I remember the year we planted our garden in Rapid City. It was 2008. The seeds went into the ground with great hopefulness. But as we watched hail storm after hail storm strip the leaves off the young plants, we knew all hope was lost. And that's the wretched life of a gardner. But not always. Some years the harvest is plentiful becuse the seeds found good soil and good conditions.

When you share your faith, it's like you're a gardener planting seeds. You meet all types of people. Some people will reject the message outright. And that’s a shame because they’re rejecting the only thing that will save them. Other people do honestly believe. They hear you speak of the joy and peace you have in Christ and they come to know Christ, too. But they never nurture their faith. When the problems in life come, they reject their faith because it was never fed by God’s Word. Or they are seduced by the world and reject their faith. But to our delight other people believe! They hear the message, they plant themselves deeply in God’s Word and their faith grows and is sustained by the Word of God.

Now, we would obviously prefer everyone to believe, right? And sometimes that good desire to want people to have the same happiness and peace we have, makes us put too much pressure on ourselves. We kick ourselves and think “Oh man, if only I would have said this. If only I would have said it this way.” But we can’t. And when we try to force people into believing, then we are putting ourselves in God’s position presuming to know more than God or be more powerful than God.

What we do know is what has happened in our own life. We know that we didn’t make a choice to believe. We know that it was the Holy Spirit who changed our hearts. The seed has fallen in good soil by the grace of God and we grow in faith and produce fruit.

Jesus teaches us that all we must do is scatter the seeds of the gospel. Let them fly, my friends! Don’t think to yourself, “Well, I might say something wrong.” Just tell people what you know. Tell people what it means for you that you are saved. Tell people that Jesus has died for them, too. Throw those seeds of the gospel and let them fall wherever they will: hard soil, rocky soil, weedy soil or good soil. We are all God’s planters.