I’ll admit. Sometimes when I see someone reject the Word of God, I doubt and wonder “am I the fool, or are they?” No one wants to be arrogant, and I certainly do not.

Reading Luke 8 put things into perspective for me.

Large crowds are following Jesus. Even women are supporting him with their coin. Consider the status of women during Biblical times and that last sentence carries weight.

Jesus tells the Parable of the Four Soils. Basically, 75% of the people that hear him don’t have real faith. Yikes!

And here’s the point of the parable: God’s Word doesn’t uniformly evoke faith. Not because the Word is defective, but because humans are free to respond how they choose.

So the problem isn’t with God’s Word, it’s with us. The soil is us.

The seed that fell on the rock was quite interesting to me. In many parts of the Holy Land, as in San Antonio, you’ll find layers of rock covered by a thin layer of soil. The seed gets planted, and the chute takes off, but the roots have nowhere to go. Once the sun comes, the plant fries and withers away.

The interesting application is this: healthy plants must have the sun to grow. In the parable, the sun represents heat, or testing. If you have a healthy foundation and root system, trying times will cause you to grow deeper with God. But if you have no foundation and haven’t done the consistent work of growing deeper, the heat of life will show the shallow depth of your “faith”.

And in the end, there is no “faith” because you didn’t allow the seed to go anywhere.

The beauty of faith is that you can choose to cultivate and plow your own heart. Take ownership of your faith and consistently plow.