The Seed Is Beginning to Grow: A Prophetic Word for Rosh Hashanah 5787

THE PROPHETIC WORD

The seed is beginning to grow

I see a seed that has been lying dormant for some time. From the outside, it can look as though nothing is happening. It can look dry, closed and lifeless. Yet hidden within that seed is life. Hidden within it is the possibility of something that has not yet been seen.

Then pressure comes.

The outer shell begins to crack. Something that initially looks like breaking is actually the beginning of growth. The seed cannot remain exactly as it was and become what it was created to become. There is a breaking open that has to take place for the life hidden inside to emerge.

I believe this is an important part of the prophetic picture for the year ahead. Some of what has felt like pressure has not been meaningless. I do not believe that every pressure comes from God, and I do not want to romanticise suffering, but God is able to work even within pressure. There are seasons when the shell that protected us in one stage can no longer contain what God wants to grow in the next.

And alongside the picture of the seed, I see something else.

As we approach Rosh Hashanah, this connection is especially significant. Within Jewish tradition this is a season deeply associated with teshuvah, repentance and return. It is the turning of the heart back toward God, allowing Him to search us, putting right what needs to be put right, and bringing our lives again into alignment with Him.

As I prayed, I saw repentance like the preparing of soil.

Before the shoot breaks through the surface, the ground is being prepared. Stones are removed. Hard ground is broken open. Weeds that would choke new growth are dealt with.

Repentance is not God pushing you away from the promise. It is not a price that you pay in order to persuade God to be good to you. It is God calling you back to Himself and preparing the soil in which new life can grow.

There are things that cannot flourish in the soil of yesterday. There may be attitudes, fears, distractions, offences, compromises and ways of thinking that God is asking us to release. Not because He is standing at a distance withholding something good, but because He loves us too much to allow the new thing to be strangled by the old.

Then I see the seed beginning to grow.

At first, almost everything important is hidden.

Roots begin to go down before the shoot comes up. There is life, but nobody standing above the ground can see it. There is movement, but there may be no visible evidence yet.

There are seasons when roots are forming in darkness. There are times when preparation is taking place before there is anything that can be shown to other people.

And then finally, the shoot pushes through the soil.

But strangely, that can become another test.

You look at this tiny green shoot and ask, Is that all?

Is that all there is to the promise I have carried for so long?

I expected a mighty tree. I expected something obvious, complete and undeniable. I expected the whole answer. And what I can see looks very small.

I believe 5787 will be a year of new life and new growth for many, but that growth will not always begin in the form that people expect.

Some things will begin quietly.

Some answers will first appear as an opportunity, a conversation, a small change, a new relationship, fresh courage, new understanding, a door opening just a little, a renewed desire to pray, or the first evidence that something which appeared dead is not dead after all.

The danger is that we judge the beginning by the picture we formed of the ending.

We say, “This cannot be it, because it does not yet look like the tree.”

But a shoot is not a failed tree. It is a tree in its beginning.

There is a test of faith in this. Will you trust God when you cannot yet see the fullness? Will you allow Him to define the process rather than demanding that His faithfulness must look exactly like the picture you created in your mind? Will you keep walking with Him when the answer comes in seed form?

There may even be things that you once called promise which God lovingly needs to reinterpret for you. Sometimes we hold tightly to the picture we formed around a word rather than holding tightly to God Himself.

That distinction is important.

Faith is not the power to force God to produce the outcome we imagined. Faith is trust in God Himself. It is confidence in His character, even when we remain willing for Him to correct our understanding.

What God has truly spoken, He is faithful to fulfil. But the fulfilment may arrive differently from the picture we built around the promise.

The shofar adds another part to this prophetic picture.

Its sound interrupts.

It calls people to attention.

And I sense that same invitation for this coming year:

Wake up from discouragement.

Wake up from the assumption that because you have not seen the complete answer, nothing is happening.

Wake up to the condition of the soil.

Wake up to the small shoot you have been tempted to dismiss.

Wake up also to the places where your heart has drifted, and return to Him.

This is not an invitation into hype. It is an invitation into attention.

I believe there is an invitation in this year to stop, to be still, and to listen again.

Not everything needs another strategy.

Some things need listening.

Ask God what the soil of your heart is like. Ask Him what needs to be removed. Ask Him what He has genuinely planted. Ask whether you have confused His promise with your preferred way of seeing that promise fulfilled. Ask Him whether there is already a small beginning present that you have failed to honour because you were looking for something larger.

Then tend what He has planted.

Water the seed with prayer.

Let Scripture give the roots somewhere to go.

Protect what has begun through obedience.

Allow other mature believers to help you discern whether you are nurturing faith or nurturing fantasy.

Give living things time to become established before demanding fruit from them.

There is a kind of anxious spirituality that constantly checks for evidence, constantly interprets every circumstance, and constantly asks whether the promise is still alive. That does not strengthen faith. It exhausts it.

There are moments when faith simply keeps watering and trusts God with what is happening underground.

Roots often grow in darkness.

Some of the deepest work God does in us happens before anybody else sees the evidence. What feels like delay may contain preparation. What feels like pressure may be cracking open a shell that cannot go with you into the next season.

I believe this new year carries an invitation into greater faith. But greater faith is not simply believing for bigger things.

It is knowing His character, His ways and His heart. It is understanding more deeply who you are in Christ. It is learning to trust Him not only when you can see the tree, but while you are still looking at a seed, a crack in the soil, or a tiny green shoot.

And yes, I believe there will be places of rejoicing.

There will be things that spring forth.

There will be moments when you suddenly realise that something has been growing for longer than you knew.

But perhaps the greatest gift of this season will be deeper than any particular outcome. It may be the deeper relationship with God that is formed through the process, a clearer recognition of His voice, a greater freedom from fear, and a deeper knowledge of His faithfulness in the unfinished middle of the story.