"Therefore take heed how you hear."

The title words of this thought for today are cautionary words of warning from Jesus in the 8th Chapter of Luke. He goes on to say "For whoever has, to him more will be given; and whoever does not have even what he seems to have will be taken from him." Luke 8:18 NKJV

Along with preaching about the Kingdom of God, Jesus took time to spend one on 12 time with His disciples who were, along with the Holy Spirit, going to build the church of the New Kingdom. Jesus did a lot of His preaching to the masses in parables and performing miracles that should have been recognized by Israel because of the prophesies of the Old Testament (sight to the blind, deaf hear, lame walk and the dead are made alive). In most all recorded instances, Jesus would pull His disciples aside afterwards and explain the parables, their understanding still dulled by the traditions they had been raised with as Jewish children and adults. They were yet to fully understand the "New Kingdom" of God.

Even to me, a good part of the parable of the sower seemed passive on our part. We were one kind of soil or the other and hopefully would be changed as we move forward in our relationship with God. But, today in Luke 8:11-18, I see this statement from Jesus. "Therefore take heed how you hear." Wow, I thought, we are supposed to control and chose how we hear. So, I looked back at Jesus' explanation of the sower to see how I can determine how I hear.

The first seed of the sower went by the wayside. These, Jesus explained, are the ones who hear the word, but the devil comes and takes it from their hearts so that they won't believe. So I thought about it and the only way this could happen would be not to already be a believer or to be living with un-confessed sin that separates us from our close relationship with God. We need to make sure our sin is confessed and forgiveness is asked and our hearts will retain God's word and our right relationship with Him.

The seeds on the rock are those who hear and are immediately overjoyed, but have no root, so they believe for a while, but in time temptation causes them to fall away. So, I thought, if I don't want to hear this way what must I do. How do we insure roots in our garden. We constantly cultivate and weed and fertilize and water the soil. That is the same thing that is required of God's word in our hearts. We must study and pray and add to the things of God that we put in our hearts on a daily basis. This will cause our soil to be full of nutrients and our roots to grow deeper.

Some seeds fell among the thorns. These are those who hear, but then they go out unprepared and are choked and knocked down with cares, lure of riches and pleasures and the word may not completely die in their hearts, but it does not mature and produce the fruit of discipleship. To avoid this way of hearing, we must put God first and deny ourselves when our focus overshadows our discipleship. Then we take this approach and add the cultivation and fertilizing and we confess our failures and sins along the way and we become the last type of those who hear....

"But the ones that fell on the good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it and bear fruit with patience." Luke 8:15 NKJV

Our noble and good heart, cleaned by confession and forgiveness offered freely by God, can keep His word and bear fruit with it, even through the trials of our faith. The Greek work here, translated patience, means to "bear with it under persecution of your faith."

This is how, with God's help, I choose to hear! Let me be the seed that fell on good ground. What say you?