November 2 ~ Mark 4:18-19
The seeds that fell among the thornbushes are also people who hear the message. But they start worrying about the needs of this life. They are fooled by the desire to get rich and to have all kinds of other things. So the message gets choked out, and they never produce anything.
Scripture taken from the Contemporary English Version © 1991,1992, 1995 by American Bible Society, Used by Permission.
I mean no offense to my preacher friends, but have you ever sat through a sermon at church and thought of a zillion things other than what was being said in the sermon? Maybe you planned what you were going to do later that day. Maybe you were thinking about lunch, the big games on TV that afternoon, what all you had to do the next week… or even the hairdo on the person sitting in front of you!
Maybe you’ve sat down to study your Bible and ended up thinking about the new clothes you want to buy or how to pay your bills. Maybe you’ve been so busy working and “trying to get ahead” that you have not had time for church, much less God. And maybe you have all sorts of excuses that you think are pretty good… “I have to feed my family”… “I work late on Saturdays and I’m just too tired for church on Sundays”… “I have a short attention span and lose concentration when I pray or read the Bible.”
For starters, I am not buying the short attention span excuse in any form… and God surely isn’t! We seem to have no trouble concentrating on our favorite television show, sporting event, movie, or video game. We seem to be plenty capable of paying attention to something that makes us money or gets us noticed by others and appears to win us the approval of our peers and the people around us. But we have all sorts of excuses and distractions when it comes to spending time with God and truly getting His message.
In The Message, this passage says…”The seed cast in the weeds represents the ones who hear the kingdom news but are overwhelmed with worries about all the things they have to do and all the things they want to get. The stress strangles what they heard, and nothing comes of it.”
Is stress strangling what you hear? Are you so caught up in the busyness of your life that you are missing the message God is trying to send you? Have you gotten so engrossed in making money, gaining friends and popularity, doing as you please and making excuses that you have lost sight of God and choked out His influence in your life?
So often we fail to realize that things would actually go better, easier, faster, and more to our liking if we would include God… if we would find time to communicate with Him and truly cultivate our relationship with Him. We don’t seem to understand that we are choking ourselves by excluding our Heavenly Father. Let’s start today to find our way back to God. Let’s slow down and evaluate our life and where we are… how we are doing things… and where we need to make some serious adjustments.
Nobody wants to be stressed, but nobody wants to be choked either… and we have gotten pretty good at both. Ask God to give you relief… to flood you with His grace and mercy… to restore you to right relationship and realign your priorities. He is waiting to do just this… and more… are you ready?
©2010 Debbie Robus
Scripture quotations from The Message. © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved.
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