Month: February 2021

Jesus said, “Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When  anyone hears  the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.”

The person who is described as the path (or road) is the one who is so busy they can’t or won’t take time to reflect and contemplate what God is doing in their lives. The seed of the message of the Kingdom sits on the surface and does not even get planted – becoming nothing but food for that which lives in the air to pick off. The person who Jesus describes as ‘rocky places’ is the soul who doesn’t die to self on anything. There is no decomposing organic matter for the seed of Good News to germinate in. They are unable to hold in any of the water that is the Spirit’s refreshing presence. Those who are described as patches of thorns are those who might look green and fruitful, but are actually that which chokes out more useful vegetable life and/or protects ‘their fruit’ to the hurt of the He who would gather it. In the end, the condition of all three (road, rock and thorns) is the same. Unfruitfulness. Yet God told us all, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.” 

A lack of fruitfulness is not a condemnation. It is a warning. A clear indicator that we are not doing what the Lord would have us to do. Seeing the lack is a decision point. Either we take corrective action to correct the condition of our soul so it can produce fruit, or we remain as we are. A useful field – a profitable patch of ground – is ground that is cultivated. Ground that has been cared for – stripped of stones and rocks, mixed well with organic matter and ready to receive the seed the farmer purposes to sow without restriction. But uncultivated land is full of unhelpful things. It might be rocks or thorns, but the result is the same. It will not produce fruit. That is a serious problem for the owner is wants fruitfulness. 

A farmer who does not find enough fruitfulness from what grows on his property will eventually take action. They will prune back what is growing (John 15:2), dig down and put fertilizer around it (Luke 13:8) or rip out what unhelpful thing is growing and throw it in the fire (John 15:6, Luke 13:7). So if we notice a lack of fruitfulness in our lives, we know we have move quickly to cooperate with what the Lord is purposing to do. 

Obviously, fruitfulness takes many forms. Not all fruit is external. Fruitfulness can also be internal. As shade trees and ornamental plants are pleasing to the eye and make pleasant habitat for creation, so the fruit of the Spirit is quiet and discreet. But whether external (bringing blessing to others) or internal (being a blessing to those who are near), the fruitfulness of our lives ought to be evident to all who look on!

Amen. 

What does the tree suggest? Strength and stability! Fruitfulness! Beauty! Refreshing shade! All of these things are found in the one who delights in the Word of God. And the degree of the delight is the degree to which they are found.

Roger Ellsworth

APPLICATION: Thankfulness

PTL, as Matthew Henry put it, “We sit down under Christ’s shadow with delight, and by it are sheltered from the scorching heat of the curse of the law.”

Noting that the sower scattered seed everywhere, and some “…fell among  thorns, which  grew up and choked the plants.” Jesus explains, “The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.”

If you pick raspberries or blackberries or any other kind of fruit that grows on thorny plants, you know that harvesting that kind of fruit is not a pleasant experience. The multitude of thorns that protrude from even the thinnest stem makes you think twice about gathering any of it. But worse is the proliferation of stems – they are virtually weeds, among which little else can find root. Either way, the picture is very unlike a farmer’s field. 

Some people’s souls are like that. The concerns of worldly life and/or the accumulation of wealth has all their attention. They are not the kind of people given to dying to self or sacrificing for the Kingdom. While they may appear lush and helpful from a distance, from God’s viewpoint such an individual is altogether unfruitful. What the Lord sows with purpose cannot grow there. The wild things grow there instead, and no matter how many seeds land, the “worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.”

This part of Jesus’ parable has a pointed – almost thorny – implication. The seed of the Good News may have germinated in your soul, and may even be growing. But if we allow the weeds to also grow, they will crowd out the good thing God started. Yet sometimes those weeds look pretty inviting. They even seem to have fruit of their own. But to reach for it is to injure yourself. It must be pulled up, not cultivated!

When you pull up such a weed, you’ll find that it is connected underground to more weeds. In fact, they propagate underground. The roots go on for some distance, and pulling them up is both difficult and painful. It disrupts the soil all around. But pull them up you must, or the thorny plant just keeps growing. If you try to surgically cut it out, you may remove it in one spot, it just pops up in another.

We don’t really need to be bombarded with commercials for selfishness and greed. Those things grow naturally, all of themselves. If we let them take root we will find them hindering what God is doing in our lives. If we fail to pull them out – painful as it is – they’ll eventually choke out what He purposed altogether. 

Don’t let the things of this world impair your worship of Him. Don’t let your natural need to ‘get ahead’ impede your sacrifice for His purpose. Pull out the weeds, even through it is horribly disruptive for a season. Then the message of the Kingdom can find not only fertile, but unhindered soil to grow! 

The things of this world lie too close to thy heart; the earth with its things have bound up thy roots; thou art an earth-bound soul, thou art wrapped up in thick clay. ‘If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him’; how then can he be fruitful in the vineyard?

John Bunyan

APPLICATION: Intentionality

There is but one way to rid a garden of thorns without risk of personal injury, and that is by fire. 

We have all tried at one point or another to plant something in poor quality soil. The   seed germinates quickly on account of watering, as its own surface retains some moisture. But the soil itself cannot. Water flows through it like a sieve, and the immature plant is quickly in trouble. The root system has not had time to establish itself – it is too small to reach deep enough to find water, and the baby plant soon dries up. That which started so quickly and with such promise, dies before it can grow into anything meaningful. 

Jesus takes that experience and makes it into a profound spiritual lesson, “The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away.”

In Jesus’ parable, the seed of the message of the Kingdom is the same as that which falls elsewhere. The lack of fruitfulness is not the fault of the sower, nor the fault of the seed. The problem was the soil. So also we are all responsible for the condition of our souls. While we don’t get to dictate what we were handed initially as far as life circumstances go, we are all ultimately responsible to tend to the garden of our own soul. For every gardener knows that the fertileness of the soil can be altered. Larger rocks and stones can be dug up. Rich organic matter can be added. In the end, not every kind of plant can grow there, but even the worst soil can be made suitable for some sort of useful vegetation. If we fail to do that we may well miss the opportunity of the message of the Kingdom. 

After all, without an appropriate medium to grow in, any plant will fail. Plants need to have roots, and roots need to be able to find water. Just as gravel and sand do not retain water, some people have almost nothing within them for the life-giving message of the Gospel to take root in. They have not cultivated their lives through thought and reflection. They have not let God transform them – either before they received the message or soon after. No foolishness has died in them, no coarseness or pettiness has decomposed into rich organic matter. No stone has been removed. Their ‘life’ is little more than a collection of hard things – grievances and painful habits and rough character. They hear the message of the Kingdom and initially respond positively, but there is nowhere in their soul for the message to take root. The water of the Spirit passes and in a moment it is over. That which showed such promise dies the moment the sun bears down and the heat gets turned up. 

There is of course still hope for those without good soil. With enough water and nutrients, plants can grow without soil. When they are constantly in the presence of the Spirit, even the hardest and most unhospitable soul can eventually set down roots deep enough to become a fruit-bearing vine. 

This is one of the inherent values of the assembly of God’s people. Wherever they gather, the Spirit of God is present – so when they gather around the soul who is ‘rocky places’, there is a hope of restoration!  

Tending the soil of the heart includes keeping the heart pure so the listener can see God.

Vern Heidebrecht

APPLICATION: Intentionality

How is the soil of your heart?

Jesus has begun telling His disciples what the parable of the sower means.  “Listen then  to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path.” The message about the Kingdom of God is like a seed. It needs to be sown in fertile soil in order to produce a crop. This much any reader of Matthew’s Gospel can understand. 

Not everyone’s life is a patch of fertile ground. Some are beaten down and barren places. Not because their lives couldn’t be fertile, but because they are ‘going places’. The pace of life and franticness of their schedules railroad every attempt to plant something worthwhile in their lives. The seed of the Gospel cannot take root in that soil until the ground is softened and watered. 

That’s not impossible. Every path and every packed dirt road can become a garden. But there needs to be some structural changes first. First, people need to stop using it as a path or road. You cannot expect to grow anything if the smallest of shoots gets bent over and stomped on repeatedly every day. Neither can you plant the Gospel seed among those who have no margin in their lives. They will not think about the meaning of the Kingdom, or the wants of the King. They think only about the next task, the next personal goal, the next thing to own or conquer. For them, life is a race against the sun. They innately know they will lose, but they run all the same. 

Such people are told the Gospel, but they can barely hear it. It never gets ‘planted’ underground. It sits on the surface of their hearts. For them, the Gospel is like a car commercial when they are not looking for a car – a piece of noise to be dismissed at the next thought. The message of the Kingdom is easily picked off. And it does get picked off. For while the message of the Kingdom is to them only noise, to the spiritual beings of creation it is anything but. 

To spiritual beings, the Gospel is a tasty morsel. It is life sustaining and highly sought. It is not something to be overlooked or left alone. They long to hear it so they can take it in, but not for noble purpose. For the demonic, the Gospel is like seeds to a bird – their longing is to consume, not to see it grow.

At the end of creation the Lord choose to take a rest. To set aside a full day to enjoy what He had made. In so doing He established that there is a high value on keeping margin in one’s schedule.  Moreover, God wrote it down as the fourth commandment for His people. For His people must reflect Him to the rest of creation, and that includes modelling rest on a repeated and frequent cycle. Without margin in our lives, we can scarcely hear what God is saying. Without it we have little joy and no lasting fruitfulness. Worse, without margin we are unable to properly receive the full message of the Kingdom. 

It will be picked off us before we even know what it really was.

Again and again has God spoken to you so that both your ears have tingled, but there it ended; the avenue from your ears to your heart has still been blocked up by the devil and his angels, and by your sin; and, as yet, you have not answered to the divine call, and said, “Here am I.”

Charles Spurgeon

APPLICATION: Intentionality

Let us humble ourselves and do business with God, lest anything hinder His voice to us.

Jesus said, “But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they   hear. For I tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it. Listen then….” 

According to the Jewish calendar, almost 4000 years had passed prior to Jesus’ first appearing. During that time, every prophet in the Old Testament except John the Baptist was born, lived and died. They did not see the appearing of the Messiah. Every righteous King and every righteous man and woman for generation upon generation looked forward to the appearing of Messiah, but they did not see it. 

For four hundred years after Malachi the people of God had no prophet at all – they could not hear the Word of God apart from their own prayer lives and the Scripture. God in His grace knew that such was enough for them. Such is enough for all of us, even if we long for more. So to be given more is to know God’s extraordinary grace. To open our eyes and gaze on the Son of Man and to turn and hear His Words is a special privilege that falls on only some since the fall. 

We live in this in-between time. The age between His first appearing and His return. And we long to see His return in glory and power. For we know that in that day we shall be free of our sin forever and all the world shall be put right. All the earth will worship God Most High and we will reign with Him. Yet for over two thousand years, good people have longed for that event. Christians world over have hoped and looked, but to them the honor of being ‘that generation’ has not fallen. Whether we are ‘that generation’ or not remains to be seen. Perhaps we will be, and perhaps we will not. One thing is certain; While we wait for our physical eyes to see Him and our physical ears to hear Him, we can all the same see Jesus, and all the same we can hear Jesus. We are not without spiritual sight and spiritual hearing. For the first to come is the spiritual. The physical always follows. 

As that blessing is not given to all, we who do have it have a particular responsibility to use it. We must seek Jesus’ face, and we must listen carefully to His Spirit speaking to us. We must not cover our spiritual ears by blasting them with the mundane things of the world, and we must not obscure our spiritual vision by clouding our sensitivity to His Spirit by the foolish things of the world. To those who have much, much is expected. We have much. We know Jesus, the pearl of great price. We have much, much more than most! 

Knowing that, Jesus says, “Listen then…”  He is still speaking. He is telling us the wonders of His Word. He is instructing us in His Mission. He is imparting to us knowledge that will help us bring the Good News to those He puts in our circles of influence. So let us listen!

Everything changes when God opens his mouth. It is impossible to hear God’s voice and remain the same.

Roger Barrier

APPLICATION: Intentionality

Listen then! God is yet speaking. What is God saying to you today?

When God calls us blessed, we know we are blessed. But often what He calls blessing is   not something that we typically would ask for as a blessing. We tend to associate blessing with prosperity, health and relationships. That is, we think of blessing as being primarily about us and ours. That’s kind of sad in a way, because blessing in God’s eyes is primarily about Him. 

Speaking to His disciples after telling them that the crowd had dull ears and closed eyes, Jesus said, “But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.”

It is a blessing to be able to physically see at all. Many are those who cannot see. The wonder of the sunset, the glory of the stars at night, the beauty of the fog winding through the trees in the valley below – these things are cut off from them. Likewise, it is a blessing to be able to hear sound. Many are those who are deaf. The majesty of the symphony, the peacefulness of the birds singing in the countryside, the roar of the crowd – these things are cut off from them. The blessing of one of our five senses is something we usually take for granted until we are at risk of loosing it. Only then do we realize just what a blessing it truly is. 

So it is with physical blessings that almost all have. But it is a particular blessing to be able to not only physically see, but perceive what God is doing. It is another particular blessing to be able to not only hear, but to know God speaking to you. 

Certainly most people cannot see what God is doing, and many are oblivious to His Voice. We get that, because all who know God know that unless you’ve washed your sins away by means of Christ’s sacrifice, you cannot really see or hear God at all. Yet there are also many who’ve done that – who even attend churches every week and can plainly see what the church is doing and what the pastor and elders are doing, but they cannot see what God is doing. They have no idea that He is leading His church. They assume that the pastor and elders are doing that. They are oblivious to where He wants the church to go or what He wants the church – and themselves – to be about. 

For them, the inspiration of knowing the thread of His voice speaking over the church from season to season is completely inaudible. The same people can see the news and read the newspaper, but they have no idea that God is in charge of history. They have no idea that He is bringing the world to a conclusion. They assume that chaos is reigning, and God is only periodically making an appearance via coincidence and miracle. They cannot see that He is moving whole people groups from place to place for a reason. They see only refugees and displaced people. That God means to humiliate Satan (who inspired the carnage that drove them from their homes) through the redemption of those people by means of the Gospel (which is why God opened a way of escape, so that they might yet hear the Gospel) – that thought never even enters their minds. 

Blessed are you when you can see what God is doing in and through His people, and blessed are you when you can see what He is accomplishing. Blessed are you when you can hear His Voice. Blessed are you when you know Him speaking to you, and blessed are you when you hear Him speaking through others! 

But more blessed still is the one who hears and then acts.  

God gave the birds the instinct to know the seasons and the times of their migrations, but He gave people so much more: a spirit within to hear God’s voice and understand His Law. Made in the image of God, men and women ought to be as obedient to divine instruction as birds are to natural instinct.

Warren Wiersbe

APPLICATION: Thankfulness

Think back to the last time God spoke to you. Then, rejoice! God spoke, and you heard Him!

When Isaiah received His call He was looking at the Lord seated on His  throne and  asking, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”  In response, Isaiah cried out, “Here am I. Send me!” and the Lord said, “Go and tell this people: ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.”

Isaiah’s call was a difficult one. It was a call to a hard hearted people. A people who had lived with the presence of God for generations, but wasn’t listening or seeking Him. In fact, they did not want Him. They just wanted the blessings that He offered. They wanted security and wealth and health and every good and useful thing, but they did not want any responsibilities from God Most High, who bestows every good and useful thing. So God called a prophet to go to speak to them. It is not an understatement to say that Isaiah was among the greatest prophets the world had ever seen. Under his watch, Hezekiah was able to escape the Assyrian army. Nevertheless, by the end of his career Israel had been fallen to the Babylonians – the hardness of heart generations within Israel had nurtured had run its full course. 

Israel in Jesus’ day was little different. The temple had been restored under Herod, but the bitterness of soul most felt over their occupation by a foreign power kept them from realizing God in their midst. And truly He was. To that generation in that age was given that God incarnate should walk among them, teaching and instructing them. 

Recognizing their hardness of heart, Jesus said, “In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “ ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, 

hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’””

Jesus uses the past tense when speaking of the condition of their hearts. Where Isaiah was sent to callous their hearts, Jesus notes it already is. Where Isaiah was sent to make their ears dull and to close their eyes, Jesus notes it already is so. 

Every generation is given the privilege of building on what the prior generations have done. So each generation chooses – they can either apply faith and see God at work through the ages (up to and including their time), or they can be faithless and see nothing but mere circumstances handed down to them. But we are never given just circumstance. We are given all of God’s prior work, written down for us in the pages of history. We just need to open our eyes and see it. 

As God was preparing the people of Israel for the coming of Messiah, so He is likewise preparing all peoples for the coming of Jesus our King. Can we see that, or are our eyes closed to it? Can we hear Him still speaking to us, or are our ears barely able to hear? 

One of the significant costs Christians pay for not immersing themselves in the Scriptures is the inability to recognize God’s voice, presence, and activity when it occurs outside the pages of the Bible.

Mike Erre

APPLICATION: Intentionality

When was the last time you heard God speak to you? What has been saying lately? More importantly, what did you do with what He told you?

After telling the disciples the spiritual principle behind His decision to speak  in parables,  Jesus said, “This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.””  Where His prior answer emphasized the positive side of a spiritual principle (those who have the blessing of God find they can walk ever deeper in God’s blessing), here Jesus emphasizes the negative side; Those who don’t really want Him encounter God just as all do yet they fail to realize His working in their lives. 

As before, we can see this happening in our own lives too. Every time there is a church service, a few respond. Even apart from ‘coming forward’ and making commitments, the vast majority of church goers will have an opportunity to encounter Christ every time they are in a service. For unless the church is a cult and a church in name only, Christ faithfully speaks to His people and Christ faithfully meets with His people. Yet most will come to church unprepared to encounter Him and unprepared to see Him.  

Frankly, they are not expecting to encounter Him there. Yet He shows up and He speaks. He speaks through the reading of His Word. He speaks through the music He gave His servants to perform. He speaks through the people we meet and the words He gave His preacher. Yet we can remain oblivious to Him unless we attend church expecting to see and hear Him. 

Knowing that is true for those who DO know Him, how much more is it true for those who do not know Him?  After all, God is still at work in their circumstances. God is still aware of their beginning and their end. He knows all the number of their days and every hair on their heads. Their thoughts do not escape Him. They too are made in His image, and they too are sustained by His grace and speaking over their lives (for He upholds all things by the power of His word). We who have read God’s Word surely know that He does open their ears to perceive Him speaking to them and He does show up in their lives every time we pray for God’s mercy upon them, for He is gracious, He desires that none should perish and He answers prayer. Yet they remain oblivious. 

In fact, those who have no desire to really know Him find that even what little they have of His blessing is taken away. Recall Jesus’ earlier statement, “Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.” Unbelievers may or may not have worldly things, but a lack of peace and a lack of joy inevitably begin to overshadow their souls. Their experience of God’s creation and God’s blessing gets smaller and less wondrous instead of bigger and more wonderful. Far worse than a retirement in poverty, what awaits them after death is not the riches of heaven but the desolation of an eternity apart from every blessing that can be known. 

This we have to know: God is purposing to meet with us every day of our lives. He is always caring for us, always speaking over us, always urging us closer to Him. Can we se His work every day? Are we listening?

We can see, but there’s something wrong with our spiritual capacities to discern the beauty and value of what we see.

John Piper

APPLICATION: Thankfulness

God gives spiritual sight to all who ask Him. He is able, and He is willing. 

There are many spiritual principles at work all around us that are on full  display week in  and week out. Yet the world is completely blind to them because they do not understand things of a spiritual nature. Take for instance the fact that the rich seem to find it fairly easy to get richer, and the poor find it very difficult to pull themselves out of their state. The world looks at this situation and says, “You need to have money to make money.” People hear that statement and innately know it has a measure of truth to it. Not of course that you can’t make money if you have none; That is what labor is all about – the selling of a service in exchange for something of value (money). You can make money without having it first, and people do it all the time. Yet everyone knows that if you already have money, it is much easier to make more money. Money begets money, so to speak. That is not a spiritual principle of itself. It is the twisted reality of a sin-soaked world that fails to understand we are blessed only that we might be a blessing. But there is a spiritual principle behind it: Those who have the blessing of God find they can walk ever deeper in God’s blessing. Conversely, those who do not have the blessing of God find only ever deeper misery and emptiness, no matter how much money they have. As Jesus said, “Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.”

This proves to be true in the life of every Christ-follower. The seed of the Gospel sprouts, the shoot appears and eventually a great harvest is had. Every true Christ-follower can testify that their walk with the Lord gets sweeter and sweeter as they go on. Not that there aren’t rough patches or dry seasons, but that over time they learn to live more and more in the presence of God – the very presence they’ve been in all along. As brother Lawrence encouraged his readers so long ago, we just need to practice His presence! 

C. S. Lewis wrote, “If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry.”

The more we do that, the more we realize His presence and practice His presence, the more the peace of God, the joy of believing and the righteousness of the Holy Spirit fill every nook and cranny of our lives.

This is such a reality that Paul writes, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” Paul is saying that if you know Christ, greater blessing is so assured you can legitimately say you already have EVERY worthwhile blessing! For is only a matter of time before you appropriate that which God has already reserved in heaven for you. You might not have it right now, but you will have it all, because Jesus is so committed to seeing you who have chosen Him brought into His blessing that the Scripture confidently proclaims, “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

This is the destiny of the wise. They seek Him because He is the fount of every blessing! 

You have exalted my horn like that of the wild ox; you have poured over me fresh oil.

King David (from Psalm 92:10)

APPLICATION: Worship

Glory to God, He is here with you, even in this moment. Recognize His presence, and worship Him! 

Jesus has just finished telling the crowd about the parable of the farmer
Photo by kyle smith on Unsplash sowing seeds. The disciples, who had heard Jesus teach plainly for so long, are confused as to why He has changed His teaching style. “The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” He replied, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him.””

Jesus is quite aware of who the disciples are, and He is quite aware of who the crowd is. Jesus knows that the crowd is there to hear, but not really to listen. To that point He tells the parable publicly. The surface of it is for those who want to hear – but the meaning is really just for those who want to listen. Those who want to listen are those who already have gained something of the Kingdom. They know who God is and they want to be about God’s purposes. They come that they may apply what God is telling them, and apply it wholeheartedly. But those who only want to hear are really just there for themselves – they want to have an experience of seeing and hearing, but they have no intention to let what they are seeing and hearing truly impact them.

There will be some in every church who are really there to be entertained. They will make space in their schedules to come to church, they may put their names forward for membership and may even give regularly. But they are not coming to church with an expectation of being regularly changed by an encounter with God. They are coming with an expectation that they will selfishly ‘get’ something from the service – something they can use for their own purposes, not God’s purposes.

It may be just to see their friends. It may be to acquire a fact they know their other friends do not yet know – perhaps a story or illustration that they think is interesting or poignant that they can use as their own in a downstream conversation. It may be the appeal of the music or the free coffee. But it is little more than entertainment or fodder for boasting. The week will pass and the next service will come and they have not applied anything at all of the previous service to how they live their lives or how they worship God.

Subsequently, instead of talking about how they are participating in the worship or applying the message given after the service, they will speak of the music volume, the use or non-use of particular instruments, the lighting, the sound quality, the order of service or some other external aspect of “how it went”. Such subjects may be appropriate conversation for church leaders trying to iron out distractions, but they are of no value at all to almost all of us who attend. That such subjects comes up in our conversation is a revelation that our focus has not been on God, but on something else.

For such people, Jesus has little.

For those who truly seek Him, He has much.

If we allow the Word to go “in one ear and out the other,” we have not understood the purpose of a lamp, nor have we been careful how we listen.

Paul R. McReynolds

APPLICATION: Intentionality

What comes up in our after church conversation? Which camp are we in? Which do we think we are in? It is that delta – the hidden and unseen motivation of the heart – that determines what we get out of a message from God. It is not the office we hold, or the gifts we are given, or the style of preaching – or even necessarily who the preacher is. What matters is whether we are there to listen or not.