It’s critical that we know the difference between being planted, and being buried.
In John 12:24 (NKJV), Jesus says, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.”

God wants you to know that you’ve been planted, but satan wants you to think that you’ve been buried. So it’s critical that we know the difference between planting and burial. On the surface, planting and burying look the same; both involve digging into the ground, but here’s the key difference: planting has a future; burial does not. You bury the dead when life is over, but when you plant a seed, you bury it in the ground so that after a period of transformation it comes back up greater than it was when it went down. When you plant a seed, you aren’t burying it to get rid of it, but rather you are planting the seed so that new life may grow.

But satan wants you to feel that you’re buried. Buried in guilt. Buried in shame. Buried in regret. And he wants you to remain in buried, stuck in the dark.

Our loving Father God wants you to live with the constant awareness that you have been planted. You didn’t grow randomly. You didn’t just arrive on the scene. You were planted! The sperm cell that created you beat out millions of other cells–just for the chance to be you! That sperm cell fertilized the egg in your mother’s womb so that you could grow. God planted you in your mother’s womb so that you could grow into the powerful person that He created you to be.

But despite the challenges that you may have experienced in your life, God wants you to live with the revelation that you were borne of incorruptible seed and that you were planted to be an overcomer in Jesus. Just because you have experienced darkness in your life–or you may be in a dark place now, it doesn’t mean that that’s your final destination, or that you are destined to remain in the dark.

If you find yourself in a mess, expect to grow, change and thrive! When you do, people won’t recognize you because you will have been transformed by the experiences you endured. Most folks can’t deal with being a planted seed–most folks are afraid of the dark, but part of being planted is enduring the darkness as you grow. People can’t deal with destiny concealed, they only want destiny revealed. Until the acorn becomes an oak tree, you can’t appreciate how tall it stands–that’s when you realize how small it was when it was planted. Regardless of where you find yourself in life, you must constantly remind yourself that you’ve been planted. No matter how bad things look remember that you have been planted. The bible says in Psalm 119:71 (NKJV) that “It is good for me that I have been afflicted that I may learn Your statues.” If you just trust God in the process you will come out of the darkness looking different than when you went in. The key is to be equally as committed to the process as you are the end result!