Our life is like a grain of wheat. It is dead but precious life waits dormant inside. If it wants to live it has to die, totally and completely giving up its identity in order to live again.

When the seed gets planted it starts to germinate and life springs forth . The emerging plant rapidly finds new energy sources apart from the seed. The roots search downwards for nutrients and water while the new leaves unfurl upwards towards the life giving sun. The seed, rapidly depleting, is soon dead. It has served its purpose and brought forth new life. This new life is now being sustained by a source other than the seed.

This sequence has a lot to say to the Christian. If we want to live we have to die and be born again. We must willingly lay our life down in obedience and trust to Him, living not under our own will and power, but sustained by a source other than ourselves, Jesus Christ.

Yes, we can stay like the kernel of wheat, proud of who and what we are. But we need to realize that ungerminated and unregenerated (though we are still of worth…made in the image of God) we are a potential living plant locked inside a waiting seed, curbed only by our selfish desires and unwillingness to see what we are and what we were made to be.

 
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Paul in Galatians 2:20