Have you ever had a vegetable garden? You prepared the soil by breaking it up and watering it. You may have even put fertilizer on the soil. Then, you planted the seed. After a short time, the seeds sprouted, and the plants started growing. The plants may have even grown to the point where they should start producing their fruit. The plants may have been corn, beans or peas. If you took good care of the garden, you made sure that no weeds grew up in it. You kept the garden clean of all weeds.
However, if you had not taken care to pull out weeds as they sprouted up, the weeds would have grown right alongside the vegetable plants. The weeds would take some of the nutrition and water from the soil for themselves. Eventually, the weeds would even overpower the vegetables and choke them out. The vegetables would not produce what they were supposed to produce. The vegetable plants might not die completely, but they would be unfruitful. You would eventually have to cut them down along with the weeds.
Jesus said there were some people like this situation. In Luke 7, 14; Mark 4:7, 18-19; and Matthew 13:7, 22, Jesus says that some people hear the Word of God and accept it. They begin to grow in the faith, but they allow cares of this world, and the desires for things of this world, to grow up in their spiritual soil. These thorns and weeds become more important to them than God’s Word. These weeds and thorns eventually choke out the spiritual fruit that they should be or had been producing. These people probably show up for worship, but their heart is really not in it. These people may have been very active in church activities at one time, but they become silent.
Do not allow thorns to choke you. Keep your garden clean of weeds. Study your Bible and learn all you can. Then, obey what you have learned. If any of this is hard to understand, ask an adult to help you.
