Break Up the Hard Ground: How Courageous Faith Leads to Renewal in 2026

140 Years - An Incredible Milestone

What the number represents

Souls saved, disciples raised, faith, sacrifice, dedications, enrolments, commissions, weddings, funerals, thousands in need served.

Songs sung, music played, prayers whispered, sermons preached.

A legacy of lives changed by the Good News of Jesus Christ.

We stand on a foundation of history

Built by the saints.

A rich inheritance, and history.

A story of God’s unending faithfulness.

We can look back with gratitude at cornerstones laid, ministries launched, disciples sent out to their frontlines.

So much to celebrate, to be proud of.

It’s good and right to honour our past and give thanks to God for this journey throughout this year.

But …

On this Covenant Sunday, in this New Year, we have to take an honest look at ourselves too.

In western world, we might wonder if TSA/Church has moved from mission to maintenance over past 140 years.

Have we?

What happens when years of comfortable routines, predictable worship meetings, well-managed programmes begin to grow hard?

What happens when soil of our hearts / life together becomes compacted/unproductive?

What happens when we become so proud of history/heritage that we stop paying attention to ground where all future growth has to come from?

Not a comfortable question

And if you’re comfortable and don’t want to feel uncomfortable, you might be tempted to switch off at this point.

But our 140th Anniversary not just for celebrating, but for consecration.

To revisit our personal/collective covenants with God.

To pause/reflect on where we’ve been, but also on where God is calling us to go.

Lord has a powerful, if uncomfortable word for us today

From Hosea.

Message centuries old, but has startling relevance today.

Calls us to look at our own hearts, soil of our corps life, and answer visionary challenge.

Dares tough question: Are we really ready for what God wants to do next?

Or have we become content with yesterday’s harvest?

Hosea 10:1-4; 9-13

Hosea 10:1–4 NLT

How prosperous Israel is— a luxuriant vine loaded with fruit. But the richer the people get, the more pagan altars they build. The more bountiful their harvests, the more beautiful their sacred pillars. The hearts of the people are fickle; they are guilty and must be punished. The Lord will break down their altars and smash their sacred pillars. Then they will say, “We have no king because we didn’t fear the Lord. But even if we had a king, what could he do for us anyway?” They spout empty words and make covenants they don’t intend to keep. So injustice springs up among them like poisonous weeds in a farmer’s field.

Hosea 10:9–13 NLT

The Lord says, “O Israel, ever since Gibeah, there has been only sin and more sin! You have made no progress whatsoever. Was it not right that the wicked men of Gibeah were attacked? Now whenever it fits my plan, I will attack you, too. I will call out the armies of the nations to punish you for your multiplied sins. “Israel is like a trained heifer treading out the grain— an easy job she loves. But I will put a heavy yoke on her tender neck. I will force Judah to pull the plow and Israel to break up the hard ground. I said, ‘Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you.’ “But you have cultivated wickedness and harvested a thriving crop of sins. You have eaten the fruit of lies— trusting in your military might, believing that great armies could make your nation safe.

MESSAGE NOTES

A Picture of the People of God

Hosea 10:1 NLT

How prosperous Israel is— a luxuriant vine loaded with fruit. But the richer the people get, the more pagan altars they build. The more bountiful their harvests, the more beautiful their sacred pillars.

Success, prosperity, abundance.

Things were good.

King Jeroboam II - booming economy, political stability.

Land produced great harvests, fruit multiplying.

Thriving, successful.

Rich heritage, glorious past.

Picture of God’s blessing.

Doesn’t that seem familiar?

For 140 years, luxuriant vine.

Fruit: ministries flourished, building projects succeeded, families grown up between these walls, good we’ve done in communities.

We have, through God’s grace, built something beautiful, and we should celebrate it, and thank God for it.

But then, chill down spine

Hosea 10:1–2 NLT

How prosperous Israel is— a luxuriant vine loaded with fruit. But the richer the people get, the more pagan altars they build. The more bountiful their harvests, the more beautiful their sacred pillars. The hearts of the people are fickle; they are guilty and must be punished. The Lord will break down their altars and smash their sacred pillars.

The more prosperous / successful > more turned wealth towards idols rather than God who gave it.

Success ≠ gratitude, but to more self-sufficiency.

Abundance ≠ obedience, but spiritual adultery.

Producing fruit for themselves.

It was all about them.

Here’s the great danger for any one - and any corps / church - with a long history of success

We subtly start shifting our dependence.

From depending on God to depending on the systems that brought us success.

Can get to good at “doing church” we forget how to “be the church”.

Get so focused on maintaining the Army that we lose fire of the mission.

Drift into timid discipleship, faith of maintenance, instead of faith of mission.

We stop moving.

Our goal becomes preserving the legacy ≠ pioneering the future.

Our prayers ≠ “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done” but “Lord, please just help us keep running things smoothly”.

Hosea says our hearts can become fickle

Wanting God’s blessings ≠ full submission to God.

Heart that sings praises on Sunday, but quietly agrees with world’s values on Monday.

Heart that honours the past, but bemoans “the Army isn’t what it used to be” and resists the messy and disruptive call to a new one.

Heart that loves idea of courageous faith but prefers comfort of a predictable one.

Heart that loves the stories of our pioneers who literally risked it all, but won’t risk its own comfort to spread the Good News in communities that still need it just as badly today.

The fruit of fickle hearts

Hosea 10:4 NLT

They spout empty words and make covenants they don’t intend to keep. So injustice springs up among them like poisonous weeds in a farmer’s field.

Poisonous weeds start growing by the good crops.

The poisons of complacency, self-reliance, timid faith can grow so subtly in a corps that we barely even notice.

We can be busy, active, look fruitful, have a great time, but the toxic weeds of spiritual stagnation can be quietly taking over the field.

Hosea warns us

Hosea 10:13 NLT

“But you have cultivated wickedness and harvested a thriving crop of sins. You have eaten the fruit of lies— trusting in your military might, believing that great armies could make your nation safe.

We cultivate these poisonous weeds when we trust in our own strength, programmes, budgets, strategies.

That’s the problem laid bare

The problem of the luxuriant vine that produces fruit for itself.

The problem of a fickle heart.

The problem of a 140 year legacy that’s at risk of becoming a monument instead of a movement.

At the beginning of our 140th Anniversary / New Year / Covenant Sunday, this is a moment of decision

Will we keep cultivating a comfortable faith that serves us?

Or will we listen to difficult, life-giving command that God speaks through Hosea?

This is what Hosea is saying to us this morning - the verse that holds the key to our future

Hosea 10:12 NLT

I said, ‘Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you.’

Let that sink deep into your soul.

Hosea is saying to us: You know what God has taught you, invest your lives - plant good seeds - in growing your relationship with him, invest in all its implications - do what he is calling you to do - and the result will be that God will shower his righteousness and steadfast, covenant love on you.

That’s God’s promise to us through Hosea.

Hosea calls us to plough up the hard ground

What is “hard ground”?

Farming term: land that was productive, but has been left alone for a long while.

Land that has potential, but right now, unusable.

Sun has baked it, rain has beaten down on it, and it’s become hard, compacted, impenetrable.

Weeds and thorns might grow ≠ good seed.

Hard, stubborn, resistant.

What is spiritually “hard ground”?

Condition of our hearts - or corps/church - when we’ve become hardened.

Heart left uncultivated by repentance, unchallenged by new faith, unstirred by fresh move of the Holy Spirit.

Soil of a life that’s settled into a comfortable routine.

It’s corps that has become content with past successes, established programmes, predictable patterns.

Ground is hard not because soil is bad, but because been neglected.

Packed down by foot traffic of familiarity and weight of tradition that’s no longer life-giving.

Overgrown with thorns of small grievances, weeds of unspoken disappointments, thistles of timid faith.

And God’s command is not gentle - it’s violent!

Don’t tickle the surface! Plough it up!

Ploughing is not gentle.

It has a sharp blade, it cuts deep, designed to tear open the hard, compacted earth, to turn soil over, to expose what’s hidden underneath, to uproot weeds and thorns.

Plowing = disruptive, difficult, demanding work.

This is a prophetic call to courageous, honest self-examination

A call to take the sharp plough of God’s Word / Spirit and drive it deep into our personal lives and our life together as a corps family.

A call to break up the hard-packed certainties we hold.

To question methods, to re-examine our motives, to confess complacency, to repent of ways we’ve become a vine bearing fruit for ourselves.

Not about destroying the foundation, or dishonouring our past.

It’s about preparing soil on the foundation - on our past - for a new season of planting.

The legacy of 140 years is the field God has given us.

The question is, what is the condition of the field today?

If, like me, you want renewal and revival - in your own life and in the life of our corps, then God says:

Break up the hard ground by repenting where your heart has become hard, and then plant something new

If we are going to plant something new, then we have to get to work.

We can’t be spectators! We have to be workers.

That means moving from a passive faith to an active faith.

It means making choices - every day - that line up with the character and commands of God.

Choosing prayer ≠ distraction, generosity ≠ accumulation, serving those in need ≠ serving own comforts, sharing our faith, even when awkward.

Asking whether our programme, budget, corps calendar are aligned with God’s heart for mission and ministry, or to keep us comfortable and contented?

“Planting good seeds of righteousness” is deliberate. You can’t do it by accident!

You reap what you sow.

It’s time to break the cycle, plough up the hardness, and start planting something new.

If we do that, then God’s promise is that we “will harvest a crop of love”

This is the beautiful grace of God’s Good News.

Our effort is to plant seeds of righteousness, but that harvest we get in return isn’t something we earn, it’s a gift of God’s love.

When we do the hard work of ploughing up the hard ground and planting new seeds of obedience, God doesn’t give us a critical school report on our performance. He responds with a harvest of chesed - that incredible Hebrew words for his steadfast, covenantal, unending, merciful love.

That’s our motivation for the hard work God is calling us to do

We plough up the hard ground not because we’re afraid of God’s punishment, but because we long for a renewed experience of God’s love.

We don’t plant new seeds of righteousness in order to earn God’s favour, but because we are so captured by love, grace, mercy he offers us that we want our lives to be a thank you note in response.

The promise that we will harvest a crop of love frees us from the paralysis of perfectionism.

We might not sow perfectly, our ploughing might be a bit crooked, but God promises that if we sincerely turn to him, the harvest will be one of his grace.

And what will drive this process?

Hosea gives us the key: “now is the time to seek the Lord”.

It is time. At the start of our 140th Anniversary / New Year / Covenant Sunday.

The time is now. Not tomorrow. Not 141st Anniversary. Now.

It is time to seek the Lord.

Breaking the hard ground is not about a human self-improvement project. It’s not about making this corps “better”.

Breaking hard ground is the result of seeking God in prayer, in his Word, in silence, solitude, in honest, vulnerable communities like our Growth Groups.

This is not about trying new methods. It’s about encountering a new measure of God’s presence.

Not about human strategy, but divine visitation.

We can continue to build on our Big Conversation, but unless we are on our faces seeking the face of God, then we’re just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

The call at the beginning our 140th Anniversary, on this Covenant Sunday, is a call to a new desperation for God himself.

Hosea calls us - this year and beyond - to keep ploughing, and keep planting new seed until God comes and showers righteousness on us

We keep breaking, sowing, seeking until the heavens open, until God’s presence and power come down on us like a life-giving rain on thirsty ground.

We can do the hard work of repentance and the faithful work of sowing, but we depend on God to send the rain, to shower his righteousness, his life, power, presence on us.

If we want to move from timid to courageous discipleship then …

We must no longer be content with hard ground.

We must no longer avoid the plough, just because it’s disruptive and messy.

We must stop ourselves from avoiding planting new seed because it involves risk.

We must no longer be satisfied with spiritual drought because we’ve learned to survive on very little.

We must avoid faith in maintenance mode.

Instead, we must hear the call that it is time to seek the Lord.

We must push through our fear and act in the face of it, because we trust the One who calls us.

We must pick up the plough, even though we’re afraid of what it might uproot.

We must live in the spirit of power, love, and a sound mind, and take up our cross and follow Jesus.

140 years is behind us, the land before us is our future

It will require courage to enter it.

It will require the courage to break up the hard ground of our comfortable Christianity.

It’s not enough to agree with this sermon

To agree complacency is bad and revival is good.

Not a time for empty words. God is calling for action.

Calling us to move from maintenance to mission, attendance to engagement, fear to faith-driven courage.

We must embrace the plough in our own lives

This is where it starts.

We must let HS show each one of us the hard ground in our own hearts.

Where have I grown hard towards God?

\Where has my love gone cold?

What comfortable sins have I let grow like weeds in my soul?

Where have I been sowing in the flesh ≠ Spirit?

Breaking up the hard ground is something each one of us must do personally before we can do it as a corps family.

It’s coming to the Lord with a broken and contrite heart, knowing that’s ground he can work with.

Only then can we re-evaluate our life together

We must continue to ask ourselves hard questions as a corps.

How much is our corps diary - of weekly and special events - actually dedicated to seeking the Lord?

Do we - as a corps family together - desperately seek him in prayer?

Does our budget seek to maintain our corps and our building? Or is it a mission document, designed to risk our resources for the Kingdom?

Do we fund courageous faith, or comfortable religion?

A courageous corps is willing to let go of “good” ministry to make room for the “best” thing God has for its future.

It’s willing to see a beloved programme or ministry die if that death is necessary for a new resurrection of ministry and service.

A courageous future means we are willing to lift our eyes beyond these four walls to our frontlines.

Hosea charged God’s people that they were a vine bringing forth fruit for themselves.

A Salvation Army corps living in courageous, whole-life discipleship knows it exists not for itself, but for the world.

Our mission is not to gather and hoard God’s blessings in here.

It is to be a pipeline of those blessings to a broken and hurting world.

A courageous future means we get our hands dirty in the soil of our families, our neighbourhoods, our workplaces, the places we socialise.

It means building relationships with people who don’t look or think like us.

It means we see the needs around us - the homeless, lonely, addicted, grieving - not as someone else’s problem but our divine assignment.

Now is the time for us to seek the Lord

I’m calling on you today to sustained, persevering prayer.

To dedicate ourselves to a year of seeking.

A year of ploughing, sowing.

Calling us to become a people - in our 140th year - who are not satisfied with the memory of the last rain, but who are desperate for the next one.

Let’s grow Growth Groups of deep, honest, seeking.

Let’s make our Sunday Celebrations times of passionate, expectant prayer and worship.

Let’s set aside time, both personally and together, to practice spiritual disciplines that humble ourselves and show God how serious we are.

This is a moment not just to listen, but to respond

Where is the hard ground in your life?

You know what it is - God is already speaking to you.

Is it an area of unconfessed sin, relationship to mend, habit of complacency, fear keeping you from obeying God’s call?

Today is the day to take the handles of the plough.

Let today be a turning point for our corps.

A line in the sand.

On this 140th Covenant Sunday, let’s make a new covenant with God.

Not a covenant of maintenance, but mission.

Not comfort, but courage.

A covenant to seek his face until he comes and soaks this field with the rain of his presence.

Prayer

Father, we just come before you, and our hearts are filled with gratitude for 140 years of your faithfulness.

You have been so good to us.

You've blessed us beyond measure.

But we confess, Lord, that we have become like Israel, a luxuriant vine producing fruit for ourselves.

We confess that our hearts have become divided.

We confess that there is fallow ground in our lives and in our corps - hard, compacted, unproductive soil.

Lord, we hear your call today.

We hear the command to break it up.

And we say yes.

Give us the courage to take up the plough of repentance.

Help us to be honest with ourselves and with you.

Expose the weeds and the thorns.

Cut deep into our complacency.

And Father, as we break up this ground, give us the faith to sow righteousness.

Show us where to plant seeds of love, justice, mercy, and witness.

And as we sow, we trust in your promise to reap a harvest of your unfailing love.

Most of all, Lord, we declare today that it is time to seek you.

We are thirsty for you.

We are desperate for you.

We don't want to live on the memories of past blessings.

We want a fresh outpouring of your Spirit.

So we will seek you, we will wait for you, we will long for you, until you come and rain righteousness upon us.

On this Covenant Sunday, at the start of this New Year, at the beginning of our 140th Anniversary, we dedicate our future to you.

Make us a courageous people for your glory.

We ask all of this in the mighty and matchless name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Come forward: pray prayer on Covenant Sunday card and sign it, explore, re-read, re-sign Soldier’s Covenant, read conditions of Adherent membership. However, God is calling you to respond.