Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the LORD, till He comes and rains righteousness on you.
(Hosea 10:12)

There are two kinds of soil — fallow and plowed or cultivated. Fallow ground is uncultivated, unused, idle, and dormant. It could have been plowed at one time, but because the ground was left untended, it hardened and became crusted until finally it needed to be broken up again in order to become useful.

Similarly, there are two kinds of Christian hearts: the fallow heart and the plowed heart. The heart of a fallow-life Christian is content with himself, content with whatever fruit he may have produced in the past. He is tolerant of the self-searching of those earnestly seeking God. Yet he remains undisturbed. He has lost his passion for the presence of God in his life. He looks back with satisfaction at the glory that once was, but he has lost the spirit of adventure that drives him forward.

On the other hand, the plowed or cultivated heart is the heart that has remained prepared for the fresh activity from the Spirit of God. This heart is discontented with the inactivity of the fallow field, and it yearns to be cultivated and developed to receive seed again and again. It knows that its purpose is to be the habitation of seed.

Without the proper environment seed cannot grow. The miracle of growth can only take place in cultivated ground. It is miraculous how seed contains all the ingredients that makeup the plant it is destined to become. Take for example seed for a flower. Within that seed is stored all of the components that determines the color of the bloom, the size of its petal, its fragrance, and every other aspect of that type of flower.

God’s Words are God in seed form. All of His Words contain the power necessary to cause them to bear fruit in our lives. Everything He has destined us to be is contained in seed form in His Word. When His seed (His Word) is planted in our lives, it will become the plant it is destined to be. His seed growing up within us begins to change us into His image. This is the way we become everything that God has designed us to be.

Only the life that is plowed and cultivated, however, is eligible to see the miraculous growth of God’s seed. Miracles follow the plow. It is those who reach out in their spirit to seek and know God’s ways that become usable soil.

Diligently seeking the Lord is the open door to breaking up the hardened, unusable ground in our lives. Notice the Moffatt translation of this same verse, “…break up your fallow ground, by seeking knowledge of the Eternal….”

When we make the decision to become fallow ground and plant the seed of God’s Word then we will be like the person in Psalms 1:3: “He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither; and whatever he does shall prosper.”