Carrie Cox’s Corner

I was thinking some more about the seed. I mused on how it represented resurrection, but as I was discussing it with Nathan, I realized more and more how it represents salvation.

Think about it…

Before Christ we are useless seeds that are unplanted. We have that outside seed coat, but without the Lord quickening the inside, we are nothing. We are useless. We are in all intents and purposes dead.

The only way for that seed to come alive is for it to be planted.

What is the only way we are saved? We must by faith believe in our hearts the gospel: believe that the Lord died, was buried (planted) and that he rose again. This we can believe about him, but by faith we must believe ourselves as dead-completely unable to reach God. A seed cannot plant itself. We cannot save ourselves. It is not in what we do, but it what Christ has done: his death, burial, and resurrection.

Once by faith we accept his sacrifice, his blood, as a payment for our sins and sin nature, and believe on this truth-then life is planted within us. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. We have faith when we hear and allow our minds to be open and to listen. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear! We have faith when we decide to believe the truth, even if we don’t feel like it could be true! Once this truth is realized and accepted, the seed germinates, and the old coat is shed. The inside man comes alive and starts to grow. Like Mom’s song that she so sweetly sings, “I’ll tell you the best thing I ever did do. I laid off that old coat and I put on the new.”

But in this instance the coat is not our fleshly body. No, we know that won’t be shed until we close our eyes in death, but this old coat is the internal old man-a human heart without Christ, a human heart with only his own mind and reasoning to justify the world and his own actions.

Friends, salvation is so simple. You just have to believe it and know that you personally need it. You cannot try it on for a while to see if it fits. No, faith and salvation are superlatives, like being born, or being dead. You can’t be half dead (although it makes a nice metaphor). You are either alive or dead. You cannot be half-saved. You are only in or are you are out. The eight souls on Noah’s ark were in the ark. The rest of humanity was out.

You may be able to convince yourself that you’re saved, many have, but until you can look back at a time when you realized that you were a sinner, when you realized that you in no way possible could take yourself to heaven, when you realized that allowing Christ to do it for you was the ONLY way, when you in your heart, you said “yes” to the Lord Jesus Christ, his blood, and his plan…this supernatural transaction will not have taken place. When it does a new creature is born, germination has begun.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says it clearly:

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Dear Reader, please take a moment and make sure of this. Have you been planted by faith? Have you heard with the ears of your heart that you are a sinner and that you MUST have salvation?

Father, give us ears to hear, and enlighten our minds to your truths.

Has God revealed himself to you? He promises to show himself to all men through Creation. The heavens declare the glory of God. Have you ever looked at the sky, the stars, the Grand Canyon, anything in nature and said, “There must be a God”? He will continue to reveal himself if you look. Draw nigh to God and He will draw nigh to you. If you are wondering if you have truly accepted Christ, ask him. Search him. Test him. If you are honestly seeking if God is real, and if he is really for you, I promise if you open up to him, he will in no wise cast you out.

There is a great book written by an agnostic called By Searching (by Isabel Kuhn) who shares her own story of testing God to see if he was real. Spoiler alert, He did.

And he did that for me, too. I realized that even though I grew up in church, I was a good kid, I read my Bible and I prayed—that wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. I was a sinner.

Finally, after the Lord was graciously calling to me, my heart was fiercely condemning me, and the Word of God through a preacher was whole heartedly convicting me, I bowed my knee and I said, “Lord, I submit to you. Please save me.”

And you know what?

He did!

I was 12 years old, and right then and there in a little girl’s heart, a new man was born. The old man in my heart was shed away, and I now had access to God the Father and to heaven when I died.

Many couldn’t see it on the outside, but oh how the inside changed. And oh how it continued to change as I grew in Christ. And oh, how I wish it was finished changing, and I was more like my Savior. But oh, one day I will be, I just have to wait for that final fleshly seed coat to fall away.

I love the poem by Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken.”

I’m sure you’ve read it. It’s one of his most famous. It talks of how a person came up to two roads and had to decide which one to choose. He chose one road out of the two, the one that not many others had taken, and for a time they ran parallel and seemed the same, but through time they grew further and further apart. The man looks back to that day when he made one choice and what a difference it made.

I see my self in this poem. Looking back to that decision that a child made, many would not have seen how it could have mattered. But today, now I can see how that has made “all the difference.”

Today, are you at a crossroads? Two choices lay before you. Life or death.

Which one will you choose?