Zebra Ministries

Good morning Zebras,

Last week I realized I needed to start over on my Personal Training course.  I had gone too quickly through the first few chapters and I didn’t learn them well enough to understand the more difficult materials I am trying to learn now so I needed to stop and go back and relearn the foundational truths.

At first, I thought I didn’t have time, I thought I had to take the test in August, so I was going to push through anyway, do my best, fail and schedule a retake.  And even if by some miracle I passed I was still going to go back and relearn the basics because I knew I didn’t understand them well enough to help others.

But this morning I found out I can schedule the test for November which gives me plenty of time to go back and learn it right, which is very encouraging to me because it repeats a successful pattern from the past.  Go back, start over, emerge stronger.

Years ago, God showed me my faith wasn’t strong enough to help others.  Heck, it wasn’t even strong enough to help me.  The only thing that made me different from a nonbeliever was that I went to church and Bible Study and spent a lot of my free time “working for God.”  I was the third soil, an immature believer with pathetic fruit.

As you know, in the parable of the four soils, the seed is always the same but the crop changes based upon the soil.  But the really cool thing God showed me is that He can change the condition of the soil.  We choose to be the third soil, we can just as easily choose to be the fourth, all we need to do is put Him first.

Luke 8:14–15: “And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.  As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.”

Mark wrote it this way: “And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.  But those that were sown on the good soil are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirtyfold and sixtyfold and a hundredfold.

I love you Zebras, there’s nothing more important than the foundational truths you are building on and the condition of your soil.  Don’t assume either are good, instead use the guide that Jesus laid down and honestly inspect your own “fruit.”

Love,

Jill