A Deeper Look at the Parable of the Sower...

"Behold, the sower went out to sow..."(Matthew 13:3). These are the words which Jesus used to begin the well known(to most of us) parable of the sower.

For most of my life when I heard these words at the beginning of a sermon, I realized that this was going to be a message with an evangelistic purpose; you know...to reach 'the lost'. "You 'lost ones' in the audience, what is the condition of your heart(the soil)?" "Is your heart prepared(condition of the soil) to accept the salvation God through Jesus and to follow Him faithfully through the rest of your life?" Simply stated, that was the message of this parable for the first fifty years of my life.

Then(I just love 'then')...Yes, then one Sunday morning sitting in a Bible class in the midst of studying this very parable, God allowed His Spirit to use that spiritual 'two-by-four' on me once again! The extended and expounded truth(s) of this parable "hit" me right between my spiritual eyes!

The application of this parable is not so much for the 'lost ones', but for us, the 'following ones'!

This was the 'two-by-four' question for me that morning, "How do I tend to receive God's Word into my own heart?" I have had to ask myself this question many times since then, "When through hearing or reading or studying God's Word, a new or deeper truth is uncovered or revealed to me; how do I tend to receive that revelation?" And maybe even the most important question for me today is: "Does my heart stay prepared to receive deeper truths?"

The way my heart is resting today leaves me with four options with God's truths...

1). with a hardened heart, the word simply is heard, sets on the surface of my life, and the
devil easily takes it away;

2). with an unfocused heart, the word is received initially, but it is not fully accepted nor
understood, so it is soon gone, not to be found;

3). with a preoccupied heart, the word is received like so many other things in life, and
simply gets lost in the mix;

4). with a prepared heart, the word is received gladly, understood, kept possession of
firmly(Luke 8:15), and is therefore applied into one's life.

The evaluation of this in my own life...once, twice...; nope...daily!