M-G: 3.1.16 // Sunflowering, Part 2 of 2

I have been doing a Bible study with a small group on Sunday evenings on the Gospel of John. It was during this study that a new complimentary noun converted into a verb came into town to provide another illustration of “believing” in the book of John. The Apostle only mentions the various verb forms of believe, never the noun form. This is where the sunflower idea was born. To read Part 1 for background, you can click on the symbol that either looks like a bicycle on some computers or looks like a big “b” on other devices:b. Or, you can go to the Archive tab or scroll down to the PQRS menu near the bottom of the home page. I wanted to preface my remarks before starting part 2 of sunflowering because I am writing as if you are part of my class.

After reading Nicodemus (Jn 3) and the woman at the well (Jn 4), this is as good a time as any to introduce you to the third component of sunflowering or believing. What little we know of Nick and the woman at the well after their meeting with Jesus was that their behavior from what we read was foreign to their past life. This is something we need to hear because we are all running out of biological and prophetic time, and regardless of our age, we need to be about the business of believing or sunflowering all the time! If you believe it is never too late for someone to be saved (the thief on the cross, for example), then you would have to believe it is never too late to start witnessing to others about God and serving Him. We cannot change the past, but as long as we are breathing, we have the opportunity to make a difference in our lives that may help to shape the lives of others in a positive way for God’s glory.

As you well know by now, sunflowering or believing is a continual process of calibrating and capturing. For the sunflower, it tracks the movement of the sun to capture the most light possible; it’s all about the angle of exposure! For us, spiritual sunflowering is calibrating to the movement of the light of God’s Word in order to capture the countenance of Christ in our lives. This almost comes across as an intellectual exercise, doesn’t it! Let’s briefly talk about the third element in sunflowering or believing – creating. Sunflowering or believing is a continual process of calibrating, capturing, and creating. Creating what? For the sunflower it is the production of sunflower seeds; for us, it is bearing fruit. One fruit comes to mind immediately, the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23).

Like any analogy, if pressed too hard, eventually the comparison breaks down. So, when I speak of “creating,” there are two nuances I want to convey to you along the lines of sunflowering, a.k.a, believing. First, it is in the DNA of sunflowers to follow the sun in order to produce seeds. Similarly, it is in the DNA (or the design of God) that biblical faith calibrates to the light of the Word, captures the light of the Word, and creates fruit according to the Word. In other words, the very nature of biblical belief is to calibrate, capture, and create all the time, but it is not automatic.  

And second, unlike the sunflower of calibrating, capturing, and creating, sunflowering does not come naturally, only supernaturally by an act of the will, after regeneration, coupled with the enablement of the Holy Spirit (Eph 5:18; Gal 5:16). Sunflowering is something only believers can do; it is a post-salvation experience. Only by this union are we able to be positive phototropic spiritually – calibrating, capturing, and creating. This is biblical belief. In the first, we see a picture of what biblical believing is supposed to look like, and in the second we see that it never materializes unless our will is subjected and coupled to the will of God. As the sunflower is a slave to the sun; a believer is to be a slave of the Son (Gk, doumos, G1401) whose will is lost in the will of the Master!

Faith produces fruit (Jn 15:4; Jas 2:18). A fruitless faith is indicative of the absence of sunflowering. The sunflower goes motionless with the going down of the sun, but with sunflowering or believing, think of it as a 24/7/365 perpetual movement. Unlike the sunflower, sunflowering or believing continues on through the darkness, literally and spiritually.  The movement of sunflowering can only be stopped by an act of our will. Whenever a believer chooses not to follow the light of God’s Word, movements of believing are decreasing. This is being spiritually negative phototropic or moving away from the light. With genuine believers, there is never an immediate or spontaneously moving to the darkness. What has preceded it has been a diminishing of activity in following the Son in the heart for a period of time. Then one day, there is a spiritual breakaway, and in the wake, everybody asks, “What happened? He or she was so on fire for the Lord!”

Spiritual erosion of the heart is a heartbreaker because it could have been avoided if detected in the visible drifting. To be clear here never is a believer a victim of spiritual negative phototropism, a moving away from the light to the darkness; he or she is a volunteer; it’s called sinning in knowledge. One of the telling signs of moving to the darkness is the absence of creating fruit. The lack of fruit is not a root cause of being negatively phototropic spiritually. It is a love problem (cf. Mk 12:30 with Jn 14:15), a failure to abide in the vine (Jn 15:5). In these situations all we can do is pray they have a 1 Jn 1:9 experience and be welcomed back into the light of fellowship!

What is sunflowering? More than looking pretty, sunflowering, or believing, is continually calibrating to the light of the Word, capturing the light of the countenance of Christ as much as possible, and creating fruit for the glory of God. Are you truly tracking, receiving, and revealing the Son in your life day and night or is your life shifting away from the light? Sunflowering is the only way to go (Psa 89:15; 119:105; Jn 8:12; Eph 5:8)! Stay the course! <><

End of Series