Well, you can turn in your Bibles to Matthew 13. Matthew 13, if you're familiar with this passage, Jesus is speaking to the crowds, and he pushes out into the water on a lake, and there's a bunch of crowds that are standing on the edge of the lake, and they're sitting down on rocks, because it's not a beach, it's more like a rocky edge shoreline. And he begins to speak to the crowds in parables, and it's a whole chapter of parables, and every single parable has one purpose, and that is to describe the kingdom of heaven, everybody say the kingdom of heaven. And so Jesus, as he's describing the kingdom of heaven, he then proceeds to share one of the most famous parables in the history of the church, and it's the parable of the sower, or the parable of the soils.
And so we are going to dive in to the parable of the soils, the parable of the sower, whatever you wanna call it. And tonight, I think it's important that we dive into this passage, because in lieu of it being the start of the year, because it's the start of the year, I want us to be able to pinpoint and name what kind of soil do I got? What kind of soil do I have in my soul? Going into this year, do I have good soil?
Because as we read this passage, you're going to learn pretty quickly that God is the sower, and your souls are the soil. And tell me what is the seed? Can anybody tell me what the seed is? The word, the word of God, in other words, the ideas of God, the truths of God, what God thinks.
And so what God thinks gets communicated through language, and Jesus is relating the seeds to his word, and he calls himself the sower. And one thing that I want us to know right at the start is that there is not a seed problem. There are plenty of seeds, is that right? Jesus in this parable says that there's seed that goes to every type of soil.
So what that tells us is that there's not a seed problem, and there's not a sower problem. What's the problem? The soil's the problem. And he begins to give a parable that's describing the different types of soils or souls that are listeners to his word.
And so he begins to talk about three different soils that don't produce any crop. How many of you know when a seed hits soil? It has the potential to germinate, and then when that seed grows, it can bear fruit or grain, and then within the fruit. Have you ever seen a strawberry?
And noticed how there's a bunch of seeds on the outside of the strawberry? Each one of those seeds is another strawberry plant, right? That's what makes fruit different than vegetables, is fruit actually have seeds that can then multiply. So that's why God says in the very beginning to Adam and Eve, he doesn't say, be vegetable-y and multiply.
He says be fruitful and multiply, because within the seed there's more potential for multiplication, and it keeps on exponentially getting bigger and bigger, right? And so Jesus is wanting us to know the kingdom of heaven is jam-packed with exponential potential. And it comes through seeds that God speaks, the word of God, okay? So let's look at Matthew 13, verse one, it says this, the same day Jesus went out of the house, sat beside the sea, great crowds gathered around him, he got into the boat, sat down, whole crowd stood on the beach, and he told them many things in parable, saying a sower went out to sow.
And as he sowed some seeds, fell along the path, the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately the word of God sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose, they were scorched. Since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them out.
Other seeds fell on good soil, and produced grains from 100 volts, some 60-fold and some 30-fold. He who has ears led him here. And then the disciples come to Jesus, and they whisper to Jesus, and they say, Jesus, why are you speaking in mysteries? Why are you speaking with parables?
Which goes very common for rabbis to speak in parables. And Jesus proceeds to pretty much say, I speak in parables, because they don't even really want to hear the truth. That's what he says. He says, they don't even want to hear me.
So I speak in parables, because they actually don't have enough hutspa inside of them to seek, and to know the truth that the rabbi is teaching. As Jesus is sharing this parable, he's doing something that many rabbis did in the first century, and what he's doing is he's saying, he's sharing a story, but he hides in that story a thing called the Ramesse. And so he's hiding within that story. The Ramesse is a key to unlock a treasure.
So Jesus shares this parable, in every parable that Jesus shares, in every teaching that Jesus has in the New Testament, in everything that he does, because he's a Jewish rabbi, he is actually always drawing his listeners' attention to some Old Testament passage. So as you read the Gospels, and as you read passages about what Jesus is doing or what he's saying, you have to know that all of his onlookers know the Torah, and know the Old Testament. And so he can say one phrase, and it's actually something that's in the Old Testament, and he can just say one phrase, and his Jewish listeners will know what chapter that is, where it comes from, and they already have the whole chapter memorized. So as he gives this little key, then all of a sudden, there's treasure to be found in the Old Testament to actually unlock a greater meaning.
So there's a surface meaning of what he's sharing, but then he gives little keys to go, there's even even greater treasure you could discover, if you open up the Old Testament and learn, right? That's what makes studying the Old Testament, so valuable is it begins to unlock your rabbis teaching, your rabbis Jesus. So what I'd like to do is kind of go through the Old Testament a little bit as we're looking at this parable that Jesus provides. But the question that Jesus really wants us to ask is, what type of soil do you got?
What type of soil do you have? And he's describing four of them, and I figured we should just start with the good soil. Cause it's kind of, I wanna just start with the good stuff, okay? Can we do that?
So he says in the good soil, if you look at verse 23 of chapter 13, as for what was sown on the good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it, he indeed bears fruit and it yields 100 fold 60 and 30. There's only one other scripture in all of the scriptures that uses the word 100 fold. And it's in Genesis 26, so let's turn there. Genesis 26, and this is a story of Isaac, okay?
We're gonna breeze through this pretty quick. You might remember that last week, we were in Genesis 25 in verse 29 through 34, so we just kinda get to fist pump, Genesis 25, and now we're in Genesis 26. And this is a story about Jacob's dad, Isaac. There's a famine in the land besides the former famine that was in the days of Abraham, and Isaac went up to Garere, to Abimelech, King of the Philistines.
And the Lord appeared to him and said, do not go down to Egypt. So God shows up, starts talking, starts seeding things into his soul. He starts speaking to him. And he says this, dwell in the land, which I'm telling you, so journey in this land and I will be with you and will bless you for to you and to your offspring, I'll give you all these lands.
And he begins to basically repeat, the covenant that he gave to his dad, Abraham. And then Isaac has this funny story with this leader of the region named Abimelech. And what happens is Isaac is afraid that Abimelech is gonna take his wife because his wife is beautiful, and he's afraid that Abimelech or some other men in the area are actually going to kill him so that they can get his wife if they know that she's his wife. And so then he says that his wife is his sister, and he lies about it.
Abimelech finds out because he sees his wife and him flirting with each other. And so then he puts two and two together, and he's like, wait a second, you guys are together? Oh no, well Isaac has to come clean and say, I'm a coward, I've been afraid and I'm scared. And I'm kind of wimpy.
And I put my wife's life on the line because I'm lying and I don't have enough hoodspa to actually step in and be a protector. And so what happens is Abimelech, I guess it just gets smoothed over. And then I want us to look at verse 12. If I was in that scenario, I would be the one that would be like, hey babe, let's get out of here.
You know, it's like humiliating. What he just did, that's humiliating. But instead, even though his reputation just got dashed against the rocks and he's just embarrassed, he actually chooses in that place to still obey the Lord. Even in that place of insecurity, in that place of shame, what does he do?
He stays in the land that God told him to stay in and he starts planting crops. And look at what happens. Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year, 100 fold in one year, 100 fold. And the Lord blessed him and he became rich and gained more and more until he became very wealthy.
100 fold, my goodness. How many of you have ever owned a stock or a mutual fund or had a retirement account? Raise your hand, raise your hand, hi. Okay, good for you.
That's awesome. Can you imagine getting 30 fold in one year? Only some of our crypto brothers and sisters have ever seen gains like that, right? Or think about 60 fold.
That's a good ROI. That's a good return on investment. 60 fold in one year, that's amazing. Think about 100 fold.
That's what God is saying that is gonna happen for those that have good soil. I want good soil. Do you want 100 X returns? I know that God wants 100 X returns.
And I know that that gives him so much joy as John 15 says, that there's all of this fruitfulness and it fills God with joy. If you got 100 X returns, would that give you a lot of joy? Ah, yes. I'll answer for you.
Yes. But what Isaac does is he stays faithful and he obeys God. He listens to what God said and despite the difficulty. Now listen, God is not wanting perfection.
He knows we can't be perfect. He knows that good soil, there's no perfect good soil. God is aware, God is aware that we're in process. He's not expecting perfect soil from you.
But what he is calling you, and as we look at all the other soils, there's gonna be moments where it's like, man, my heart is a little hardened. There's gonna be moments where you feel like, man, there's some rocks underneath the surface that are hindering growth. There's gonna be moments where you're like, thorns are choking my soul and choking the kingdom of my soul. But for the most part, our goal is to be that 30 X, 60 X soil, 100 X soil, right?
And the way that we get there is we listen to God and in Hebrew it's called Shema. It means listen and obey. They're one, if you listen, you automatically obey. And that's what Jesus is trying to teach his followers.
He's going, for a long time, who has ears? Let him hear, in other words, who has ears? Shema, you must listen and obey. Don't just listen, don't just be a hear of the word, actually be a doer of the word.
Because there's plenty of truth, there's plenty of information. In America, in the American church, there's plenty of seed to go around from the Father. He's given us his word, he speaks all the time, he's speaking all the time. If you're not hearing him, it's not because he isn't speaking.
He is generous with his word, generous with his voice, generous with his opinions. He is. It's more so a question of, do I actually wanna hear what he has to say? And do I actually want to obey my Lord?
Is he Lord or is he just Savior? And the reality is, those can't be divided. You can't get Savior without making him Lord. And a lot of times we've convinced ourselves in the American church, we can just surrender to Savior, but that's not what salvation is.
You surrender to a Lord. And it's listen and obey, that's the way. The way of following Jesus is to listen obey. All right, let's go to Matthew 13.
Some of us might be wondering why, when I, oh, and I'm wondering the same thing for myself, and this is why this is so good to preach it, because it forces me to look at my own life. I don't know if you've ever experienced this before. I've experienced this a lot. And it says something about my soil.
I'll open up my journal, and I'll look at what I'm journaling about, and realize that I've been struggling with the same problems year after year. Is that a seed problem? Is that a sewer problem? I think that's a soil problem.
Do you keep on struggling? The same thing, over and over and over again. You might have one of these three soils that's not good soil. All right, let's look at these soils.
The path, I'm gonna try to breeze through these quick, okay? Verse 19, anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it. See, Jesus, even as he's saying understand it, this is building off of what he just said, where people are gonna hear, but they're not gonna understand, because they actually don't want to. They don't even have a desire to understand.
Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. What happens to a path is a path gets trampled on. Is that right?
And some of us have had our hearts get hardened and we can't even receive the seeds of truth and the seeds of God's opinions and thoughts. We can't receive those things because our heart is so hardened from the pain of life because life has trampled you down. People, family, circumstances have trampled you down and it's created a hardness of heart. Maybe it's bitterness, maybe it's resentment, maybe it's unforgiveness, maybe it's self-protection, but there's a hardness of heart that is set in.
And Jesus is actually pointing to an Old Testament passage in Hosea. And I want us to turn there and to Hosea 10. So turn to Hosea 10 quickly with me. Hosea 10, verse 12.
Once you get to Hosea, say amen. Whoa, it goes fast. Hosea 10, verse 12, it says this. This is what he's quoting from it.
He's wanting us to actually connect the dots here. So there's treasure here. So for yourselves, righteousness and reap steadfast love. Break up, you're trampled on path ground.
You're followed ground, you're hardened ground, you're hardened soil, you're hardened soul. For it is time to seek the Lord. That he may come and reign righteousness upon you. Jesus is making the point, he's saying, hey, there's a remedy for your heart and heart.
And the remedy for your heart and heart is to stop lying to yourself and acting like you want God. Stop lying to yourself and acting like you're seeking God and acting like you want God. As you dance the dance of religion, stop acting. It's time to seek.
It's time to seek God. You feel like your heart is hardened? Then it's time to throw all of your weight into seeking God. Not just seeking truth and then coming as a skeptic and being cynical.
I'm talking about in your hardness of heart, humbling yourself and going, I'm sick and I need to seek. I am sick in my heart and I've been deceiving myself, thinking that I'm seeking but I'm not really seeking. I know that there's more desire in me to seek the Lord and the hardness of heart has actually been deceiving you and he says this, this is so beautiful. And I kind of wish that he said something like, for hard hearts, if you have heart, soil in your heart, just come in and just to stay with God.
But instead he goes, seek the Lord. He says, don't take no for an answer because those who seek will find. Those who start knocking, the door is gonna get open. Those who have an asking are so you're gonna get an answer, but are you willing to seek?
Are you willing to pass, press past, the little offenses that you've got or the big offenses that you have and actually humble yourself out of the hardness of heart and go, you're God and I'm not. I'm gonna seek you. Guess what happens? All of a sudden he meets you and you're seeking and then he starts bringing showers of truth and right thinking over you.
That's what righteousness is, right thinking, right ideas. He starts showering you with righteousness. What does water do to harden soil? It's softens it up.
You have a hard heart, you need water to hit that soil. You seek the Lord, the Lord's gonna respond from heaven and start showering you with his truth. It's gonna soften your soul and you're actually gonna turn in to rich good soil. Some of us have been sowing into other people's lives that have hard hearts.
I've been doing that with some of my friends that don't know the Lord and I've been sowing seeds into their life by the grace of Holy Spirit. I'm trying, I'm trying, okay. And have you ever experienced that where you're sowing seeds of truth and love into somebody's life and you're hitting up against walls because they're hard, hard. I remember being at a department store a couple weeks ago.
This guy was being really friendly and helping us out and I'm just getting words of knowledge for him and I'm just gonna like speak identity over him that Scott given and what God thinks about him. And I close out our time, he checks us out and I get, I grab the bag and then I'm just like, hey, one second, I just wanna share this with you. And I begin to speak about God's heart for him and immediately his countenance changed and he went into hardness of heart. I wonder how many of us have become frustrated because our friends or family or co-worker has hardness of heart.
But the only remedy for a hard heart is not you just trying to blast them with seed. The only remedy is either they seek God or you stop sowing seed at their face and you start seeking God yourself on their behalf in your closet. And you start seeking the Lord in intercession when nobody is watching, getting his heart for them and then repeating his heart back to him. And then all of a sudden that seeking results in some showering and there starts to be a breakup of the soil and then you go, whoa, they're ready.
I'm not saying, I mean, so see just like the Lord everywhere, okay? I'm not saying stop that, but I'm wondering if there's a key here. So showers from seeking is a way to break up follow ground, a way to break up that path, that soil-yoli, like that trampled ground of the soil. And the only other way to break up that ground is through storms.
It's gonna be showers from seeking or it's going to be storms. That's how ground that's hardened in the soil gets softened. All right? And in the passage in Matthew 13 talks about the enemy being birds, the demonic being birds that snatch the truth off the soil.
How many of you know what happens when showers start happening? What do the birds do? They fly away. In the middle of a shower, you don't see birds on that soil.
They start finding or they start retreating. The demonic starts leaving when the shower of God's righteousness rolls in. We don't have to be so concerned with the demonic. When God starts bringing the let it rain thing into people's hearts, okay?
Matthew 13, let's go back to that. So that was the path. That was the trampled soil. Here we are back in Matthew 13.
And he says that there's another type of soil. In verse 20, it says, as for what was sown on rocky ground. This is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it. Immediately starts listening and obeying.
Immediately starts accepting it. Yet he has no root in himself. He has no root in himself but endures for a little bit. So there's starting to be some fruitfulness.
But then tribulation and persecution arises on account of the word and immediately falls away. So the sun starts shining. And when the sun starts scorching, then everything starts shriveling. So what does this mean?
What is Jesus talking about? Let's turn to Jeremiah 17. Jeremiah 17. Everybody say Jeremiah 17.
Some of you guys are going to be familiar with this passage, okay? Are we okay? All right. Jeremiah 17.
7. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when the sun starts shining.
And it starts getting hotter. And the heat starts rising. The temperature starts rising. For its leaves remain green.
It's not anxious in the year of drought. For it does not cease to be that 30, 60, 100 fold. The heart is deceitful above all things, desperately sick, who can understand it. I, the Lord, search the heart.
And I test the mind. So Jeremiah is writing about a soil that actually takes in seed, and then that seed finds water sources underneath the surface. God is raising up a people that are planted by streams of living water, that no matter how hot it gets, the heat actually just produces more growth. So your circumstance is telling you that it's going to break you, but it actually ends up making you stronger, and you're continuing to get more fruit, because the root system is finding a source that nobody else can see.
And that root system that's finding a source that nobody else can see is actually personal revelation and understanding and relationship with God that gives you a source that nobody has any visual sightline to, and that when your circumstances go sideways, it actually just makes you stronger. More perseverance, more steadfastness, more fruitfulness. So he's addressing that the rocky soil doesn't have confidence and trust. Rocky soil is vulnerable soil.
So rocky souls are vulnerable souls to circumstances. What I mean by that is this. Good soil, no matter what happens, it's unshakeable. But rocky soil, obedience is contingent on circumstances when you have rocky soil.
When you have a soul that has mostly been established or like built on what other people say, listen, listen, listen, listen. Most of the church in America has rocky soil because we've just taken a pastor's word for it, taken a podcast word for it, taken a Bible teacher's word for it, but there's not actually personal revelation and understanding. So what's an example of this? When the person doesn't get healed and you prayed and you heard somebody talk about like, we can pray for healing and people get healed and then the person didn't get healed.
If you have rocky soil, you immediately assume circumstance, trumps truth in the Bible and then you second guess everything. And the sun, so that circumstance of that person not getting healed is like the heat getting turned on to your belief system. And when that heat gets turned up, if you don't have any root within yourself where you've actually done the work to seek out truth, then that thing shrivels and dies. And all of a sudden the next person that rolls through that needs healing, you're like, I don't, how do you please and you kind of hope and I don't know.
And you become less confident because your faith has shriveled because your faith was based on what somebody else got and it's not actually rooted within you. It's similar to if you're faced with a decision in your workplace of like you're on a work trip and your coworkers are going into like a happy hour. Like, come on, it's going to happy hour. And there's vulgar language, foul language and drinking.
And you have a decision to make. And I'm not saying that I'm not going to get into the weeds on like drinking and things like that right now. But what I am saying is that if your reputation trumps obedience for the Holy Spirit, then you got rocky soil. So if you are matching the way of the world to actually gain reputation with your coworkers and you're using the same foul language and you're actually carrying yourself as one that looks exactly like the world, then you're actually giving yourself over to your reputation as Lord more than the Lord of the Holy Spirit.
And what I'm saying is that's called rocky soil and that's your faith shriveling in that moment. If you are faced with a decision and you have a decision between obedience to Jesus or fudging some numbers in your workplace and you know that you're going to lose your job and you're thinking about your family and how you're going to provide for your family. That's the heat getting turned up. What kind of faith do you have?
Who is your Lord? Is your Lord the provider or are you the provider for your family and your kids? What kind of faith is your life built on? Is it built on somebody else's good ideas or teaching?
Or is it actually personal revelation where your roots have found soil and is not dependent on the man of God? You're the man of God. You're the woman of God. You go and you find the soil.
You find the revelation. You find the scriptures yourself. You're actually one that knows him in secret, okay? God's setting us free from circumstances and social pressures and trials shaping our faithfulness.
Our faithfulness is not conditional. Our followership is not conditional. Our obedience to the Lord is not conditional. It's set, it's dependable and it's reliable.
That's who we are as sons and daughters of God. Amen? All right, thorny soil. Let's look at Matthew 13 again, thorny soil verse 22.
As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word. The cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and it proves unfruful. Chokes the word and it proves unfruful. The cares of the world is like the worry and anxiety that we live in our world.
And I don't know if this is maybe something that you struggle with but when you worry and you're feeling anxiousness and then you think about all of the bad things that could happen, right? So we like play out in a movie, all of the worst case scenarios. Do some of you do that? Worst case scenarios and you like lived it already.
You lived your worst nightmare and it already happened in your conscience. Or maybe you're going, there's bad things that could happen and you go into research mode. Some of us are researchers with our worry. Is that right?
I heard about this bad circumstance. I needed to understand every detail about that circumstance. So I self-protect so that doesn't happen to me. And I'm in self-protection so that doesn't happen here and I don't get surprised by that pain.
And you're filling up your soul on all of the worry that it's actually choking the kingdom out of your life because there's no capacity for you to actually give yourself over to hope and faith. Instead that worry and that anxiety and fear, you're giving so much attention to it that it's strangle holding the kingdom of heaven, advancing in your life. The Lord's going, hey, you can bring that to me. Let's talk about it.
Let's talk about it. Let's have a conversation around what's driving you in that space. Then he talks about the deceitfulness of riches. That's basically like the lie here is that wealth and riches is bad or that money is bad.
No, he's saying that riches can actually deceive. Riches can deceive. It can deceive us into trusting in ourselves or trusting in money rather than trusting in the Lord. And deceitfulness of riches is like superficial pleasures and they deceive us and lie to us.
And this isn't just like money. I'm talking about deceitfulness of influence. The lying of influence or the false promise of promotion or the promise of position or title or accomplishments. It's like the pursuit of the American dream.
It's the lie of success and status. Right? And so some of us that might be our image. It's like what I wear is who I am.
My job is who I am. What I can do and what I've achieved is who I am and it's deceit. It's actually deceived us. And what happens in those spaces is we have to maintain that wealth.
We have to maintain that status. We have to maintain that image. And it takes a ton of work to maintain the American dream. Come on, somebody.
It takes a lot of work to maintain the American dream and make sure that you've shored up all that you need to to be bulletproof and not dependent and not trust. And it's actually a ceiling and it's a stranglehold and it's a chokehold on us experiencing the kingdom of heaven. That's what the Lord is saying. And so the next thing that he talks about and he talks about in Mark 4 is the desire of things.
The desire of many things is the third thing. That's thorny soil. And I just want to call us to look at the reality because I think this is the most common soil in our community. I think this is the most common soil in our community.
And we have good hearts. We want to listen in obey and we actually do. And there's growth in our lives. But then the cares of the world, the seedfulness of riches and things of life or desires of life.
Choke it out. Choke our, our kingdom of heaven out. What do I mean? What I mean is this.
The shows and the movies and the hobbies and the youth sports that keep us driving all around the city and all around the nation and all around the world and keep us busy every single night of the week. And the podcast and making sure my life is convenient and making sure that I have a perfectly clean house every single day before I go to bed and making sure that I know the conspiracy theory that can help me understand everything that's broken and why it's broken and who's behind the brokenness. And then the fantasy football and the video games and the social media and the cooking and the planning and all of these things are neutral. They're all neutral things.
There's not, they're not bad. They're not evil and they're not good. Some in some cases they are. In some cases they're evil.
But I'm saying in general, let's say they're neutral and there's not immorality in the show that you're watching and it's not a horror film. Because if you're watching horror films, I want to charge you to never watch a horror film again. So stupid. Don't be, listen, listen, listen.
I'm going to just talk straight on this. Because some of these we said, why are you inviting demons into your living room? Listen, the demonic is the one that's dreaming up these horrific ideas and thoughts and is desensitizing you to horror and demonic activity. And it's actually infusing fear into your soul to think that the devil is bigger than he actually is.
So automatically when there's a deliverance situation, you're crying in the corner because you're intimidated because you watch the exorcist and you don't know you're authority in Jesus. Because you've been feeding from a stream that is demonic, evil and filled with all sources of vile hatred and Ick. And it's the very thing that's causing a pornographic age that is a rape culture and it's because of what we're feeding on even as a church and we're funding the very demonic system that is actually enslaving people, causing school shootings and destroying people's lives and their families and you're feeding on that trash. Stop it.
Stop it. If you're a son of God, you've got to wake up and stop drinking from that well. My gosh. Many of us didn't have parents that told us the truth.
And you have to have somebody to actually speak straight to you and go, that's not good for your soul. Why have you been having nightmares for so many years? It's because you've been feeding on horror. Stop it.
You're the one that opened the door to the demonic or somebody in your life opened the door to the demonic. Shut the door. All right. Okay, I'm done.
Okay. Ugh. My gosh. My goodness.
Just dabbling in the demonic, please. Man, you don't realize. You don't realize demons are trying to kill you. Demons are trying to destroy your life.
You wanna play? You wanna play with the demonic? Go right ahead. It's gonna bring destruction to your life.
Man, I'm talking so straight. Because you need somebody to set you free from deception. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's a good idea.
Sorry, I'm like, ugh. Okay, now I'm reeling it in. I just wanna shake you out of the deception. And I want you to know I said it because I love you.
Okay? I said it because I want you free. And I don't want you in that junk anymore because God loves you. And He doesn't want you to feed on that stuff.
It's not good for you. Okay? I'm not homosophany, I'm a shepherd. Okay.
Okay. All right, I'm glad it's near. Some of you all listening to demonic music too. Oh my gosh.
Oh my goodness. Listening to demonic music, all it is is just junk getting spread through melody into your soul. And you're liking the creativity. Oh my goodness, you need to get your own creativity from heaven.
You need to start feeding on kingdom creativity because He's the most creative. And we're indulging in these demonic sounds. Some things aren't meant to be shared. I just, let's not fill our homes with immorality.
I don't care how amazing the melody is. I don't care how amazing the, how catchy it is. We've got kids, nine-year-olds, 10-year-olds, 50-year-olds. They're singing words and they've got ideas stuck in their mind that is actually bringing deception and desensitizing us to immorality.
And it's objectifying women. And it's destroying the image of God that we look at in front of us. And I just wanna call you higher. I wanna call you higher.
You are a holy people, a holy priesthood. You're set apart in God. Your ears are the Lord's. Your eyes are the Lord's.
Your hands are the Lord's. The thorny soil has all of these neutral things. I just address those things that are overtly evil and demonic. And us being able to discern that.
That's like maturity, according to Hebrews, is to discern between good and evil. So if you can't discern it, start practicing your discernment so you can become more maturing God. We've been desensitizing our sensitivity or we've been destroying our sensitivity because we're not even giving the Holy Spirit the opportunity to correct us or discipline that out of our lives so that we can actually walk in our true identity. But there's a lot of neutral things in life that have been filling up our lives.
A lot of good things. A lot of just normal things. But what's happened with all these neutral things is that they've cut down our capacity to even give any attention or moments to God. The thorns, excuse me, the thorns are basically everything that is in the world that then chokes out kingdom potential in our lives.
And that looks like all of the things that I named. The shows and the hobbies and the image consciousness and the consumerism and the what am I gonna buy next and where am I gonna go next? And how many events do we have this week? And I'm gonna fill my schedule to the brim and I'm gonna do five different side hustles.
And I'm going to pursue the American dream and I'm going to be happy and I'm gonna get self-fulfilled and I'm going to have a perfect house and it's gonna look like the magazines and I'm gonna do all of these things and then I'm gonna feed on social media so much for hours and hours a day that I don't actually have any bandwidth. I don't have any capacity to experience God and what he's speaking. And so because I've been getting filled up with all of these other things, when I show up for five minutes to be with God, I'm so bored, so bored. There's nothing here for me.
He's not giving me anything that really feeds my soul. Where's the dopamine hit? It wasn't fast enough. And it's because we've been feeding on 15 second dopamine hits and we're expecting when we open up our Bible and we actually have real relationship with a person who is God.
We expect it to be a 15 second dopamine hit. He's a person. People aren't dopamine hits every 15 seconds. He's a man.
We can have real connection with him. But that gets squelched and squeezed and choked out. There's so much and so very little for the kingdom. And we have to make a decision.
Am I content with the thorny life with no multiplication? Or do I want good soil? And am I willing to cut out some of the things that aren't even bad necessarily? But they're actually taking, they've taken over my schedule and my resources and my bandwidth to engage with the Lord.
This is something that Katie and I are doing in our own lives right now. We're going, Lord, I'm off of social media. I'm expanding my capacity. Lord, I want to be off of media.
I want to bear down on like, wow, I've been filling my stomach with ice cream all the time. And all of these things, it's like ice cream is neutral and it's so good. But it's convincing my body that my body is in charge, right? And we need to parent our bodies, right?
Whatever it is, okay? And God is inviting us out of double-mindedness. I wanna share a dream that I had about a year and a half ago. The Lord reminded me of it in the 3 PM.
This phrase, double-mindedness is actually from another way to say the cares of this world in that passage, in the Greek. And just in a moment, the Lord reminded me of it, I wanna share it with you. There's a man in this arena and I walked into this arena in this dream and it was a packed house. And this man had the most incredible charisma.
He had the whole room wrapped around his finger. And he was already, and he was talking about all of these things and he was painting pictures with his words. And we were all just like enraptured with what he had to say. And then he looked over and there was a woman laying on the front row that had an attendant holding her there on the front row.
And I had the knowledge that the one that was speaking was actually Satan himself. And the woman that was on the front row was the bride of Christ, he was the church. And with a sweeping motion, Satan pulled out a knife and the whole crowd kind of gasped. And he began to approach the bride.
And the bride was filled with kind of a fear in that moment. And he said, don't worry, I'm just going to cut off your hair. Because she was thinking that he was going to kill her right there. And he said, don't worry, I'm just going to cut off your hair.
And then she obliged. And it was kind of like put at ease and allowed him to come and approach her. And as he did, he didn't just cut off her hair. He exposed what was underneath her skull and she passed away.
And what was underneath her skull was both sides of her brain, I know it's graphic. And he exposed her double-mindedness. Satan exposed the bride's double-mindedness. Now, when we look at Jewish history and we look at Jewish culture, what the hair represents is intimacy with your husband.
So Jewish women would only let down their hair. They'd always have their hair up. And they would only let down their hair in front of their husband. It was a sign of intimacy.
And it represented their special connection. And so the bride is on the front row. And she is obliging to having the enemy removed a very thing that actually defines her. Intimacy with God, knowing God, loving God, relationship.
And she's so willing to let the enemy actually cut off the very thing that she was designed for, connection with God. And what it does is it exposed her double-mindedness. And I feel that there is more that's available to us. And that there is double-mindedness in the bride.
Double-mindedness in our souls. And we have to ask the question, why? Am I not 30, see in 30, 60, 100 fold? God is wanting to call us out of double-mindedness.
Out of being willing to just have so many lesser lovers take priority with our time, resources, and attention. He's calling us in a full-hearted, like mind-willing emotions, followership. He's calling us to be disciples that listen and obey. Let's all stand.
I want to respond to the Lord. When you speak, we want to respond. We don't want to just hear. We don't want to just know a bunch of stuff.
We don't want to have this knowledge. I want to be one that listens and obeys. And I don't want to be one that just hears you. I don't want to be just a hear of the word.
I want to respond with my soul. When you look at my soul, I want you to think, this is reliable soil. I can't wait to sow into this soil. I want you to enjoy sowing your truth into my soul because you know it's just going to flourish.
And it's going to multiply. Listen, it's the great equalizer. We all have souls. We all have freedom of choice.
We have different gifts, different abilities, different influence, different calls. But we all have the potential to be a 30, 60 hundred fold follower of Jesus. Every single one of us can be a hundred fold believer. I don't care what your past is.
I don't care how circular your story is. I don't care about all the mistakes you've made or how you've been hurt or trampled on. I don't care how many times the sun has rose and scorched. What you thought was healthy.
I don't care how many times all the cares of the world have consumed you and you've just totally forgot. God, you have the capacity to be a 30, 60 hundred fold believer. I don't care what your profession is. I don't care if you're stay at home, Mom.
He doesn't care what your profession is or what you do during the week. That's not the thing that defines how fruitful you can be. The thing that can define how fruitful your life will be and how much of the kingdom of heaven is going to completely radically change your life and move through you. It's all around your willingness to be a faithful, son or daughter that listens in obeys.
It's very simple. He knows we're simple people. You don't even have to have an education. You don't have to graduate elementary school.
So Lord, we say, this is what we want. I want us to do is I want us to just pray out what we want to do. There's some of us that you've been pinpointing, even things in your soul where you're going, this has been taking my time. This has been taking my attention.
This has been a thorn that's been choking out the kingdom. And I want to repent and I want to put it to the side because I don't have capacity for what's really valuable to me. And you get to be able to just communicate that to the Lord and you go, we're cutting this thing out. Or maybe you've got hardness of heart and you want to set in your soul.
You go, I'm going to seek you now. I'm going to make this decision right now. I'm going to seek him. Or maybe you've got rocky soil and you're going, I don't want to just take anybody's word for it.
I want to go deep in the knowledge of God. I want to go deep in my understanding of the gospel. I want to know that I know that I know that you're good. I want to know that I know that I know that I know that no matter what happens, I'm going to find refuge in you and confidence in you rather than pointing the finger of accusation at you.
Whatever it is, I want us to just all begin to tell the Lord what we want. I want us to tell the Lord what we want. And you can just articulate that out just loud enough for you to hear your own voice. You can pray in the Spirit and then break into English when you feel like you have clarity if you want to do that.
Or you can just go right after it and just tell them, Lord, this is what I want. This is what I want to do. Holy Spirit's highlighting things all over the room and you can just get to respond to the Lord with obedience and surrender. There's a yes in our hearts, Lord.
It's a joyful yes. It's a joyful yes, we get God. We get you. Lord, we're not going to allow the enemy to take the very thing that defines us.
We're not going to give the enemy an opportunity to come towards us and cut off our hair. We just say that we want to be intimate lovers of God. Lord, I want to know you and I want to be known by you. No matter the weather, no matter the high or the low, the mount top or the valley, I want to be found loving you in every season.
No matter how many rocks in there's been, no matter how hard my heart has been, no matter how many thorns have been, part of my soil, it's the past and now you are my future. I'm all yours, Lord. You can just say that to the Lord, Lord, all yours, you're my Lord. You're my leader.
I just commission out these sons of daughters. I say that they are ones that are fully given. I declare full givenness over to the Lord. Lord, we break off double-mindedness and we say that we want to worship you and love you with all of our heart, all of our soul, all of our mind, all of our strength.
We give you full access to our lives in Jesus' name and everybody say amen.