The Lutheran Hour

"Fearless and Endless Growing"

#92-46
Presented on The Lutheran Hour on July 13, 2025
Guest Speaker: Rev. Dr. Daniel Paavola
Copyright 2025 Lutheran Hour Ministries

Text: Colossians 1:1-14

God’s Word for us today is Colossians 1:1-14. We read these verses to begin, verses 5-6: “Of this you have heard before in the Word of truth, the Gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.”

My wife is a wonderful gardener. She specializes in flowers, everything from simple geraniums on to perennials with names I can’t remember or even pronounce. Her hostas and hydrangeas, they come back every spring, no matter how cold the winter was. And every May she divides plants that have gotten too big; she moves and replants flowers that aren’t doing very well; she puts in the new ones she’s been waiting to try. And by the middle of summer, you can imagine our gardens and flowers beds have every plant, every size, every color you could possibly want.

That’s the picture that takes us to our text. Paul describes us as those in whom God has planted His Gospel message. This Gospel grows like a perfect garden. The right seed in the right soil, watered, trimmed, it grows beautifully. But in many ways, the Gospel’s planting is beyond what we find in our ordinary garden. The garden of the Gospel has no limit to location. It flourishes wherever it chooses. Also, the Gospel garden grows right now. It doesn’t have to stop for winter. Finally, this garden can move. The Gospel can take us from the darkness of our past and plant us in the full light of God. Ordinary plants can’t take that kind of change: dark to full sun. But God transfers us into the kingdom of His Son where we can grow like we’ve never grown before.

So, thinking of plants, let’s start with the fact that some plants can grow only in certain places. Not every climate works for every plant. We live in southern Wisconsin, about a mile inland from Lake Michigan. We can grow apples and strawberries, no problem, but let’s not waste time trying to grow oranges or bananas. We’re Wisconsin, after all. You gardeners know that seed catalogs will show you what growing zone you’re in. It’s simple: you find the zone you’re in and order the plants for that zone.

What if God would limit the Gospel and the growth it brings according to the zone of growth we’ve shown so far? What if God would look at us and say, “Well, I think you’ve grown a little in patience, so we can try more of that. But I don’t see much love or joy here, so let’s just give up on those.” Imagine God judging our past growth and leaving us as we are with no change. None of us has grown every fruit that He could demand. So, He could just say that our lives have been too cold, too hard-crusted for any lasting crop. With that, He could turn away and leave us just as we are.

What could we say? God could rate us as He wishes. We could be judged like the fig tree in the parable in Luke 13 where the tree had not brought out good fruit for the year, and the owner was about to cut it down. But the vinedresser asked to let it have one more year. If it bore fruit, good, but if not, then cut it down. How easily God could point out that we’ve had many, many years, and the fruit that could be expected, it hasn’t always come. He could say that nothing good seems ready to grow in us. So let the weeds come and take over instead.

But the good news of our text is that God’s planting in us isn’t limited to a certain zone, a particular person, or the perfect setting. God doesn’t plant according to our past. Listen to Paul when he describes how the Gospel message grows anywhere. Colossian 1:5-6, that we opened with, says: “Of this you have heard before in the Word of truth, the Gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.” There is life in the Word of God that speaks to every person. And there’s a message that is adapted to every soul.

So, what is this power of the Gospel to grow wherever it’s planted? It can grow in even the hardest heart. Yes, it can be rejected by shallow lives and by lives that are too overcrowded. The parable of the sower in Mark 4 shows us how the word of God can be resisted, burnt off, or choked to death. But the Word can also bear fruit in the most surprising lives. The apostle Paul is a wonderful example as he described himself as the man most unlikely to bear good fruit. He said, “Formerly I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, an insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13).

When was the season in which God’s words began to grow in the apostle Paul? Did God wait for Paul first to make repayment for all his wrongs? That might sound reasonable, but God turned Paul around in just three days. He spoke to Paul when he was at his hardest point. God didn’t need to transplant Paul to a new place. But He met him on the road to Damascus and, after three days of blindness, Paul was opened to the light of the Gospel.

Despite the hardness of Paul’s heart, God’s Word was planted and it bore fruit. The change that came to hard-hearted Paul is a bit like the early spring here in Wisconsin. When winter seems to hang on, the tulips begin to break out. The ground is barely thawed. It doesn’t matter. Those sturdy tulips push through. Even a covering of new snow doesn’t stop them. When it’s time to grow, it’s time to grow, and hard mulch or an inch of snow won’t stop that tulip. They’re going to bloom no matter what.

So the Word of God comes to grow, in season and out of season, ready to change the life in which it was sown. That’s the meaning of Paul when he noted that the word was bearing fruit throughout the world. Imagine a plant that could be grown in every climate, every soil, days of darkness or days of sun, drought or rain. But of course, that’s impossible. You can’t expect the same plant to thrive in both desert and the tundra. But the Word of God has no limits. As Isaiah said, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My Word be that goes out from My mouth; it shall not return to Me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I propose and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10-11).

God’s Word is determined to bring new growth. When we plant even a simple geranium, which, by the way, I have right here on the desk in front of me, we fill the pot with new soil, carefully put the geranium in, covering its roots just so. We water it, we give it just the right amount of sun. If there’s a storm coming, we bring it in, so the wind doesn’t beat it down. That’s a lot of care for one little geranium.

But God’s Word is much sturdier and it’s a more adaptable planting. It’s boundless as our Colossians text notes, saying, “The Gospel which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world, it is bearing fruit and growing.” It doesn’t need a certain place or people to grow. There’s no exclusive property or people that alone have the Gospel growing. As God said in the passage from Isaiah, His Word grows where He’s sent it, and it doesn’t come back empty. So, we can share this same Word with all its promises and its power to everyone we know: your daughter in California, your father in that apartment in North Carolina, your best friend who just moved to Texas, your in-laws who’ve stayed in North Dakota—they all are in the right place for the growing of the Gospel in their lives. As Paul said in our text, “The gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world, is bearing fruit and growing.”

So, we have a Word that can grow in any place. Now the question is when to plant. Here in southern Wisconsin, the consensus of most people is that from May 15 on we should be free from hard frosts. So plant those geraniums and don’t worry about them freezing. Well, of course, say that to someone and they’ll tell about the hard frost that came on May 30 some years back. If you keep on asking, you might hear someone claim that it’s frozen hard even in June and froze again in August. Listen to enough of these stories, you’ll give up and let the weeds take over.

The search for the right time to plant is a challenge. I don’t want to be too soon. What if it freezes? I don’t want to wait too long and lose some good days of growing. What if we had that same caution to the sharing of the Word of God? Think how easily we could be held back from saying anything to anyone. We could all hear cautions like these: “Don’t speak too soon. Don’t wait too long. Don’t say too much. Don’t say too little.” Give me enough cautions I might not say a single word.

But consider again the humble, simple geranium. The germanium is already blooming when you buy it. It’s blooming the moment you put it into the soil at home. It’ll keep on blooming every day. Here in southern Wisconsin, that little plant will bloom for five months. From the day you buy it, that geranium can’t wait to bloom and grow.

Listen to the same restlessness of the Word of God in our text: “It is bearing fruit and growing—as it does among you since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth.” The fruit of the Word of God is immediate. Look, for example, at the tremendous response in Pentecost where in one day of preaching, the apostles saw 3,000 people come to faith and be baptized, Acts 2. In fact, listen to how Peter assures the people that this Gospel promise was immediate and boundless: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the Name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself” (Acts 2:38-39).

The Word of promise brought repentance, change, and hope to people who were crushed by their past. But the work of forgiveness didn’t have to wait for a better time or better people. They could hear the news of forgiveness and immediately take it to heart. How different this is from other life-changing words. When we go on a diet or start a new exercise plan, the promises of better health are all there. But after the first day, what’s really changed? Nothing. And hopefully you’re still excited about the plan, but maybe you better hold off getting on the scale after just one day.

But how different it is with the growing of the God’s Word. When the Word brings us news of the grace of God, it bears fruit that very day. Imagine the contrast: a dry, lifeless patch of trampled ground, worthless, is transformed in one day into a garden in which plants are already blooming. So Paul reminded the Colossians that they had shown fruit from the first day of hearing the Gospel, and this fruit continued to grow.

A plant that can grow from the first day on is wonderful. But there could be one problem. That plant might get too big! We have hostas on the north side of the house; they just don’t know when to quit growing. So every two years or so, we have to divide them into two or even three parts. One part stays where it is; it always comes back just fine. In fact, I think it likes the freedom of having more room. And the other pieces get moved to a new place. We recently started a whole new hosta garden just for these pieces. They always grow. It seems awfully rough to divide them, dig them up, put them into a new place. But you know, put that hosta in the hole, water it, cover it, and water it again and walk away. It’s going to grow.

That’s the idea of the ending of our text. Paul notes that the Word of God is a Word that transplants. Hear Colossians 1:13-14: “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” Most plants prefer a certain amount of sunshine. Hostas thrive on very little sun, even doing well on the north side of the house. You wouldn’t normally take a shadow-dwelling hosta and put it in the full July sun. It’s too hot and bright.

But look at what God has done with us. He has taken us, shadow-dwelling people, dwellers in darkness, and He’s moved us into the full light of His Son. He’s done this, not so He could display our sins and scorch us for them. He’s moved us as His own, children whom He loves. He has us in the sunshine of His kingdom so we can begin to show the fruit He has ready for us to bear. Our text puts it this way with Paul: “asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. May you be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience and joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light” (Colossians 1:9-12).

Not only do we survive the replanting by God, being put into the kingdom of His Son, we begin to bear those fruits that Paul just described. And what a list of the fruit God brings out in us! The power, endurance, patience, joy and thanksgiving are all reflections of God’s own nature. Power, patience and joy are what He first gave us, not only as gifts in themselves but as seeds that grow in us. We bear fruit because He first brought that same fruit to us.

The Word of God is that life-giving, fruit-bearing seed that’s determined to grow up in us. When it comes to us, this Word is not forgotten or hidden. It’s a seed that can grow in any life and at any age. It’s an abundant Word, a seed that won’t run out, so we don’t need to hide it or keep it just for ourselves. It’s a Word of life that bears that fruit for us all. Here is the Word that needs no special season or zone. There’s no delay in planting it. Today is the day for it to grow. And once this Word has begun to grow, this new growth can move. We are transferred to the kingdom of God’s Son. In fact, that new place, the kingdom of God, is exactly what we were made for. Here we can bear the fruit God has prepared for us, growing in the gifts He’s already shared with us. Amen.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, thank You for speaking Your creative, fruit-bearing Word to us. Remind us that Your Word lives within us, even us, needing no delay or special season. And bear in us the fruit that You have prepared ahead for us to carry. We pray in Jesus’ Name. Amen

Reflections for July 13, 2025
Title: Fearless and Endless Growing

No reflection segment this week.

Music Selections for this program:

“A Mighty Fortress” arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Crucifer” by Sydney H. Nicholson, arr. Peter Prochnow. Used by permission.
“Almighty God, Your Word Is Cast” arr. Henry Gerike. Used by permission.
“The God of Abraham Praise” arr. Henry Gerike. Used by permission.
“Preach You the Word” by Martin Franzmann.
“Where Charity and Love Prevail” From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.