Mark 4 talks about four different types of ground, which are four different types of people who hear the Word. Another way of looking at it is that there are also four progressive stages your heart goes through in receiving the seed of God’s Word.
The first stage is when the heart is so hard that God’s Word doesn’t even seem to penetrate it. That’s the first type of person described.
Then you go through a time where the Word of God excites you, you’re enthusiastic about its potential, but you aren’t ready for the rejection and criticism that come your way for beginning to take a stand on the Word. If you don’t overcome the afflictions and persecution and move through this stage, then the Word of God will never bring forth fruit. You have to get to a place where you say, “I’m going to stand on the Word of God even if it costs me relationships, if I get punished, fired from a job, or whatever. I don’t care. God’s Word is all-important!”
CARES, DECEITFULNESS, LUST
Then there’s a third type of person, or a third stage your heart has to move through. It’s described in Mark 4:18-19, which says:
And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the word, and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.
This is powerful! I pray that the Lord is giving you revelation and you’re seeing this progression.
I remember when God used Mark 4:16-17 to speak to me. Through these two verses, He showed me that I did not yet have roots in myself. I was living off someone else’s revelation. Then I made a decision that the Word was going to become real to me. Once I made that decision, I began to move into Mark 4:18-19 (see above). Personally, I believe that, to some degree, I’m still in between the third type of soil and the fourth type of soil, where fruit really starts to produce. I’m seeing some fruit in my life, and I praise the Lord for what He’s doing, but I know there’s more.
The third type of soil (or heart) is where you’ve made the commitment to go on, regardless of what it might cost you. You’ve decided that the Word of God is going to dominate your life. But notice again what Mark 4:19 says:
The cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word.
ADDICTIVE PERSONALITIES
When a person gets ready to plant a natural seed in the soil, they usually till the ground, remove all the grass and weeds, and then put their seed in there. They begin to water the seed and start looking for results. Even though they’ve pulled out the old grass and weeds, some hidden seeds will remain, and weeds will begin growing along with their new plant. What they have to do is carefully remove all of these weeds and leave their plant undisturbed. If the weeds aren’t removed, they will sap the strength and nutrients that the plant needs. It seems like weeds (what you don’t want) always grow bigger and faster than the fruit of God’s Word (what you do want).
It’s the same in the spiritual realm with the seed of God’s Word and the soil of your heart. The Word of God begins to take root in your heart, but your heart will want to latch on to other things.
Take sports, for instance. (Now, if this is you, I’m not trying to criticize or pick on you. I’m simply making an application so you can understand what I’m talking about.) I’ve met people who treat sports like a god. They watch anything with the word sports in it and spend huge amounts of time sitting in front of the television.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with sports, in moderation. Just about anything done in moderation is okay. That’s what the Scripture teaches. But many people tend to be extremists. They have addictive personalities. So, they literally just plant themselves in front of the screen during the season of their favorite sport.
“PHS”
Many women have come to me saying, “My husband is in this stupor. He just can’t do anything except talk about sports.” One woman told me, “My husband has PHS.”
I thought, Oh man, what is this, some new disease? So, I asked her, “What is PHS? What does it do to your husband?”
She answered, “He just sits on the deck in a chair and stares out into the woods. He’ll sit there polishing his rifle and cleaning his gun.”
“So, what is PHS?”
“It’s Pre-Hunting Syndrome. About the time fall begins, he just gets this glazed look in his eyes. He becomes captivated by thinking about going out there and trapping, hunting, and doing things related to that. I just lose him for months!”
That’s the kind of thing Mark 4:19 is talking about. We shouldn’t be involved in something to such a degree that it takes us out of the Word of God.
The cares of this life also include things like parenting, working a job, or all kinds of other things that certainly aren’t sinful. As a matter of fact, Second Thessalonians 3:10 says, “If any would not work, neither should he eat.”
Work is good and has its place in our lives. But we can be so occupied with making a living and raising our children that it will literally choke the Word of God in our hearts and keep it from producing in our lives. We can successfully pass the threshold to where affliction and persecution aren’t big things. But a much more subtle and deadly attack of the devil against the Word of God in our lives is simply preoccupation with other (not necessarily sinful) things.
If you want to destroy a person’s vision, give them two. Divide their vision, and they’ll end up with “die-vision” (division). We simply can’t do multiple things wholeheartedly and correctly. We have to establish priorities. There must be certain things in our lives that are such a high priority that we never depart from them. Every day for the rest of our lives we are going to establish these priorities. If we want the Word of God to really produce in our lives, it has to become a priority. The subtlest way that Satan comes against us is through things that aren’t necessarily sin, but they divert and occupy our time and attention.
SO BUSY
Like a parcel of ground, you only have so many nutrients in you. And if those nutrients are depleted, it won’t matter if the best seed in the world is planted in your heart, the seed won’t produce. If your heart is given over to other things and your time and attention are elsewhere, you can choke the Word of God.
The cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.
Mark 4:19
As a minister, I’ve been through several different stages in my life. There was a time when people stayed away from my meetings by the droves. I mean, it was just supernatural how many people didn’t come. So, during that season I just spent a huge amount of time in the Word of God.
Then we started seeing miracles, and some folks had their lives changed. People started coming. When I moved to Pritchett, Colorado, there were times that—if I had allowed it—I wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night. People were staying over until late, and I had to send them home. They’d wake me up at two, three, or four o’clock in the morning. Miracles were happening so fast, but I was being run ragged.
I went weeks with only ever opening the Bible to minister the Word through prayer and preaching to other people. It’s not that ministering was bad. It’s that I was so occupied with ministering to other people that I wasn’t sowing the Word into my own heart. What was occupying me wasn’t a bad thing. It wasn’t anything evil. It was actually helping people. But we can get so busy helping people that it destroys our personal relationship with God.
QUALITY AND QUANTITY
What I’m trying to say is this: If the Word of God can be choked by being occupied with helping, praying for, preaching, and ministering to people, then how much more can a person be preoccupied by their job or a favorite sport or television show? We can become preoccupied to such a degree that the Word of God is not able to release its power and produce fruit in our lives. Part of being a fruitful Christian is taking the needed and regular time to sow God’s Word into our hearts.
One time I hosted a major conference and was very busy. I was going nonstop from six in the morning until after midnight each day. I just didn’t have very much time to study the Word. So, after the conference, I spent a couple of days just kicking back. Although I had a lot of things I needed to do, I went out of my way to just sit in the Word and study. I wasn’t studying to minister the message or to have something to give to somebody else. I was reading and meditating on the Word for me, which is what I’ve been doing now for more than fifty years.
You might be thinking, All right, how long do I have to be in the Word? Will six months do it, and then I can get this? You’re missing it. You have to get to where the Word of God is a lifestyle with you.
As a matter of fact, I’ve read Psalm 19 hundreds, if not thousands, of times. And that is no exaggeration. There’s a song I sing based on that chapter, and I’ve sung it hundreds, if not thousands, of times. And yet I always get some new revelation out of it. But it’s really not new; it’s just a new way of seeing it. And I guarantee you, this revelation is going to bear fruit in my life. I’m getting brand-new insights from God’s Word every single day.
For many people reading this book, that’s not your lifestyle. You want the fruit, but you aren’t going to plant the Word in your heart and protect it. You’re going to let other things occupy your time. I’m telling you in love that that’s not the way the Word of God works (Eph. 4:15). You have to spend quality time and quantity time in the Word of God.
QUIET TIME
My wife and I raised two boys. When they were little, they were energetic, bounced off the walls, and played. But we had a quiet time every afternoon. It didn’t matter where we were or what we were doing, there was a quiet time. When they were really young, Jamie laid them down and made them take a nap. As they got older, they didn’t always have to sleep, but they had to be still and do something quiet, like read a book or look at pictures. They had to have some quality downtime. We taught our kids how to kick back and rest every single day instead of just be constantly going.
Maybe you can’t relate to that, but I don’t believe that our children are exceptions. I think that most people have indulged their kids and spoiled them in that area.
During that period of time, my wife forced herself to take that hour off. In the natural, it would have been a great time to get some work done without two little boys in tow, but she determined to spend that time praying, studying the Word, and recharging her batteries because it takes a lot of energy to raise kids. There are ways that you can do this.
When I’m talking about being in the Word of God, I recognize that we can’t always be sitting and reading. However, we can meditate in the Word day and night.
A GREATER SATURATION
This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.
Joshua 1:8
Now, you can’t always be reading the Word and still have a full-time job, raise kids, etc. But there is a certain amount of time that you must spend sitting and reading, because you can’t meditate on what you haven’t put in you. Once it’s in you, you can develop a lifestyle where you keep your mind stayed on the Word (Is. 26:3). For instance, you can listen to godly Christian music instead of secular music. Why listen to folks singing about people falling off a barstool, wailing, travailing, and all kinds of discouragement? Listen to something that glorifies God, whether you’re driving in your car or working at home.
The advances we have in technology today give us many options for listening to the Word. There really is no reason that people today can’t have a greater saturation of the Word of God than people had in previous decades. Our lifestyles may be busier, but we have some advantages. We can turn on Christian radio, Christian television, and Christian podcasts. We can listen to audio recordings of preaching, teaching, and even the Word being read aloud. We can meditate in the Word of God day and night (Josh. 1:8).
“Well, Andrew, I just don’t like that. I like all this other stuff.” Well, if you like that fruit better than you like the fruit of the Word of God, it’s your choice. You don’t have to do what I’m saying to be able to love the Lord and go to heaven. As a matter of fact, you can probably get there quicker because when you get sick, you won’t be able to draw on the power of God. You’ll have to wait on a healing evangelist to come through town. Or if your situation is a crisis, you’ll die and go to heaven early because you won’t know how to receive healing. Meditating on the Word isn’t a necessity. It’s not mandatory—unless you want fruit. If you want fruit, then you have to root out the other things that vie for your attention, and you need to put priority on meditating in the Word of God.
I don’t know how to totally explain this, but when you meditate on God’s Word, it just changes you. It changes the way you think. It changes the way you feel. It changes the way you treat others. It really does. God’s Word transforms your life.