course! Hehe. But seriously, never settle for the list. I think in our humanity, we feel the need for some sort of structure. We want a checklist and I think we’d feel lost without some sort of framework to step into. What I’m asking is that you never settle for it as-is.

Every year, I learn about new fungi, creepy-crawlies and other life forms that are vital to the health of my garden soil. We must be vigilant. As Peter wrote, “Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober.” In every season, we must be aware that our basic recipes for fertile heart-soil leave holes of unbelief. Instead, we can remain aware and ready for the Holy Spirit to touch those places and say, “Here child. I need you to seek me here.” When we obediently find Him and soak up His nourishment, then slowly but surely the life that unfolds will bloom brighter and fuller than ever; it will bear rich fruit to the praise of His glorious grace which He bestows on us.