"Break up your uncultivated ground.." - Hosea 10-12 (AMPC)

The Lord has been speaking to me very clearly about breaking up “fallow ground.” One of the first visions I ever received of the Lord concerning my family and I was riding a tractor doing that very thing with a disc plow.

Breaking up the fallow ground represents breaking up the areas of one’s life, which have become hardened over the years from lack of attention. Weeds and thorns represent the influence of the world, which crowds out the fruitfulness that God had intended. 

The scripture tells us to live in the land of promise but to drive out the evil influence around us. By not doing so, they will become thorns and pricks for us that vex us.

“But if you will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then those you let remain of them shall be as pricks in your eyes and as thorns in your sides, and they shall vex you in the land in which you dwell.” 
Numbers 33:55 (AMPC)

The above scripture is a spiritual lesson of what happens when we allow compromise to obfuscate what the Lord has told us. His love is demanding but fair. He sees our lives and wants all of it, not just a part of it.

Going deeper with the Lord is a process and a journey, if we are stuck in our walk and are not moving forward then the question must be asked, “what fallow ground is the Lord telling us needs to be broken up?”

I believe each of us wrestles with God at one time or another, if we have only treated Him as just a friend or a lover, then the relationship would be tilted too much in one direction, sometimes we must wrestle with Him for a blessing.

 “Since the days of John the Baptist, the kingdom of heaven has been under attack. And violent people are taking hold of it.” Matthew 11:12 (NIRV)

Sometimes the desperation of the soul demands that we pursue God with a hunger and a passion that requires an answer; the desire for more of God keeps us crying out for more. Jacob physically wrestled with the angel of God all night and would not let go of Him until He would bless him.

“Even before Jacob was born, he was holding on to his brother’s heel. When he became a man, he struggled with God. At Peniel he struggled with the angel and won. Jacob wept and begged for his blessing. God also met with him at Bethel. He talked with him there.” Hosea 12:3-4 (NIRV)

Part of the wrestling I am speaking of is praying, fasting, devoting, sometimes physically yelling at God or hitting a pillow or wall. 

Sometimes even walking or running helps us to express the necessary emotion to the Lord. Our emotion does not threaten God; He welcomes it because emotion expresses the most authentic part of our vulnerability to the Lord, it is from that place we can reveal what needs to be released in our lives and broken up by the Lord. 

The Lord does want to take us into deeper areas with Him, where He can reveal the treasures and beauties of His Kingdom in greater detail through our lives. Still, we must allow Him to prepare us by asking Him to show us what hinders us from going to these deeper places with Him and then allowing Him to shake up areas of our lives He shows us which need further surrender. 

It is these areas in our lives that God stirs us and will enable us to be spiritually broken so that our cry to Him is one of passion and desire for His deliverance and healing so that He may enter our lives on a new level. It is good, and it fosters a healthy relationship with the Lord.

  

Returning to the theme of God’s love, yes, He does love us with a passionate love, but he also loves us enough to not let us stay distant from Him for very long. Intimacy requires sacrifice, and God wants intimacy to be our way of communicating and interacting with Him. Intimacy reveals who we are in our deepest self standing before God with no pre-tense (much like being exposed - naked and unashamed) so that He may see us as we are, not like the way we want Him to see us. 

It is in this place of vulnerability that God beacons us into areas of revelation that we desire to go, places where secret graces of His Kingdom can be ours and ours alone because of His love for us.

  

We have so much potential in our relationship with Jesus that it staggers the mind, we are the ones that can go the distance with Jesus or not, we cannot put our trust in spiritual leaders, pastors, teachers, or prophets.  Our trust has to be in Jesus alone. 

We have been given the tools and the understanding to make the difference for ourselves and this world by knowing the Lord, and the Lord wants to take us from just superficially knowing about Him, to fully knowing Him as our Bridegroom-King who is after a bride who is perfect in every way.

We are that bride, and we are being prepared, He is showing us that it is time to violently: “break up your uncultivated ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, to inquire for and of Him, and to require His favor, till He comes and teaches you righteousness and rains His righteous gift of salvation upon you.”

Be Blessed;

Stephen Barnett