Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – 1 Samuel 6-10
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Matthew 13:3-9
Jesus: Once there was a sower who scattered seeds. One day he walked in a field scattering seeds as he went. Some seeds fell beside a road, and a flock of birds came and ate all those seeds. So the sower scattered seeds in a field, one with shallow soil and strewn with rocks. But the seeds grew quickly amid all the rocks, without rooting themselves in the shallow soil. Their roots got tangled up in all the stones. The sun scorched these seeds, and they died. And so the sower scattered seeds near a path, this one covered with thorny vines. The seeds fared no better there—the thorns choked them, and they died. And so finally the sower scattered his seeds in a patch of good earth. At home in the good earth, the seeds grew and grew. Eventually the seeds bore fruit, and the fruit grew ripe and was harvested. The harvest was immense—30, 60, 100 times what was sown.
He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
I guess the first question we should ask today is whether we want to talk about the sower, the seed, or the ground. If we talk about the sower in Jesus’ parable, maybe we should think about when is the best time and place to sow the seed. Jesus will explain this parable to His disciples later and we will know that the seed represents the gospel, the good news of His message. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. But if we need to think about the time and place for planting seed so that we can expect the best crop, how do we distinguish between the rocks, the vines and thorns, and the good soil? How do we know when and where to share the message to reap the most benefit from it?
The answer is sometimes we don’t, but there are a few things we know about people that give us hints about when we might best share the message of God’s good news. For instance, when someone is angry, they will not listen. When someone is angry, in a fight or flight mood, it’s like arguing with a drunk. They cannot comprehend what you are telling them. Their adrenalin level is so high, nothing will make sense to them and trying to share a message of hope to a person in the middle of an angry outburst is almost impossible. Until their mood softens, they cannot hear the message.
Equally, a person in the middle of some jubilant mood is unlikely to hear the message. It’s interesting to see how Satan blinds us our sinful, depraved, and desperate condition, but when we feel like we are on top of the world because of some good thing that has happened to us, we are not likely to listen to a message of hope that we need a savior. We think we have nothing to lose when in that state of mind. We have nothing to gain when we think we have it all. I think that’s why Jesus talked about the difficulty of the wealthy finding the narrow path that leads to eternal life. Because they think they are self-sufficient in their wealth, they do not listen to the good news of God’s hope for them.
So when can we best reach someone with the message of hope Jesus brings? At those crisis moments of life. Those times at which everything seems to have fallen apart and our world seems to be crashing in around us. We go to the doctor and hear the dreadful news about our or a loved one’s medical condition that will never get better. We discover our life-time security in our job just ended in a layoff as the company downsized. We discover the retirement account we relied out suddenly disappeared as the broker who held our securities went bankrupt. Hope seems gone.
Or we look at our life and discover just how sinful we are in the light of God’s holiness. We hear a message or a song or read a book or scripture that shines God’s light on our life and suddenly we become aware of just how depraved and empty we are without God’s forgiveness and without His Spirit guiding us in our daily activities. We reach the end of our rope and there is still a lot of cliff below us.
Those are the times we will listen to the message of God’s good news. Those are the times we will hang on to the hope He gives and become aware that all is not lost. We will grasp for His hand extended to us in grace and mercy. We will reach for Him to rescue us from the heavy load of despair that tries to crush our spirit. Those are the times we are ripe for the seed of His messengers to share with us the hope all His saints carry with them.
So do you look for people to whom you can share the message? Do you look for those choice spots where seeds planted can multiply 30, 60, 100 fold? Do you recognize those who are at the point of feeling hopeless and reach out to them with God’s message of hope for their lives? From the sower’s perspective, we are missionaries for God. His emissaries to carry His message to a world screaming for some kind of hope. And when we find those individuals ready to receive His message eagerly because they are at the end of their rope, we can and must be ready to share with them the hope we have within us as Peter tells us.
Are you ready to sow some seeds?
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