No lesson for 7/13/25

My small group has camp meeting this week so no class lesson will be out.

"sorry board game (i)" by myguitarzz is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

I’m sort of winging it this morning. We are in the third quarter of material from this year’s Advent study using the parable of the Sower and the seeds He spreads. The seeds are the Word of God in our lives. The Sower is the Holy Spirit. We are the ground those seeds fall upon. I’m stealing the thunder of the last quarter for this year when I post this, but I thought it would be good to drop this little nugget this morning to sort of “till up the soil” so to speak.

²²“And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.
²³“And the one on whom seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it; who indeed bears fruit and brings forth, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty.”
Matthew 13:22–23 (NASB95)

The knee-jerk reaction to verse 23 is that we don’t always understand the word, so that either absolves us from having to act on it or excuses why we didn’t. That’s, of course, not true. No one understands all of the Bible. We might accept it, but no one understands it all and if they tell you they do, they’re making it up as they go along.

The point of this, this morning, is that we don’t want to be in the verse 22 category and want to be in the verse 23 category. Verse 22 is where we allow the things we decide are important in Life to be more important in our lives than the things God wants to be important in our lives.

As I typed that last paragraph, I might have had a connection with a question I’ve been asking God for guidance on about my writing. There are no coincidences. What you look for, you will find. If you found this little note this morning useful, and you read all the way to the end, I’d love for you to leave a comment on Substack telling me so. Comments and interaction here on Substack are the #1 way you can support what I do here. An active, thriving community of people interacting in the comments is the biggest draw for other people to a platform like this. If you want to support what I do writing, consider leaving comments when something I’ve written strikes a cord with you.

Thanks for being here. Thanks for subscribing and supporting my time at the computer banging away at the keyboard. Your comments and participation really do mean a lot to me. Thank you. God bless and Godspeed.

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