Read Mark 4:3–5, 7
As your waved good-bye to your friends at church last Sunday, what mental darts were left stuck in the target of your thinking?
Can you remember those pointed challenges from the preacher who stood before you with Bible in hand? How many hours have passed since you sat there, opening your ears and heart to counsel from God’s always-relevant Book? A few dozen, maybe?
Ah, it’s starting to fade, isn’t it? Those incisive, potentially life-changing principles are swimming away in a sea of forgetfulness. What a frustration! Why can’t we hang on to those mental, spiritual handholds we need so desperately?
Jesus illustrated this struggle so vividly:
Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seed. As he scattered it across his field, some of the seed fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate it. Other seed fell on shallow soil with underlying rock.... Other seed fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants so they produced no grain. (Mark 4:3-5, 7)
What is it in your life that chokes the life of the seed of truth? Worry over your children’s futures? Fear of losing your employment? Stress from over-commitment or your lifelong pattern of perfectionism?
Let go of all of that and begin to allow the truths of God’s Word to grow roots and flourish. That takes a commitment to cultivating your relationship with Him through prayer and meditation and a daily reflection on Scripture. Also, join up with someone you trust who can lovingly point out the weeds in your life and help you maintain a fertile heart for the things of God.
Watch how God enriches your life when you pay attention to the soil of your heart. You’ll experience a bumper crop of joyfulness and peace. I assure you.1
Devotional content taken from Good Morning, Lord...Can We Talk? by Charles R. Swindoll. Copyright © 2018. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a division of Tyndale House Ministries. All rights reserved.
1Adapted from Come before Winter and Share My Hope, Copyright © 1985, 1994 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission.
