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Stuck In Immaturity By Life's Worries
Brian Mashburn
March 4, 2018
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Life’s Worries vs. God
When I was boy, my mom would occasionally have me and my brothers join her outside in order to “do some weeding.” I remember it being slow, dirty, tedious work that I didn’t look forward to… until I began, that is.
Once I got over myself and set to the task, knees in the dirt, I got swept up into the drama taking place in the soil. There was what my mom had planted, and then there were… other things. Weeds, my mom called them.
Two things stand out to me as having been particularly satisfying. One was the unwrapping of the weeds that had menacingly spiraled around mom’s plants. It felt as if I was freeing them from a chokehold of death. Then, following these villains until they disappeared into the soil, I would yank out the root and victoriously toss it.
Jesus borrows on similar imagery in his famous parable of the sower (or soils). The seed is the word of God, planted in your heart, trying to grow and bloom. He says that there can reside in your heart some weeds (he calls them thorns) that choke what God intends to grow in you, saying that His things "do not mature".(Luke 8:14)
What are these thorny weeds stifling our maturity? He tells us directly. They are "life's worries, riches, and pleasures." Like weeds in my mom's planter, these three things permeate our hearts, and are surprisingly competitive even when taking on God Himself.
Listen, friends. You can want to take your next step towards spiritual maturity all you want. You can practice prayer, study, Sabbath, fellowship, service and love with zeal and faithfulness. But unless you get on your knees, get dirty, and carefully unwrap these weeds that grow in your heart with them, and pull them out by the root, Jesus says you do not mature. It is time to do some weeding.