Breaking Up Your Fallow Ground
_{// by Pastor Mitch Horton}

February 2000 | Posted in • Archives | (1) Comments |

“Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, til He comes and rains righteousness on you” Hosea 10:12

We are all hungry for a fresh move of the Spirit of God in our personal lives. I believe that God plans for all of us to live in a canstant state of renweal and revival. One of the keys to having a daily fresh experience with the Lord is found here in this verse in “breaking up your fallow ground.”

A healthy Christian is a hungry Christian! One of the first signs of physical sickness is loss of hunger. Even an animal, your pet cat or dog, will stop eating when they feel sick. And when we lose our spiritual hunger for the Word, prayer, church attendance, evangelism, etc., it is a sign that we have in some way stopped pursuing God. We may have opened ourselves up to spiritual staleness by allowing unconfessed sin to remain in our lives.

We read in 1 Peter 2:1-2, “Therefore laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, evil speaking, (2) as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby.” Notice that when we lay aside the sins mentioned in verse one, we then become alive with the spiritual hunger and desire mentioned in verse two.

When we become content with where we are in God, and cease to pursue a deeper relationship with Him, we then have need of breaking up our fallow ground. As Hosea 10:12 states, when we break up our fallow ground we will find a fresh work of God in our lives, “till He comes and rains righteousness” on us as a result.

Fallow ground is untilled and uncultivated ground. It has been protected from the shock of the plow and the agitation of the farm equipment. Fallow ground lies undisturbed year after year. It remains the same, safe and unchanged. It never sees the fruit of the harvest season. And there is never a harvest without the plow first of all breaking up the hard, crusty soil.

On the other hand, cultivated, plowed ground has allowed its peace and contentment with the ordinary to be disturbed by the plow. Plowed ground experiences the travail of change. It has been upset, bruised, and broken. But it finds the rewards of the plow in the new life that it produces, and in the fruitful harvest.

There are two kinds of lives that we can live as Christians, the Fallow or the plowed. The fallow Christian has become centent with himself and lives on his past experiences in God. As A. W. Tozer says,“to be has taken the place of to become.” This Christian has ceased to bear fruit and to grow into the likeness of Christ.

The plowed life has allowed repentence and confession to break up the fallow ground of complacency. Contrition and humility have broken the soil of the heart for the seed of the Word to be planted. The plowed life becomes a fruitful life.

In the New Testament, one of the ways that our fallow ground is broken up is by the application of the fire of God to our lives.

John the Baptist mentioned fire as being included in Jesus’ baptism of believers in the Holy Spirit in Matthew 3:11,”....He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

Fire is mentioned frequently in the Word of God. In the day of Pentecost, the one hundred twenty in the upper room had “divided tongues, as of fire” appear over their heads. God revealed Himself to Moses on top of Mount Saini in a great storm, anf the writer of Hebrews says that experience, “Our God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:29) “Fire” will reveal our works when we stand before Jesus to receive our rewards at the judgment seat of Christ (1 Corinthians 3:13). When John saw Jesus in Revelation 1:14,”....His head and hair were white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire.” When God appeared to Ezekiel in Ezekiel 1:26-28, He had the appearance of fire from His waist up and from His waist down.

Fire is the element of God’s character that purges our lives, that breaks up our fallow ground. To accept Jesus’ Lordship, you must also accept the fire of His presence that will cleanse your life from the imputities that hinder your usefulness.

We are all “changed from glory to glory” by the Spirit of God (II Corinthians 3:18). When we are born again, our spirits become new (II Corinthians 5:17). The nature of sin is removed, and the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in our human spirit. Our souls (mind, emotions, and will) and bodies are left with a residue of sin that has tarnished their purity. And the Holy Spirit uses the Word of God to reveal these impurities, bringing them to the surface, so that we by a choice of will can allow the Word to change them.

The word heart is used several different ways in scripture. I believe that the word heart is used to refer to the human spirit, such as in I Peter 3:4, where the human spirit is spoken of as “the hidden man of the heart.” In Ezekiel 36:26 we read, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” Aain, in this verse, the heart is used in reference to the human spirit.

I believe that the term heart could also refer to the inward man, which includes both the spirit and the soul. “....Even though the outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.” (II Corinthians 4:16).

The soul contains our minds, our emotions, and our wills. Our human spirit is our eternal nature, the part of us that reaches out to fellowship with God. Again, I believe that Jesus uses the term heart as a reference to both the spirit and soul when He says in Matthew 12 34-35,”....for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. (35)A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things.”

God deals with our inward man, or our hearts. His fire , or His purifying ability, reaches down into our hearts to cleanse us from wrong motives, wrong attitudes, and wrong thoughts that will hinder us from receiving His best in our lives. When His fire is applied to our lives, it searches us thoroughly. This searching is not to condemn us, but to place us in a position to receive his best.

Notice the scriptural references to this searching of the heart. In Revelation 2:23, Jesus says,”....I am He who searches the minds and hearts.” In Jeremiah 17:10, God says, “I the Lord search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.” In Jeremiah 23:24, we read,” Can anyone hide himself in secret places, so I shall not see him? Says the Lord; Do I not fill heaven and earth? Says the Lord.”

Again we read in I Chronicles 28:9, “....for the Lord searches all hearts and understands all the intents of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will be found by you, but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever.” And in I Samuel 16:7, “....for the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Psalm 7:9 reads,“O let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end, but establish the just. For the righteous God tests the hearts and minds.” And also in Psalm 51:6,“Behold, I desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden parts you will make me to know wisdom.”

In the New Testament, speaking to the believer, we read,” Now He who searches the hearts….” (Romans 8:27). And in Hebrews 4:13,” And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.”

God has the attitude of a father towards us. Not a harsh, demanding, dictatorial judge, but an attitude of love, care, compassion, concern and help. “The Lord is gracious, full of compassion, slow to anger, and great in mersy. The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all his works.” (Psalm 145:8-9).

His desire for us today is that we allow the Holy Spirit’s purging fire to sift the thoughts and motives of our hearts. We need to allow Him the privilege of setting in order our thoughts, our motives, our attitudes and our actions. He wants to break up our fallow ground, the spiritually unproductive areas of our lives. We may have been born again for years, and yet still have areas of our lives that have remained unchanged, unchallenged, and fallow . The loving fire of His presence will act as a plow, breaking up the hardened areas of our lives, causing His Word to transform us, bringing change, victory, and strength to the stubborn, willful, and prideful areas within us.

Don’t run from the fire! It will challenge us, but it will not burn us! It’s a fire that will refine us. We all need to find a place to get alone with God, and begin to pour out our hearts to Him. We should expose to Him by confession every thought, every motive, and every attitude that we know to be sinful. He stands with us, not as a judge, but as a helper. Jesus took our sins as well as our sinful nature on the cross, and He is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse us (I John 1:9).

As we trust Him in this way, He will give us grace that will help us to overcome these sinful predispositions. Every time we recognize a wrong though, motive, or attitude, we should bring it to His attention. We will then find His strength and ability producing change in those areas that we have submitted to Him.

We all have “baggage from Egypt” to deal with, thoughts, and motives from our “before Christ” days that still try to control us.

When I received the baptism in the Holy Spirit over twenty-three years ago, I often found myself alone on my face before God, pouring out my heart to Him, and confessing sinful patterns that tried to rule my mind, my emotions, and my will. I found that as I humbled myself before Him, His ability was there to help me. He would show me scriptures such as Isiah 57:15 which reads,” For thus says the high and lofty One who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revice the heart of the contrite ones.”

I found that His help and strength would come into my life throughout the day, and that the Holy Spirit would remind me of scripture that applied to the problem areas of my life. He began to break up the fallow ground in my life, and He’s still in the process of completing His work in me to this day.

I encourage you to begin today to allow the fire of His presence and of His Word to plow through the fallow areas of your life. The results will be a fruitful harvest of godly living for you that that will be a witness to others of His presence in you. And you will notice a “peace that surpasses all understanding” that will enable you to enter into the “rest” that He has promised all believers.