There are Christian workers and they are saved, and they mean well, but their understanding of these things is not Biblical. And they seem to think that by your farming or in other words by your techniques of preaching, proclaiming, caring for souls, you can do more than simply sow the seed. You somehow contribute to its germination and its growth and its development. So they will say to you, ‘You must do this; you must do that’, and some of the great crusades that have been held in the last 50 years are full of human interference with the growing of the seed. Sometimes it’s quite crazy. They will even statistically plot what they are doing. ‘If we appeal for people to be saved in this way, we get so many percent more responses. And you must not let a person go. Having preached the gospel, you must get them to come to the front, and then put them under further explanations and efforts. You've got to bring about conversion. If you just preach to them, then all may be lost.’ But according to this parable, that is exactly the right thing to do. You preach persuasively, you witness, you appeal, and you leave it to the Lord. Only he can bring about germination, regenerate the soul, convict the person, plant a sense of need, which grows up, turn that person into a seeking, longing person, convicted of sin, and bring that person to the place of repentance and faith, consciously. That is a work of God. We cannot manipulate that. ‘Oh yes you can’, they say. ‘Make the church more like a theatre. Have wonderful huge choirs singing in a certain way. Stir the emotions, dip the lights, have a really dramatic emotional preacher mount a great invitation system. This all helps germinate the seeds.’ It doesn't. It's human manipulation. It's emotional manipulation. It is superficial. It cannot achieve the work of conversion. We proclaim, but the Lord germinates and gives the growth, and we must trust him. All we can do is pray. That's the meaning of the parable. It's a lesson on soul-winning and how we proceed.