What Kind of Soil are You? (The Crowded Ground Hearer - Part Two)

Belief and trust in the Gospel will give you a passion for the Kingdom of God.  A passion for the Kingdom of God will enable you to be a steward of the kingdom by managing all your affairs from a heart that trusts Christ and desires to glorify God.  This means that as a believer you will be managing your affairs rather than your affairs managing you.  Yet as we see from this picture Jesus gives us of the crowded ground hearer, there are other things growing in your heart that if left untended will choke out the life of the Gospel and the truth of the word of the kingdom and thus destroy your faith.  These are the thorns that compete for the turf of your heart.

The two main kinds of thorns (or injurious influences) that crowd out the seed from the ground of your heart are thorns of anxiety and thorns of covetousness. 

The Thorns of Anxious Unbelief

In several other places in the Gospels Jesus warns us about the danger of being given over to anxious cares about the necessities or needs of life.  You are to indeed be stewards of the necessities but you are not to be preoccupied over them.  In other words you are to trust in your heavenly Father’s promise that you are more valuable to him than the birds of the air, which he feeds and the flowers of the fields, which he clothes.  So as you go to work, establish a budget, make your plans, do your shopping, give your tithes and pay your bills and taxes – you are to do all this with faith resonating in your heart and not anxious care.  For such anxious care is a cancer on your faith – it chokes out the promises of the word – the Gospel promises and thus destroys your faith for your faith has no object on which to rest and from which to work. 

It is the Gospel that highlights for us the Fatherly provision and oversight of God over those who trust in Jesus Christ that should banish from our hearts all anxiety.  Anxious unbelief is a terrible thorn that chokes the word from growing in our hearts and thereby strengthening our faith in the Gospel.  Take steps to combat this thorn and to root it of your heart – out of your thinking and desires.

The Thorns of Covetousness or Misplaced Faith

Covetousness is the strong desire to possess an object.  There are two objects of coveting to which the Gospel writers point.  There is the delightful deceit of wealth or riches and then there is everything else or what Luke calls the pleasures of life.  Wealth is an obvious object of coveting.  Jesus speaks here of the delightful deceit of wealth or money and the lifestyle that money can bring our way.   No it is not money that is the problem it is our response to money or wealth

As anxiety is a trust killer covetousness is a treasure killer – they both eclipse the life and content of the truth of the word in your heart and rob faith of its object – the Gospel.  Treasuring Jesus Christ and the grace he brings to you that justifies you before God who is holy fills your heart with true contentment and rest.  This does away with wrong covetousness and establishes a godly and genuine desire and passion in your heart – coveting money, earthly pleasure, power, prestige or even people is false worship.  False worship’s aim is to destroy the true worship of the living God.  To treasure the Gospel and the kingdom and the grace of God in Christ fuel true genuine worship and kill all covetousness. 

Farming Your Heart as a Steward of the Gospel and the Kingdom

 

You need to be sure that you are fighting the dual sins of anxious unbelief and idolatrous misplaced belief.  You need to fight for your faith so that you grow more confident and more content with all that God is for you in Christ. But how do you do this?  

1. By making sure you are focusing on the reality of God’s grace to you in Christ.
1. The Gospel of grace dislodges anxiety because it assures you of the Fatherly care and provision of God.
2. The Gospel of grace dislodges covetousness by replacing it with a superior affection or desire – the treasure of God’s grace and glory.
2. By resisting the power of temptation through holding to the grace of the Gospel.
3. By availing yourself of the means or disciplines of grace through which you nourish the spiritual life residing in your heart due to the word being sown there.
1. Regular intake of the Scriptures
2. Cultivating a life of reliance on God through prayer
3. Worshiping God privately and corporately that includes the sacraments
4. Accountable fellowship with God’s people

A helpful resource for such soul-farming is the book by Donald S. Whitney “Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life.”  It is a very challenging, encouraging and practical work on how you can more effectively grow by faith as you exercise with these spiritual disciplines. 

These grace disciplines – using the means of grace – apart from faith will accomplish nothing, yet with faith they are necessary weapons to kill the thorns of anxiety and covetousness because they are means God uses to nurture your spiritual life.  They are means God uses to allow his word to grow up in your heart.  Disciplines apart from faith in Christ can become barren legalistic potholes.  But these disciplines of grace embraced and pursued from a heart of faith are powerful means to grow your spiritual life and to weed the soil of your heart – so that the word that you take in will bear lasting fruit.   You need to be a deliberate and persistent farmer of your heart.  Those professing believers you are prove that they are not crowed ground hearers.  So what kind of soil are you?