What Does It Mean to Cultivate?

1/19/2023

What does it mean to Cultivate?

To cultivate isn’t just to care really deeply about something. It’s to care SO much that you actually GO AFTER IT and say, “That is who I will become!” It’s not about sitting back and observing some amazing quality of Jesus or even talking about some amazing quality of Jesus. It’s to say, “That is so beautiful. I WILL become that. That’s where I’m headed. I WILL pursue that.” It’s a heart and passion to say, “It is not enough for me to just sit back and admire this quality of Jesus. I will not just talk about it. I’m going after that with all my heart. I will BECOME that, not just admire it.” It’s about constantly planting the seeds of it in your mind and heart, thinking about it, cherishing it in your heart, writing it down, talking to God continually about it - when you wake up, when you go to bed and throughout the day when you fail. Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, holding it up to God and saying, “Jesus, this is the man or woman I want to become. I WILL become. Please take me there. I want to go there with you. Teach me. Train me. I’m not that person yet, but that’s where I’m going. In fact, I want to go way past that.” It’s to have Elisha’s heart of “It’s not enough for me to just be like Elijah, as amazing as that is. I want double of what he has!” It’s about filtering every failure through the lens of the character of Jesus, which is our goal. And instead of being depressed at the failure, it’s about fixing our eyes again on the goal. Continually going back to “Jesus, I failed in this again. But that’s not who I want to be. This is the person I want to become. Please take me there.” It’s about RUNNING toward your future, instead of sitting back and admiring. It’s about taking ownership of your future in the sense that YOU decide what seeds you are going to plant and cultivate in your heart and ultimately what harvest you will receive. If you want to become someone different than you are today, you have to cultivate your future. Let’s plant and harvest beautiful things!

And by the way, seeds don’t “work.” They GROW, in season—if planted and cared for. Seeds are a tiny speck of future life to be CULTIVATED every day and never smothered or neglected.

Summary of what you just sent is there’s no such thing as “passive cultivation.” A field of wheat that is cultivated passively will produce a small sickly harvest at best. But a field truly cultivated, aggressively pulling weeds, treating the diseased plants, pruning, watering, feeding... will produce 30, 60, 100 times the energy put into it. That kind of harvest cannot be produced passively. What you have around you now is the answer to the question of whether you were passive in months or years past, when you could have been aggressively, passionately sowing and cultivating.