I have seen much in my 40-plus years as a believer in Christ Jesus, but nothing as powerful as a Kairos Prison Ministry Weekend. As an inmate once mused, “Look around this room. In just three days, the love you [volunteers] brought here has cut through these hardened men and entire lifetimes of hatred and anger. This can only be God.” Kairos observes some foundational practices that are effective in sharing the transforming love and forgiveness that are found in Christ, one of which is this: We do not come seeking commitments, rather we come planting seeds of truth and love; any spiritual “harvest” will be God’s doing in His own time.
Jesus used the “planting of seeds” as an analogy of speaking the Word of God: it falls on different kinds of hearts and over time, it produces spiritual life and growth in those who accept it. And to His disciples, he said that, of sowing and reaping, it is actually sowing that is “the hard work.”1 So over the next few weeks, let’s devote ourselves to meditating on “seeds” that bear fruit—Scriptures that speak life and truth to the human condition and produce a harvest of spiritual birth and growth in its time. We begin today with three passages, each of which acknowledges the gravity of our sin and celebrates God’s provision of forgiveness.
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. (Isaiah 1:18 ESV)
God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8 ESV)
And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. (Colossians 2:13-14 NIV)
All of these verses breathe hope into hopelessness. Each exhales a confession of our sin and inhales the cleansing breath of God’s forgiveness, a pardon at great cost, one that cannot be taken away. So let’s think on these truths and the new life they proclaim. Better yet, why not memorize them, so that we may be prepared to plant the Word in wrestling hearts as the Spirit leads us to do so?
Father, thank You for those who planted seeds of truth into my life, for through Your Word, You have saved me. Grace me to grow in knowledge and incline my heart to Your Spirit, that I might sow Your Word on the paths of human hearts. May there be harvest—rich, Kingdom harvest. In Christ I pray. Amen.
1 Mark 4:34-38
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Paul Nordman—Author 