A seed must die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It must die if it wants to become something more. It must first wait, sometimes a long time. It must wait without certainty of the future, what it will become, what shape it will form, what weather it will see. A seed must die to become a tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Versions of ourselves must die too if we want to become who we are meant to be. This is painful. It can be grueling to lay part of ourselves down to death so that we can become something new – so that we can grow. It\u2019s always the opposite of what we think. \u201cTo get to growth, I need to be alive,\u201d one would think. \u201cTo flourish and be strong and grow in my life, I must grow from where I am right now, spreading my roots and strengthening small branches into bigger ones.\u201d What I know is true is that I need to die. Again and again and again. Somehow this thought never becomes more appealing over time. It is hard to accept. And sometimes, I forget about it. Then, I remember all over again when I need to grow what must happen first. A seed must die before it can grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesus understood this. He even taught about it. In John 12:24 He says, \u201cTruly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.\u201d Jesus knew something about death before growth. In fact, He knew everything about death before growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Planted seeds die and all seems lost at a glance. But dying seeds are much more than what presents initially as a total loss. They sacrifice everything to become something more, something far greater that they were always intended to be. They were made to die. They were made to grow. They were made to become trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am a seed. No matter my age, no matter how wise or how clueless, no matter far along or how far behind, no matter the time in which I live, no matter the things I do; I will always be a seed again. I will never outgrow the need to keep growing. I will always need to experience loss and death to myself to become who Jesus intends for me to be. I must trust that the hard work now will be worth it and what God has next is something more beautiful than I could ever imagine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will not come to life and experience the fullness of who I made to be unless I die first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A seed must grow. And so it must die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I must grow. And so I must die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A seed must die. It must die if it wants to become something more. It must first wait, sometimes a long time. It must wait without certainty of the future, what it will become, what shape it will form, what weather it will see. A seed must die to become a tree. Versions of ourselves…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","content-type":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"WB4WB4WP_MODE":"","WB4WP_PAGE_SCRIPTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_STYLES":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FONTS":"","WB4WP_PAGE_HEADER":"","WB4WP_PAGE_FOOTER":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/grantkennethtaylor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/grantkennethtaylor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/grantkennethtaylor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grantkennethtaylor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grantkennethtaylor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=827"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/grantkennethtaylor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829,"href":"https:\/\/grantkennethtaylor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827\/revisions\/829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/grantkennethtaylor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grantkennethtaylor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/grantkennethtaylor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}