An overcrowded heart stifles strong faith
When Connie and I first moved into our church parsonage in Topeka, Kansas years ago the back yard was a mess. It was overgrown with weeds, shrubs and even small trees. We wanted a garden so we went to work. I remember how surprised I was when under a thorny tangle of vines I found a scrawny rose bush with one little bud. I remembered something Jesus said.
In Luke 8:14 he said, The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature.
I think what sometimes happens is that I do believe deeply and that faith shapes the big decisions daily but I can easily let other concerns and issues grow so thick in my mind that the vitality of faith is to some degree choked out by the many concerns of life and, in my case, even of ministry.
In Luke 21:34 Jesus said, “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap.
Here he’s talking about the last days but what I want to stress is the way the heart can be weighed down. The word “weighed down” suggests a heavy sleepiness. Not just sadness but weariness and dullness of thought. Notice what brings this dullness of heart about: dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life. Okay drunkenness we understand. What about dissipation? Dissipation means a careless and wasteful life. Drunkenness is a kind of dissipation but there are other ways to dissipate or waste your life. You can do this just by giving too much time and attention to foolish things in a kind of wasteful self-indulgence. It can take many forms; hobbies, TV, shopping… Paul even warns about worthless theological arguments. 2 Timothy 2:23 says, Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. Titus 3:9 says, But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and useless.
If we waste our life’s energies on unimportant things we may find the vitality of our faith slipping away, or shrinking and growing flabby like an unused muscle. Think about it, could it be that what seems a crisis of faith in someone is really just the atrophy of faith due to a wasteful indulgence of modern life without the essential discipline of weeding and cultivating the garden. The last issue Jesus mentioned in Luke was “the anxieties of life”, an overanxious heart so concerned with this present earthly life that there is little room for deep faith to grow. Sometimes when we feel our faith is weak the problem might not be the vitality of our faith so much as the crowding of our faith. Faith can’t thrive if it is just be one plant in a garden overgrown with weedy worthless thoughts and emotions. Faith in Christ has to be guarded, cultivated, nurtured and encouraged. Everything that gets in the way of that faith has to be ruthlessly cut away, rooted up and thrown out. Psalm 139:23-24: says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Larry is the senior pastor at 
This was good to read today! It reminded me of something I read a few years ago.
Dallas Willard noted an experiment done with mice a few years ago. A researcher found that when amphetamines are given to a mouse in solitude, it takes a high dosage to kill it. Give it to a group of mice, and they start hopping around and hyping each other up so much that a fraction of the dosage will be lethal so great is the effect of “the world” on mice. In fact, a mouse given no amphetamines at all, placed in a group on the drug, will get so hyper that in 10 minutes or so it will be dead. “In groups,” Willard noted, “they go off like popcorn.”
You’d think only mice would be so foolish as to hang out with other mice that are so hopped up, so frantically pursuing mindless activity for no discernible purpose that they put their own lives at risk. But this is not the case; we, you and I susceptible to the same kind of behavior. We live in a world that has confused action and activity with progress, it tells us to measure our worth by our work!
I pray that God reminds us of this.
The busyness of all of the things we spend our time with (family, work, ministries, volunteering, etc.) cause us to slack when it comes to spending time with God. Even though these are all good things to spend time in, there has to be a balance. Part of that balance requires that time is made to focus on God and his word. One way (in addition to God and his word) I find that I am able to “pull weeds” and be nurtured, encouraged and often be put back on the right track is by spending time with Christian friends who will be honest and help me by holding me accountable. God did us such a great favor by giving us people who help us to see him more clearly! The weeds in our lives could represent any number of activities or people, and we have to take the steps necessary to remove those weeds. We should find our value in Christ, not how many things we are involved in or how others see us. It takes faith and discipline to stop the “doing” and start taking the time to really build our relationship with Christ, especially when we are surrounded by the “weeds” of life which constantly are trying to win over our time.
I have a good friend who works in the business world out West. Some time ago he told me about a trend that was developing in the business world. Basically, he said, “people are busier than ever in the office, but are becoming less productive as they get busier”. He stated that there is a growing number of people “keeping busy” in remedial and often meaningless taks.
For example, he talked of people in his sales division spending more time checking email and web surfing than they actually were trying to sell their product. Sure, they wer reading work related stuff and checking work related email, but not accomplishing their ultimate goal…to make sales.
I learned a valuable lesson through our conversation. Life will always be busy. Especially in North America, however to remain unproductively busy is not the answer. How much more so if we truly believe all of our resources…including time have been given to us by God.
One of the many costs of discipleship is to allow Jesus to sift our hearts and lives on a daily basis. This certainly includes what we are doing with our time and various other resources.
I agree with what you’re saying.
There’s tons of stuff we elect to do, and then claim we’re too “busy” …and it does effect our relationship with God. But this same dynamic does effect on how we interact with each other,too…we’re too busy in a world of our own making to comply with the “one anothers” we’re commanded to do.
I don’t want to act like everyone else is getting this wrong. I think it’s me, too.
We take on hobbies, or buy boats or real estate, or watch TV, and then we raise the objection when God calls us to do something: “how can I, when I have so much going on?”.
We use the blessings He gives us….young healthy kids in sports, or a good job, or a big house, or our talents and abilities…and use these same blessings as excuses for not actually following Him. “Following Him” doesn’t just mean our private, personal relationship with God…it’s doing the stuff Jesus did: taking the time to actually interact and care and love peope. We’re too busy with our own “make-work world” to actually love one another.
Like I said, this is a self-indictment, and something I am thinking about a lot lately.
I am sure I stole this from somewhere.
The first chapter of the gospel of Mark tells the story of a long day in which Jesus is busy into the night teaching and healing the sick. Then Mark 1:35 says that the next day;
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.
I think I can safely say that the average work week consists of over forty hours a week. A recent survey estimated that the average American works just under fifty hours per week. Forty eight hours to be precise. If there are 168 hours in a week and I take away forty eight hours we are left with 120 hours. If you sleep eight hours a night you sleep fifty six hours a week. We are down to sixty four hours of time that’s not spent on work or on sleep.
None of this factors in the fact that many people are married, have children, or have extra responsibilities. So let’s take away thirty four of those hours; we are still left with thirty hours on our hands. That means for over three hours a day we could read, study, and/pray in solitude and sileance before God.
I read in Dr. Archie Parrish’s book about Martin Luther,”A Simle Way To Pray”, that Luther prayed about 4 hrs. a day. When someone asked how he could devote this much time to prayer, he said he found it necessary in order to accomplish all that he felt he should do for that day.
Shalom! This title is well suited to the dynamics at work in the lives of many who find themselves within this category. The Christian life begins with faith in Christ and continues with faith in Christ. Having once embraced the truth/word/seed in the heart/soil a believer must persevere in faith if one is to overcome this world and not be overcome by this world; Thus, actually proving oneself to be good soil. “They are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience” (Luke 8:15). So, faith that holds on to the truth in the heart is the good soil which continues to believe and matures to bear fruit. Yet, except for the “good soil” it seems to me that the other types of soil prove themselves to be failures in faith.
But my thoughts land on the question of how can a person, inspite of finding themselves living as/like the thorny soil, victoriously overcome all that is choking their faith “as they go on their way”. I believe the answer lay in other scriptures and would like to make reference to the words of Christ in Matthew 6:19-34. Here he lays out some of the ground work, no pun intended, which clarifies for me some of the essential facts about true faith and the thorny soil in Luke 8:14. For example, he said “for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”, and that “The eye is the lamp of the body”, and that ““no one can serve two masters. All of which I think directly confront the issue at hand. Then the most remarkable verses about being anxious are given and summed up with the statements, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself; sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
Lastly; For additional questions to consider, one might want to include the relationsip of the topic and the ongoing spiritual warfare/conflict involving the world, the flesh, and the devil etc. mentioned in the book of 1st John and elsewhere. “Faith is the victory”
VOICE IT!
Psalm 119:9-10 “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word. With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments”
Psalm 119:29 “Remove from me the way of lying, and grant me thy law graciously”
Proverbs 25:28 “Whoever has no rule over his own spirit Is like a city broken down, without walls”
We must cling with our whole hearts to the Word – the living Word that is the only thing on this earth that brings cleansing.
The distractions of the world will try pulling you in every direction.
I had a chance to visit my parents this past weekend – who live some distance away. I realized how bittersweet it is just to be in their presence, to spend time with them, and to listen to their encouragement. I realized as I was driving back to my own home how much more our heavenly Father desires to be not only the Savior of our souls, but our God! I have learned the hard way in my short few years as a child of God how beaten off the trail, how crowded my heart becomes, and how stressed life can be when my heart is not completely yielded under the Authority of my Father. So please consider that despite how much you’ve let your guard down – you are the Lord’s! Today he wants all of you. Today he will restore you. Today he will cleanse you. Today he will remove and lift off the thorns that are holding you down.