Most of What You Plant, You'll Never See Bloom...and That's the Point

Last week, I was on my knees in the dirt, planting flowering bushes about four inches tall and trees barely a foot high. Somewhere between digging the holes and wiping the sweat off my face, a thought hit me that I couldn't shake:

Most of what I'm planting right now, I will never enjoy.

Some of these plants will die within the first year. Others will take decades before they produce any real fruit, shade, or beauty. And yet here I am, investing the time, the money, the aching back, for a return I may never personally see.

That's when it struck me. This is exactly what it looks like to invest in the lives of people for God's purposes.

Fifty Years of Planting

My wife, Mary Kay, and I have spent many years intentionally investing in people. When I look back across those decades, the outcomes look remarkably like my garden. Some of the people we poured our lives into died tragically young. Others appear to have spiritually died. Some simply disappeared. And then, there are the ones who have reproduced significantly in the lives of others, whose impact has multiplied far beyond anything we could have done on our own.

Even now, as I walk alongside leaders in a debriefing capacity, I know with certainty that the people in front of me will fall into those same categories. That's not cynicism. That's the reality of sowing seed.

Jesus Wasn't Impressed by the Numbers Either

The pattern I've witnessed across the years maps almost perfectly onto something Jesus said in Matthew 13:1–23; the Parable of the Sower.

What's easy to miss is the context of that parable. Crowds are surging toward Jesus. His following is growing fast. And yet Jesus is not impressed with the numbers. In fact, he literally has to push out into a lake on a boat just to create enough distance to address everyone. Then, rather than celebrating the crowd, he tells a story about a farmer and about how much seed doesn't make it.

The farmer's seed falls on four kinds of ground: the road, rocky soil, weedy soil, and good soil. Jesus later explains that the seed represents God's word being invested in people.

My first reaction? Why would any farmer throw seed on a road or rocky ground? That doesn't sound like a smart farming strategy.

But here's what investing in people has taught me: the difference in soil isn't always obvious at the outset. Rocks are often just below the surface. Weeds don't show up until the seed has already begun to grow. From the top, it can all look the same. And in Jesus' day, without fences at the edge of a field, seed would naturally fall onto the road beside it. You plant. You trust. You don't always know what you're planting into.

The Four Soils, Up Close

The Hard Path: Where the Enemy Steals the Seed

These are usually the first to become evident. If I don't see a spiritual hunger developing over time, I recognize there may not be a receptive heart. But I don't always walk away. If there's a genuine relational connection, or if I sense the Spirit telling me to keep pursuing, I stay. The soil may simply need more preparation before anything can take root.

The Rocky Soil: A Strong Start That Doesn't Last

These relationships begin to grow. There's real movement, genuine warmth, spiritual interest. I invest more. But then, something shifts. The relationship grows closer in some ways, but the spiritual depth starts to plateau. They enjoy the connection, but there's no real leaning into God. Often, they self-select out. Or they simply stop pursuing anything spiritually substantive. They become more distant, and I respect that.

The Weedy Soil: The Hardest Loss

This is the category that costs the most emotionally. These people do grow. They're established in their faith. They show real fruit. They're investing in others. And then, a potential spouse comes into the picture, and their focus shifts. Or a new job takes them somewhere else. Or, over time, their other interests slowly crowd out the spiritual dimension of their lives. It's not always an either/or decision; it's a priority problem. Eventually, they live nice, comfortable lives, but they stop reproducing spiritual fruit. They can be good social friends. But not deep spiritual ones.

The Good Soil: Where Legacy Lives

And then there are those who fall into fertile ground. Our time together deepens. They grow on their own — without me prodding, without me pulling them along. Over the years, I have moved from being their spiritual father to their spiritual friend. These are the people Jesus describes as producing fruit, some thirty, some sixty, some a hundredfold return on the investment made in their lives.

What Legacy Actually Looks Like

Legacy doesn't start with a platform or a title or a program. It starts in the dirt; investing in one person at a time, most of whom you won't fully know where they'll end up or how they'll receive what you've given them.

Legacy is built when your investment in others produces far more than you could ever have accomplished on your own. It's the moment your spiritual children start to far exceed your own impact. That's the return that makes every aching knee and every disappointment worth it.

The FAT Test and Its Limits

The Navigators trained me to look for FAT people: Faithful, Available, and Teachable. It's a solid framework and a good starting point. But I'll be honest, in my experience, you often only see those qualities in full bloom after years of shared life. You can't always spot them at the first meeting, the first coffee, the first conversation. The soil looks the same from the surface.

The Question That Changes Everything

So here's where I leave you with two questions worth sitting with:

What kind of soil am I?

And then: What kind of soil am I investing my life in?

Because in the end, the farmer still has to plant.