Everyone possesses four personal traits that can either hold them back or generate growth. This week, Pastor Neal explores these traits and encourages personal transformation!

Lesson 1: Our hearts have four kinds of soil.

In our hearts we have:
Compacted soil / tough
Rocky soil / scorched
Thorn filled soil / overstimulated
Prepared soil / growth-oriented

GROWTH GROUP / PERSONAL REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Name the four kinds of soil in the story of the farmer.
2. Describe each kind of soil.
3. It's good to have some compacted pathways in our hearts. What are some things that should be firm and resolute?
4. Why would rocks be the metaphor for habits, attitudes, and opinions?

Lesson 2: Our job is to prepare the soil of our hearts.

We can only prepare the soil of our hearts to be growth-oriented by turning over tough soil, removing rocks, pulling weeds, watering, and fertilizing the field of our hearts.

GROWTH GROUP / PERSONAL REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. The four types of soil in the story started out as the same kind of dirt. What was necessary for the farmer to do, to prepare the field?
2. If you wanted to reclaim the path and the rocky areas of your heart for planting, what would you need to do?

For a tough heart, fast from familiar inputs.
Fasting is the exercise of intentionally not putting something into us for an extended amount of time, usually a day to three days. I’m not going to ask us to fast from food. For this situation, we can fast from our familiar inputs.

GROWTH GROUP / PERSONAL REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Do you agree with the idea that we all live in information bubbles and echo chambers?
2. What are your most familiar go-to, inputs?
3. What else might you do with your time if you fasted from those inputs for a few days?

For a scorched heart, watch in silence
Keep an eye out for people unlike us and see them with non-judgmental eyes. Stop to realize, we really know nothing about them and whatever story we create in our minds based on what we see is just that, a story.

GROWTH GROUP / PERSONAL REFLECTION QUESTIONS
1. Have you seen examples in your familiar inputs of people whose soil may have been shallow, whose hearts were scorched and who seemed overly sensitive or opinionated?
2. Can you think of examples in your own life?
3. How does it feel to be “thin soiled?” That is, to have God’s word only planted shallow and easily burnt away in the heat of a situation?
4. When recently might you have benefited from “shushing” yourself?

Next step:
Try fasting from familiar inputs and “shushing” yourself.