Last week I shared how difficult my transition was from our first foster care season. Today I want to share a couple of concepts God taught us during that season that helped us get through future transitions and might be helpful to you. God showed us  early on that it was our responsibility as foster parents and as missionaries to plant seeds, but it was not our responsibility to make the seeds grow. The apostle Paul said in I Cor. 3:6 “I planted, Apollos watered, but God makes things grow.” So we planted many seeds in our foster children and in our students in Japan, seeds of truth from God’s Word, seeds of instruction, seeds of love.

However, we could increase the likelihood of the seeds sprouting by watering them with our prayers and having faith God would cause them to grow even long after we’d finished planting. I learned two truths about seeds that helped me hang on to faith for our foster kids and our students in Japan. I learned that in the natural, seeds can lie dormant for even thousands of years, but when the right atmospheric conditions develop, the seeds can sprout and grow. We pray that at some point in their lives, God would create the right atmospheric conditions in our students and our foster children’s lives for those seeds to take root and grow.

I also learned about a plant whose name I can’t remember that had so much power in its seed that when it germinates, it literally splits the rock under which it has lain and pushes itself through the opening so that it appears to be growing out of the rock. I believe good seeds planted by faith in the One who has the power to make them grow can have that kind of power in even the stoniest hearts. So if you’ve had seasons of “planting seeds” in your children, Sunday School classes, Bible studies, or other situations that are now over, especially if you’ve seen no evidence of growth, I would encourage you to put their names on  your prayer list, and continue to pray in faith believing that God will create the right atmospheric conditions to make those seeds grow even in rocky hearts.

Sometimes when we’re called from “seed planting ” seasons, we wrestle with guilt because we’re no longer planting seeds or because someone near us doesn’t believe the season is really over. When God called us from Japan, someone told us, “God called us all to Japan, and there are still people here who aren’t saved, so we shouldn’t be leaving.” I really sought the Lord about that and decided that a call from a place is just as valid as a call to a place. That night our Daily Bread devotional was about a pastor who had been called from a church he’d pastored for many years, even though God had not yet told him what He was calling him to. He said, “A lot of people talk about being called to something, but I don’t hear much about being called from something!” Once again, we had to choose to be led by the Holy Spirit, not by what others expected of us.

Whether God is calling us to or from a seed-planting season, we can trust Him to work in the people’s lives in whom we’ve planted.  He is the One who makes things grow!Father, we’re so thankful you don’t expect us to do what you haven’t empowered us to do, make things grow, but you do expect us to be faithful to plant during the seed-planting seasons you provide. Help us to be faithful not only to plant but to pray. Amen.