Break Up Your Fallow Ground

Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you. HOSEA 10:12

Of everything Finney said, the lecture on breaking up the fallow ground has probably done the most good. It was the third of his Lectures on Revivals of Religion, and Ochorus also carries it as a sermon. It is practical, blunt and uncomfortable, and it asks one thing: that before the reader looks for revival anywhere else, he should plough up his own heart.

Ground that has gone hard

Fallow ground, Finney explained, is land that was once tilled but has been left to lie waste. It has grown matted and hard, and before it can bear a crop it must be broken up and turned over.

The heart of a Christian can go the same way. It was once tender. The Word once went in. But over months and years it has hardened, and now sermons run off it. Finney said plainly that it will do no good to preach to people whose hearts are in this state; the farmer might as well sow his grain on a rock. The more the rain of preaching falls on a fallow field, the thicker the turf grows.

For thus saith the LORD to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns. JEREMIAH 4:3

Not by trying to feel

The first thing Finney said about how to do it is the most surprising. It is not done, he insisted, by direct efforts to feel. “No man can make himself feel in this way, merely by trying to feel,” he wrote. Feelings are not under the direct control of the will. We cannot summon sorrow for sin by straining after it, any more than we can summon grief by deciding to be sad.

But feelings can be reached indirectly, by attention. If you want to feel about something, you think about it. So the way to break up the heart is to look steadily at the truth about your own life. And by self-examination Finney did not mean peering inward at the state of your emotions. He compared that to a man shutting his eyes and trying to see the image on the back of his own eye. In his Memoirs he confessed that in his early days, when he fasted and examined his own feelings and motives, the day would close with no advance at all, because he had turned his eyes away from Christ. Self-examination, he said, means looking at your life: your actions, your words, your omissions, what you have actually done and left undone.

Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD. LAMENTATIONS 3:40

One by one

Then comes the heart of the lecture. Take your sins, Finney said, one by one. Take a pen and paper and write them down as they come to mind. Go over them “as carefully as a merchant goes over his books.” “General confessions of sin will never do,” he wrote. Your sins were committed one at a time, and so far as you can reach them they should be reviewed and repented of one at a time.

He gave two long lists to work through. Under sins of omission he put ingratitude, want of love to God, neglect of the Bible, unbelief, neglect of prayer, neglect of the means of grace, heartless performance of duty, want of love for the souls of others, neglect of family duties, failure to watch over one’s brethren and lack of self-denial. Under sins of commission he put worldly-mindedness, pride, envy, censoriousness, slander, levity, lying, cheating, hypocrisy, robbing God of time and money, bad temper, and hindering others from being useful.

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. PSALM 139:23–24

Some of his definitions are sharper than ours. Lying is any designed deception for a selfish reason, by words, looks or actions. Slander need not involve a lie; to tell the truth with the design to injure is slander. Very few readers come through that list unscathed.

Confess and make it right

Finney did not stop at confession to God. Where you have wronged another person, he said, go and confess it to him at once. If he is too far away, write a letter, and pay the postage, or you will only add to the injury. If you have defrauded anyone, send the money back in full. Confess to God the sins committed against God, and to men the sins committed against men.

Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. MATTHEW 5:23–24

Then, he said, go over the whole ground a second time, and a third. Each sin you write down will bring others to mind. And as you go, resolve at every point on present and entire reformation. Examining yourself without resolving to amend does no good at all. “You need not expect that God will work a miracle for you to break up your fallow ground,” he wrote. It is to be done by means, and the means are attention, honesty and resolve.

Where the plough needs guiding

This lecture is strong medicine, and like all strong medicine it needs to be taken with care.

First, it can turn morbid. A tender conscience, set to list every failure in its history, can dig and dig and never find the bottom. Finney meant the exercise to end in relief — in a heart made soft and ready for the seed — but he said much more about the digging than about where the burden goes. The gospel answer is not a longer list. It is the blood of Christ.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 JOHN 1:9

Every sin written on the paper should be carried to the cross and left there. The purpose of the list is not to earn forgiveness by thoroughness but to stop hiding from forgiveness by vagueness.

Second, some of Finney’s particulars belong to his time rather than to Scripture. He counted tea, coffee and tobacco among the hurtful superfluities a devoted Christian should deny himself, and he was sharp about novels and fashion. He was right that self-indulgence dulls the soul, but readers should distinguish his applications from God’s commands, and not bind their consciences, or anyone else’s, where Scripture has not.

Third, beware of turning repentance into a technique for producing revival. Repentance is owed to God because sin is sin, whether or not a revival follows.

Drive the plough through

With those cautions, the lecture remains a gift. Most of us confess our sins in general and keep them in particular. We admit that we are sinners and avoid admitting what we have actually done. Finney will not let us. Do not balk the ground, he said, as the farmers say; do not turn aside for little difficulties. Drive the plough right through them, beam deep, and turn the ground all up, so that it may be mellow and fit to receive the seed.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. PSALM 51:17

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Set aside an hour this week with pen and paper. Work slowly through Finney’s two lists and write down specific instances, not general admissions.

2. Take each item you write down to God by name, confess it, and thank Him for the blood of Christ that cleanses it.

3. Identify one person you have wronged. Put it right this week — by a visit, a letter or repayment.

4. Watch for morbid introspection. If the exercise leaves you staring at yourself rather than looking to Christ, stop and read 1 John 1:7–9.

5. When you have finished, destroy the paper. What has been confessed and forgiven is not to be kept.

A PRAYER

Lord God, my heart has gone hard. Your Word falls on it and runs off, and I have called that stability.

Search me and show me my sins, not in general but one by one. Give me the honesty to name them and the courage to put right what I have done to others.

As I confess, let me look to the cross and not only at my list. You are faithful and just to forgive; let me believe it.

Break up the fallow ground, and then sow Your Word in it, and rain righteousness upon me. Amen.