How deep is your faith? Mark 4

I’ve been every soil. I’ve been rocky; excited one minute and dried up the next. I’ve had thorns; some grown by myself and some thorns planted by others all strangling the life out of my faith’s seedlings. My faith has been trampled on by passers by, and I’ve allowed life-changing faith lessons from others to slip through my busy mind. I’ve been every soil.

At forty years of age, I know to protect my faith. I know to avoid toxic people who wish to destroy it. I know to intentionally give myself time for my faith to grow. This lesson was a long one. It took years of experience and years of witnessing what un-protected faith grows in to. Un-protected and un-fertilized faith grows into nothing. It either remains immature and eeks out a God-life built upon random experience and selfish feelings. OR it is a faith left to dry up and is simply a forgotten past experience.

I’m thankful for my parents who first cast the seeds of faith into my heart.

I’m thankful for my Christian college professors who taught me how to nurture a growing, independent faith.

I’m thankful for friends whose deepest prayer for me is for my soil to remain healthy and my roots of faith to grow deep.

I’m thankful for churches who provide classes that teach faith building lessons and scriptural truths to build faith upon.

There are four characters in the parable of the soil; the farmer, the soil, and the villains (thorns and rocks and birds). At some time in your life you may have been the farmer and tried to spread the gospel to others. This only happened because someone tossed a seed into your soil, and you let faith grow there. Perhaps you’ve been the villain, and you’ve tried to discount someone’s faith or squelch their growing faith because of your own faith doubts. What it comes down to is this…we each choose what kind of soil we are. We choose whether to nurture our faith. We choose whether to fight off birds or pluck out life’s thorns. We choose whether we let faith grow. And ultimately we choose whether or not to toss out seeds that are grown from our mature faith’s garden.

After spending my life in ministry, first with my parents and now my husband, I’ve seen Mark 4 in action many times. It’s all about your soil. How’s yours? Have you been casting seeds yet? Each day you make a choice. Are you nurturing your soil, casting seeds, or does major weeding need to happen?