Live Free with Josh Howerton - Eliminate your Thorns & Weeds | Ep. 319 | Thursday, April 25, 2024

Episode Date: April 25, 2024

In Jesus’ parable from Matthew 13, He talks about the seed of God’s Word landing on soil covered in thorns and weeds. He said the cares of the world and deceitfulness of riches choke out the good things God wants to grow in us. Do you have any weeds in your life that are choking out the seeds of Scripture trying to grow in your life? For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's Word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, thanks for joining us on the Daily Drive podcast. My name is bro, and man, I love, love, love, spring. So I thought we would embrace the spring and talk about different ways that God grows us. And we began the week talking about how God will use pivotal circumstances to grow us up. Some of the things that we thought were the absolute worst things of our life actually grew our character in supernatural ways. Now, it didn't make the experience any less hard or negate the tragedy of it all. But God was able to do some really good things. things on the inside of us through all of it. For the past few days, we've been talking to how God also uses practical teaching to do his miracle grow thing inside of us. And we've been hanging in

the story that Jesus tells about sowers and seeds and soils. The soils represent the kind of heart that people bring to God when his word gets sown. We talked about the concrete sidewalk kind of heart that is hard and unreceptive, and so the seed just bounces off of that heart and nothing is able to grow. Yesterday, Jesus introduced the kind of soil that is rocky and shallow, and compared it to the kind of heart that hears the truth, even gets excited about it, but never allows it to take root. It's never allowed to get to a deep place where it can grow and produce any kind of fruit. And there's a third type of soil that Jesus talks about. It looks a lot like my yard right now, and the out-of-balanced places my golf ball tends to land. Jesus says this other seed fell among the thorns,

which grew up and choked the plants. 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. Here the seed that is planted falls among the thorns or the weeds, and it's those weeds, those things in life that overpromise and under-deliver

that grow up and end up choking out the practical teaching that we've heard, and can eventually overtake the whole lawn of our life, If you know anything about plants, you know they need oxygen to survive. Maybe that's why Jesus used the word choke in this story, because the act of choking takes the breath right out of you. Plants need to breathe. They need space to grow, and so do we.

I have a friend who wrote to me after a church service a while back, and said, bro, here's the deal. I'm a mom of two kids in elementary school, so I want to help in their class, and I want to be at field day, but I also want to exercise and stay healthy, but I really need to answer those emails, but my family has to have something to eat for dinner,

and my husband needs someone to watch the Netflix series finale with, and I have to keep the house clean because the in-laws are coming, but I want to use my gifts and steward my life, and I feel like sometimes I come in here and I hear amazing teaching, then it grows up right in the middle of my crazy schedule, and what started growing in me gets choked out by all the stuff of my life. Man, anybody else's been there? You get really inspired or recognize that something in you needs to change, but then you walk out

and that seed grows right up in the middle of your prom plans, your vacation itinerary, your fantasy baseball league, or maybe you get surrounded by all your worries about your finals, your divorce settlement, your job search, your mortgage payments, your volatile 401k, your business, or your prodigal kid, and that seed of hope, that seed of wisdom, that seed of truth, that seed that got planet, that seed that you'd been waiting for even longing for, gets choked out. When Jesus described those weeds as the deceitfulness of wealth, it may be think of this passage from 1 Timothy chapter 6, where Paul tells this young guy named Timothy, tell those who are rich in his world's wealth, to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money,

which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage. Tell them to do good. To be rich in helping other people to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they'll build a treasury that will last gaining life that is truly life.

That's why Jesus referred to it as the deceitfulness of wealth. It promises one thing, but gang, it chokes out the real thing. We can surround ourselves with so many beautiful things that in reality, they become weeds. They just end up filling us

with anxiety, worry, stress, we're trying to maintain it all, or they fill us with a false sense of security, they fill us with apathy or complacency, they can kill off good things like generosity, compassion, and selflessness. You see, on the outside, we can have a lush, beautifully manicured lawn complete with stripes and matching flowers. But on the inside, man, we can be so full of weeds, that when God tries to plant real life in us, the worries and distractions are so thick that the seed has no room to breathe, and real life gets choked out as the weeds take over. If we don't let what we're learning, get some breathing room, it'll die. We have to create some weed-free space and room in our life

for God to be the primary focus so that his seed can grow and flourish in us. The kind of soil the seed falls on is so crucial. Our hearts can be unteachable, hard as concrete. They can be shallow, They can be full of weeds, or they can be what Jesus refers to as simply good soil. And we'll wrap up the week tomorrow talking about what that looks like. In the meantime, why not do a little self-evaluation, a little soil test, if you will? Ask yourself, ask God, even bring a trusted friend into it, and ask the question, am I teachable? Am I coachable? Is my lack of humility causing good things just to bounce off my heart?

Why do I get excited about some new truth, but I never really let it take root? Are there so many things in my life right now that you see that might just be choking out the most important thing? Just be honest. It's so worth it. It will start the cultivation process, and we'll see tomorrow just how beneficial that can be. Have a great day. We'll see you back tomorrow. Thanks for tuning in today.

For more biblical teaching and worship, join us. for our Church Online live weekend services on Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. For more information, visit lakepoint.com. Church slash daily drive.