Enjoy Life's Pleasures, but...

Luke 8:7,14 “Other seed fell among thorns that grew up with it and choked out the tender plants…The seeds that were planted among thorns are people who hear the word, but as life goes on the worries, riches, and pleasures of life choke them. So they don't produce anything good.”

Riches and pleasures – that’s the second half of the equation that Jesus talked about saying that the Word of God sometimes is choked when we are too busy enjoying life.

But wait – look at what the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 5:19, “And it is a good thing to receive wealth from God and the good health to enjoy it. To enjoy your work and accept your lot in life – this is indeed a gift from God.”

Health, wealth, pleasure...these are gifts from God.  In and of itself, there is nothing wrong with enjoying life.  It’s when we forget to include God in our life, when we forget to thank Him for our blessings, when we get so wrapped up in having fun that we eventually forget God is the One responsible for all the good we enjoy – that’s the kind of behavior that leads to low productivity.

Actually, Jesus says that when we are consumed with riches and pleasures we don’t produce anything good, and this makes perfect sense to me.  If always having fun and the money to finance all that pleasure were enough in life, rich and famous people would never commit suicide or get in trouble for bad behavior. 

I have often heard that, “So and so had everything.  Why did he kill himself?”  I have had that reaction myself.  This proves that wealth, fame, prestige, and fun are not enough.  There has to be something more to make sense of life.      

The key is to enjoy these gifts from God but not at the expense of God.  To live life joyfully but with the awareness that God is our Father, Protector, Provider, and Source of every blessing, and to always have a prayer of thanks at the ready.

That is the formula for true success.  When the seed heads our way, we water them with gratitude and stay connected to Christ.

PRAYER: Dear Lord, We thank you for blessing us with so much.  Forgive for those times when we have been too busy having fun that we have forgotten about You.  Sometimes we only come to you when there a crisis and completely ignore You when everything is going smoothly.  You are the reason we are breathing, and wealth and health come from You.  We never want to choke the life-giving seed You desire to plant in our lives by being too busy for You.  In Jesus’ name, AMEN~

Choke Our Worries~

Luke 8:7 “Other seed fell among thorns that grew up with it and choked out the tender plants.”

Greetings, all you beautiful and blessed children of God,

Repeat after me: I am a victorious and precious child of the living God, and therefore I am blessed today wherever I go and in whatever I do!

Back to farming…

So far we have examined seed that fell onto a hardened path where it won’t grow because the ground is impenetrable.  And we have looked at the gravelly ground where the seed, for the tiniest moment, sprouted only to wither away at the first hint of trouble.  Today we look at the seed that fell among thorns.

Jesus explains: “The seeds that were planted among thorns are people who hear the word, but as life goes on the worries, riches, and pleasures of life choke them. So they don't produce anything good.”

In this scenario the seed grew, but the thorns grew right along with them and eventually choked the life-giving goodness out of them. 

We will get to riches and pleasure later, but I will say right off the bat that there is nothing wrong with enjoying both.  But let’s focus on worrying, which sometimes has a way of occupying so much of our thoughts that little by little we squeeze out God until He is entirely out of the picture.

You would think that the more we worry the more we would turn to God for help and comfort, but that’s not always the case.  Sometimes, our brains tilt toward an overload of worry to the point that we completely forget about God.

Just ask the daughter who was so consumed with caring for her elderly parent that before she knew it a month had gone by without her praying.

Talk to the businessman whose company was in serious financial difficulty, and he was so preoccupied with trying to save his business that he pushed God into a corner and forgot about Him.

And then there’s the mom whose teenager was giving her trouble. In between trying to help him graduate high school and caring for everyone else’s needs, God kept going further down on her list of priorities until He was no longer on the list.

I am pretty sure we can identify with these folks.  Isn’t it interesting that initially, both the seed and the thorns grew side by side?  But left unchecked, the thorns choked them to where nothing good was produced.  No peace, patience, faith, endurance, or wisdom anywhere. 

We must all do some weeding, and by that I mean PRAYING!

PRAYER: Dear Lord, We come to You today and take this time to connect with You.  We are grateful that as we pray, You are choking the life out of the worry that sometimes consumes us.  Refresh our souls today.  In Jesus’ name, AMEN~  

Rich Earth~

“A farmer went out to sow his seed. Some of it fell on the road; it was tramped down and the birds ate it. Other seed fell in the gravel; it sprouted, but withered because it didn’t have good roots. Other seed fell in the weeds; the weeds grew with it and strangled it. Other seed fell in rich earth and produced a bumper crop (Luke 8:4-8 Message Version).”

Greetings~

I read everyday by choice.  No one is forcing me, and this shocks the people in my family.  None of them reads for relaxation or for fun; they only read when it’s required.  I love getting all cozy under Rayray’s old pink and white and tattered quilt – a relic from her teenage years – putting on my +1.25 reading glasses, loudly announcing that “I am going on an imaginary escapade with the cast of characters who are in the book I am reading at the moment so don’t bother me,” and locking the door!

If my door is locked, no one dares interrupt unless there is an emergency. And it is behind that locked door where I immerse myself in all kinds of adventures.  Mostly spy, but I am truly drawn to anything that’s lying around.  That’s how I found out I was married to a farmer.  Well, the etymology of Jorge’s name means, “farmer, a person engaged in agriculture, which is the cultivation of plants used to sustain and enhance human life.” (Thank you, Wikipedia).

And we would all be wise to be farmers ourselves.  It is vital to our Christian lives to produce a crop, and when we do, we too will “sustain and enhance human life,” mostly our own.

 Lots of stuff, however, gets in the way of successful farming.  Birds eat up the seeds, seeds land in gravel and don’t grow for a lack of good roots, and seeds fall on weeds and try to grow but those weeds strangle them.  But then there’s the seed that falls on rich earth.  It produces a bumper crop – an overflow, extravagant, and over abundance of blessings.

But what exactly does the seed represent? And the birds, gravel, and weeds? How about rich earth?  We will look at each of these in the next few DEVOs, but here’s a sneak peak.  “Rich earth” is symbolic of those people who with good, noble, perfect, and honest hearts are able to produce what is good no matter what! That’s what we want for us and our families!

PRAYER: Dear Lord, Prepare our hearts to be rich earth.  This is the kind of soil that allows for an overflow of wonderful blessings, and that’s something we all need. In Jesus’ name, Amen~