PrintToday's "Moment With Mark" (40)
21 December, 2012
"Listen! A farmer went out to plant some seed........some seed fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate it. Other seed fell on shallow soil...... but it soon wilted beneath the hot sun and died because the roots had no nourishment........Other seed fell among thorns that shot up and choked out the tender blades so that it produced no grain. Still other seed fell on fertile soil and produced a crop....... even a hundred times as much as had been planted." (Mark 4:3-8 NLT)
This scenario is repeated countless times every Sunday morning in Churches all around the world.
Most often, when preachers take this passage as their theme, the application is usually aimed at individual Christians and the condition of their heart. Now I'm not suggesting that such an approach is wrong. It isn't. It is just too narrow.
This spiritual dynamic or principle being taught here also has application to the corporate heart of the church. In other words the spiritual condition of the church may be reflected in any one of these four categories.
Every Sunday from a countless number of pulpits the seed (the Word of God) is scattered and it lands in all kinds of places. In some churches the corporate condition of the heart of that church may be described as a 'hard heart'.For other churches their heart condition is best summed up as 'shallow', 'lacking depth', 'superficial'.
Still other churches are struggling to be productive in the Kingdom because their capacity to produce fruit is compromised by all kinds of 'thorns' - thorns that successfully choke the effectiveness of the seed scattered.Thanks be to God for this 4th category!! Some of the seed found a whole-hearted reception and the harvest that resulted was nothing short of a miracle.
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