This transcript was generated by whisper.ai. Welcome to Daily Drive Time Devotions and to Day 2 of our look together through Mark chapter 4. We are going to be looking at verses 18-25 today. We began this look yesterday at Jesus' story about growth, growth and seeds, and we looked at two things that stop growth, that close our hearts to growth, familiarity, familiarity with God's truth. I've just become so familiar with it that it's hardened my heart to it. I've said no to God. I've said wait to God. And also shallowness, when I don't put down roots, the roots of relationships with other believers and obeying God's word and talking to God. Jesus then goes on in verse 18 to talk about a third thing that closes our heart to God's truth. The third thing is distractions. Listen to what he says, verses 18-19. "Still others, like seeds sown among the thorns, hear the word, but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desire for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. " Jesus says that the truth of God can get choked in our lives. It can be strangled out of our lives. And he says here that it's strangled by three things. It's strangled by worry, by desires, and by deceit. God's truth is strangled out of my life by worry. I've heard people say to me sometimes, "What's wrong with worry? " I mean, I worry a little bit and it helps me to get things done. I wouldn't get things done if I didn't worry. Well, here's what's wrong with worry. It keeps you from growing. It keeps you from seeing what God can do in your life. You might even get more things done on your to-do list by worrying, but if it keeps you from growing, it's got to get rooted out of your life. It is a weed in your life, Jesus says. The alternative to worry is prayer. Instead of me worrying about it depending on myself, I pray about it and I depend on God. God's truth is strangled by worry. It's also strangled by desires. I heard he says the desire for other things comes in, especially the desire for things. My own desires can strangle out God's truth in my life. God put me into this world to live for him and his greatest desires for me, but I have these lesser desires in my life for things that I think can please me quickly. And they might please me quickly, but they did please me for such a brief time. The depth of what God wants to do is so much greater. So in place of this desire strangling chase in my life, instead of that, I chase after serving others and giving to others and watching what God can do in my life. He also says Jesus teaches us that God's truth is strangled out of our lives by deceit. Here he talks about the deceit of riches. Riches make it look like you're growing, but all you're actually doing is accumulating. And Satan would love to lie to you and say that you're growing when all you're doing is getting more money into a bank account or getting a better office in your office building or getting more people into your Facebook group. Whatever you do that accumulates more things, that makes you feel better about yourself, if that's all you have, Jesus says it's deceitful. God's truth is so much more. What God wants to do in you, he wants to change your character, he wants to change your direction, he wants to make you more servant-hearted, he wants to make you more a person of peace and love and joy. That's what he wants to do. And distractions, these distractions keep that from happening in our lives. So Jesus says take care. These weeds, they'll choke the growth right out of you. Now distractions keep us from growing, shallowness, familiarity, those are things that close our hearts to growth. What is it that opens our hearts to growth? Well Jesus talks about it, three things that keep you growing. Verse 20, "Others, like seeds sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop. " Thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times what was sown. Jesus says here's how growth works. You do three things, one, hear the word, two, accept the word, three, produce a crop. That's what opens my heart. It starts by hearing God's word. If I want to open my heart to God's direction in my life, I've got to put myself in places where I can hear God's word. Places like church on a Sunday morning or a Saturday night. Places like a Bible study sometime during the week or maybe in your office building at lunch. Places like drive time devotions that you're listening to right now. You're making this choice right now to hear the word. And that's a start, but it doesn't stop there. Because we all know, we all know people who've heard a lot of the Bible, but it's not impacting their character very much. It's not impacting their growth very much. You see, hearing the word alone isn't enough. I can't grow without hearing the word. That's where it starts, but that can't be where it stops. I have to hear the word and then I have to accept the word. This is the key. I accept God's word into my heart. What does that mean to accept the word? Well, that doesn't just mean that I believe that it's factually true. It means that I decide to do something about it. I begin to live it out in my daily life. I remember when I was a kid, every once in a while I'd drive home from church with my grandmother and just about every week she would say right after she'd heard a sermon, this is the one thing I'm going to do this week about what I just heard. Just sort of to herself while we were in the car. She'd say it out loud. That's accepting the word. That was a great example for me of what it means to do something about God's word. You don't just go and hear a sermon and rate whether it was a good or a bad, it was a 10 or that was a 5. You do something about it. You do something about God's word. That's how you accept it into your life. What does God want you to do based on what we're talking about, about growth this week? Maybe you need to be talking to God on a more consistent basis, praying. Maybe you need to gather other believers around yourself who are also wanting to grow. What does he want you to do? That's how you accept the word. And then Jesus says you produce a crop. Based on that you begin to see growth happening in your life. And Jesus says 30, 60, even 100 times. It's an exciting crop of what God wants to do. Sometimes we don't see it because it's about our character. It's about our direction of life. Sometimes we don't see it as clearly as you'd see the crop out in a grain field, but God's changing you. When you hear God's word and accept it, here's God's promise, 30, 60, 100-fold. He is doing things in your life when you make that choice that are above and beyond what you can imagine. I don't think we'll understand all that we've grown in this world based on God's word until we get to heaven and get to look back on what God did even in the midst of this difficult world. God is growing you. After telling this story about growth, hearing God's word, accepting it, producing a crop, Jesus talks some more about what it means to hear God's truth because that's the beginning point. And these often missed verses unlock some keys to understanding personal growth. In verses 21 and 22, here's what he said. He said to them, "Do you bring in a lamp and put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead don't you put it on a stand, for whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought into the open. " Now remember, Jesus has just talked about hearing God's truth. Sometimes we apply these verses to witnessing, and in other places Jesus applies this picture to witnessing. But in this case, he's talking about hearing. He's talking about hearing God's truth, and he's saying God means to bring his truth out into the open. What is hidden out into the open? He wants people to know his truth. He wants you and I to know his truth, and then he wants us to show his truth through our lives. One of the keys to hearing God's truth is sharing God's truth with other people. When you tell someone else, when you bring out into the light what God has done in your life, that is a powerful key to you experiencing God's truth. This whole idea that Christian growth, that spiritual growth is a private thing and no one else should know about it, that's nowhere in the words of Jesus. Jesus says, "Bring it out into the open. Put it on the lamp stand, not for the sake of pride, but for the sake of letting other people know what I have done in your life, because that's going to help you to grow, and that's going to encourage them to grow as well. " You give the credit to Jesus, but you let other people know what Jesus is doing with his truth in your life. And then Jesus goes on in verse 23 to say this simple thing. He said it many times, "If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. " He's talking about hearing God's truth here. That's the focus of these verses. Let your heart hear. Decide for your heart to hear. When your heart hears the truth, you will change. And then he goes on to say these very important things about how you and I hear the truth. Verses 24 and 25. "Consider carefully what you hear," he continued. "With the measure you use, it will be measured to you and even more. Whoever has will be given more. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. " Now again, these verses are often applied to giving, to giving a gift, a sacrificial gift like a tithe. And in another place, Jesus does use these verses to picture that. But here he's talking about God's truth. Consider carefully what you hear. "With the measure you use," he says, this is extremely important, "it will be measured to you. " When my mind measures what I'm hearing, measures God's truth as I hear it, that makes all the difference in the world. You and I have to think about how am I measuring the truth that I'm hearing from God. Here's what happens. Jesus speaks truth, but I hear it as a threat because I'm going to have to change some things in my life if I'm going to follow that truth. And so I reject the truth. The measure I used kept me from hearing the truth. Or Jesus speaks out of love, but I hear him speaking words of control because I don't want anybody to run my life. I'm selfish and probably you struggle with selfishness too. And so I don't hear Jesus' words of love because the measure I used was the wrong measure. Jesus gives a promise for the future, but I hear it as an indictment about something in my past. I used the wrong measure. Because I used the wrong measure in my mind by which I heard that truth in the wrong way, I reject it. I don't hear it. When God brings his truth to you, Satan's going to tempt you to use the wrong measure. He's going to tempt you to use a measure that keeps that truth at arm's length in your life, out of your life. And Jesus said, "Consider carefully what you hear. " When your first reaction is rejection of a truth, consider that carefully. Maybe it's that the truth is wrong. Maybe it's that the teacher is wrong. Very possible. But maybe it's also that I'm wrong. Maybe I've got something in me that's keeping me from hearing that truth. And then Jesus goes on with this promise, "Whoever has will be given more. " In verse 25, "Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. " Truth, he says, builds on truth in my life. Growth brings more growth in my life. Let's take a minute together to talk to him. Jesus Christ, you are the truth. You're the way. You're the truth. You're the life. And I pray that you would help me to hear your truth in my life. You might want to join me in this prayer. Jesus, I pray that you'd help me to use the right measure. Instead of measuring your truth by my selfishness or my fear or my pride, help me to use the measure of your love, your grace, your mercy. Jesus, what you've done for me shows me how much you love me. I pray that the measure of your love would help me to measure your truth and to hear you in fresh new ways, so that instead of holding your truth at a distance in my life, afraid of it, I'd invite your truth into my life because I know how deeply you love me. I ask this, Jesus, in your name, amen. Join us tomorrow. We'll be looking together at another story that Jesus told about your growth.