The Rocky Soil And The Thorny Soil

Mark 4

The Rocky Soil And The Thorny Soil

     I feel that we need to have a firm understanding of these two soils that Jesus tells us about. We can all understand that good soil yields good crops and the roadside soil yields no crops. However, most of us are in the category of rocky and thorny soil. We need to know what we are dealing with both in ourselves and in those that we want to help. Let me start by defining these two soils and also by saying that these soils can be fixed. The rocky soil can have the rocks picked out and the thorny soil can have the weeds pulled.

     Rocky soil: Rocky soil is the soil that persecutes Christians. It does not desire to slowly choke out God’s word, but tries to utterly destroy it before it gets any further out of hand. The rocks symbolize the hardness of the hearts in the people around a person who becomes a Christian. They will not support a person who converts and will do all they can to make sure that the newborn Christian has no room to grow. They will terrorize that convert till he lets go of God’s word and becomes one of them again.

     Thorny soil: Thorny soil is soil that seeks to corrupt God’s word and to entangle a Christian so that his life never bears fruit. Thorny soil pretends to not mind that a person is a Christian and at the same time attach itself so firmly that the Christian does not even know that the thorns are not part of

himself. Thorny soil desires to make sure that what a Christian says and what he does are two different things.

     Both of these soils have one thing in common. A person who commits himself to Christ is going to have to cling firmly to Him to keep from being swept away by these two different forms of soil. These two types of soil either persecute or entice a Christian to give up their faith. We in the North America live in a land of thorny soil. We easily get distracted by the enticement to relax and enjoy the world around us. When we get a night off we are rarely thinking about what we could do to help our neighbor. Instead we have made plans to go out with friends, watch a movie, or work on our house. We talk about loving our neighbor, but when do we ever show our love. When does our love turn into actions? When is the last time we got up in the morning with the wonderful hope in our heart that today we could do something for someone? We need a love and passion in our hearts for be being a servant to others, but thorns choke out all of our willpower! We just can’t do it today. We’re too tired, we have too many other responsibilities, we have plans. Let me ask us, whose servant are we? Our own? If so then don’t pretend to be God’s!

     It is time to get our lives straight before God. The commitment that we have given to God is just as hard for those who live with thorns as for those who live with rocks. God did not say that the people who would have to die for their faith or be beaten with whips had a harder road then those who would slowly die as they are choked to death by pleasures and temptations. The commitment is the same and don’t expect your choices to be easier to make than theirs! To give up the passions of the flesh is like being beaten with whips. When God seeks to remove them from our lives we go through internal pain because those thorns were with us so long that we didn’t even know that they weren’t part of us. We yell and cry before God telling Him that we will die if He takes those pleasures from us. No my friends, just because there is no one pointing a gun to our head does not mean that we have an easier choice in whether or not we will be a Christian.

     What are the weeds? -Anything that distracts us from God or keeps us from carrying out His word. (People, things, excitement, entertainment, work) - Anything that we look forward to or desire more than our time in fellowship with God.

     When the weeds and thorns become seen for what they are and we begin to ask the Lord to pull them out, this is when we will find that our lives begin to bear fruit.

          How to please God

     God has told us that we must make him first in our lives and all other things second. That means that when you sit down to spend some time with Him, that you put down all of your anxious thoughts and all of the other desires that are running through your head. He wants your heart to be fixed on Him, desiring to be nowhere else but with Him. When you come before Him in this way here are the things that you will see starting to happen.

     1. Your prayers will start to bear fruit.
     2. Joy will spring up inside your heart in spite of whatever hard things you are
         going through.

     3. A peace will be in your heart as you face your trials and tough times.

     4. Your trust in God’s love for you will grow.

     5. You will begin to truly understand God’s word and His ways.

     6. That understanding will bring about a true love for His laws.

     7. You will begin to truly love your neighbor.

     8. A whole new life of talents and fruit will open up before us and in us that we never
         saw before or even knew existed.

And to conclude, not only will God do all these things in your life, but you will find that whatever it was that you put aside in order to make time for Him whether it be jobs that needed to be taken care of or things you wanted to do with friends, you will find that the hard jobs get done in ways that you didn’t expect and were taken care of quicker than you had thought possible and the time that you spend with your friends becomes more wonderful than usual. He wants to show us that if we give up all for Him than He will bless all that we do and give back more than we gave up.

     May God bless each one of you and may your lives bear fruit. Some thirty, some sixty and some one hundred fold.