Matthew 13          Monday,  January 26

You can really see the different kinds of growth even today.   There are always people who visit the church, or hear the message through a friend but reject it right away.   Actually, I think that the other categories are more common.   It's really fairly common to see someone accept the Gospel and then wander off during their first year.   Actually, that is my testimony as well.   I accepted the Lord, and then just quit thinking about it and drifted off.   I wasn't serious, I guess.     Thankfully I was afforded another chance when I was old enough to appreciate what I was being offered.
I don't know why it's so hard for us to understand that God supplies our needs.   We allow the cares and concerns of this life to choke out the growth of the single most important thing we could possess.   Who cares how much money you have if you're not going to heaven?    What difference does it make how healthy you are?   Best case scenario: it extends your life by 10 or 20 years...but it has no bearing at all on eternity.   What's the big attraction to hanging around here once our bodies begin to fail?      Perhaps we should consider that sometimes God blesses people with a timely passing.

I cannot resist pointing out that in the parable of the weeds God tells the, angels to pull up the weeds first, and then harvest the wheat,    I wonder how we should apply that to our view of the rapture.   Many believe that the rapture comes first, but that doesn't jive with the illustration.   Also note that when both plants are young it's hard to tell them apart.   It isn't until they become fruit bearing that you can observe a difference.  I suspect that Christians are the same way...you can only tell the difference between them and non-christians by their fruit.

verse 58 is the last verse in this chapter.  I wonder if Jesus didn't do miracles there because their lack of faith prevented the miracles from happening, or because he didn't feel compelled to, because of their lack of faith.   I know that Jesus has power to perform miracles regardless of my spiritual condition....it must have been that He simply didn't want to, because they didn't believe in Him anyway.      That would make them like the first type of soil, I suppose.   They heard and didn't believe.


PR