It's Gott'a die!

The David Alliance [email protected] Garth Heckman Insight C: The Necessity of Falling and Dying (Kokkos) In John 12:24, Jesus states: "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain (kokkos) of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." The Sermon Point: Burial is not the end; it is the beginning. The Greek Nuance: A kokkos is a singular, isolated kernel. Unbroken, it has a shelf life of years but remains entirely alone. Only by being "buried" in the dark, breaking open, and surrendering its structure can its inner life be released. Application: This is Jesus predicting His death, but it's also a template for discipleship. Our greatest impact doesn't come from protecting our lives, but from our willingness to lay them down. What feels like "burial" in our lives is often God "planting" us for a harvest.   WE HAVE A DREAM - a seed - we don’t just let it die… we understand the process. In the real world, we get the seed, we find fertile ground, we dig a hole, we bury it, we water it, we expose it so sun, we keep bugs away, we fertilize it…  but in that process is still death - it has to die! The seed surrenders unto death - it must die. We must die to ourselves. We must be willing to say “ok God I have done everything I can, plant, water, fertilize, weed… but I also trust you to do whatever you want… if it dies, I trust you”.     Deep inside the Arctic Circle, carved into a frozen mountain on a remote Norwegian island, sits the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. It is built to withstand earthquakes, nuclear war, and rising sea levels. Inside, there are over a million seed samples from every corner of the earth. They are kept in airtight, triple-ply foil packets at a constant temperature of minus 18 degrees Celsius. Why? To keep them perfectly safe. To keep them from changing. To keep them from dying. It is a masterpiece of human preservation. But here is the paradox of a seed: As long as a seed is kept safe, dry, and preserved, it is completely useless. A seed is not designed for a high-tech vault. It is designed to be thrown into the dirt, rained on, broken open, and utterly destroyed. Its safety is its starvation; its burial is its birth. The Transition: "Many of us live our lives like spiritual seed vaults. We spend all our energy keeping ourselves safe, comfortable, and controlled. We avoid the dirt of sacrifice, the darkness of suffering, and the pain of breaking. But Jesus did not call us to be preserved; He called us to be planted. Today, we are going to look at why God often takes what we love most and buries it—not to destroy it, but to unlock its true potential..." You can’t just simply hang on to a seed, a dream, a goal, a vision and just expect God to use it. You have to take a step of faith, plant it and hope it dies so that only God can make it grow!