Having grown up in church I can certainly relate this passage of scripture to my own life.  I have heard the Word preached for as long as I can remember, but it never took much root in my life for many years because I didn’t really understand what was being said and didn’t understand the Bible when I would try to read it.  I was raised Baptist and the churches I attended thought only the Pastor heard from God, so I never knew the Holy Spirit as my teacher, so it was easy for the devil to steal the little that was planted in my heart.  When I became spirit-filled and learned I could hear the Holy Spirit for myself and He would teach me the Word, I received the Word with joy, was hungry for the times I could spend time alone with Him allowing Him to reveal precious truths from the Word.

–Patricia

When your heart is open to receive the word of God, that is when you can truly encounter change in your life and grow spiritually. Recently, I have been struggling with being discouraged.  Because of this great calling on my life, I’ve been so focused on my personal growth in this consecrated season of my life. It has been a struggle, because I feel like I haven’t seen the change in me or felt God’s presence like I have wanted to.  God gave me a word last night out of Joshua 1:1-9 that spoke to me about not being afraid or discouraged, but to know that where ever I set foot, God will be right there walking with me.  He said that He will never leave or abandon me, to be strong and courageous in the lord because I am the one who will lead His people one day.

–Adrian

In Jesus’ parable, the sower sowed the word into different types of ground, some along the wayside, some in stony ground, some among thorns, and some in good soil.  Sometimes we read this and try to place ourselves into one of the categories.  We try to decide whether we are the fruitful ground or stony. But isn’t it more likely, that we’re different grounds at different times?

Sometimes we’re on the fringes, by the wayside.  We’re so distracted, it never even takes root, we miss the message altogether.

And sometimes we are the stony place when we’re hearing, or even studying the Word. After we’ve gotten some good revelation, we forget all about it, because we just received a text message, or have Facebook friends we must catch up with, and we never really get to the meditation of the life-changing revelation we just saw.  We had it!  But we lost it because of other interests intruding into our time.

We’re also sometimes thorny.  We’re reading or hearing God’s Word, we’re inspired, but then we come back to what we see as “reality” and must send out resumes in order to find a better job that will pay more, or we must make more sales calls so we can win the trip our company has for a prize. We forget that God is our source, that God supplies all our needs, so instead of looking to Him, we try to figure it out ourselves. We don’t assimilate what we’ve learned into life-practice.

And sometimes, we’re the good ground – eager and ready!  We hear! We’re convinced! We’re attentive to the Word, we’re inspired, and we put the Word into practice.  We live it and demonstrate it.  It’s real to us! We are doers of the Word, and not hearers only.  We make choices according to God’s will, not our own.  We serve God with our whole heart and soul!

–Nancy