Father help us to bear fruit.
Unlike most of Jesus parables, the parable of the Sower has an explanation given to the disciples (and us). It was one of many parables that the disciples did not understand, and without Jesus' explanation we may not understand it yet.
Basically it illustrates the problems that our faith can have. We'll have a quick look at each.
The first problem is probably the hardest to understand. If we remember what we looked at about temptations coming from within then we can start to understand it. (This is not about temptations, but it is about human nature). Simply put, human nature can take us away from God. We can look to what the world calls 'science' and say there is no God, or we can look to God and everything else becomes irrelevant. The main thing to note is in verse 19, that anyone “understandeth it not”. Remember that we looked at the wisdom of the world verses God's wisdom. God has chosen us to “understand”. We are in a much more privileged position than those who may understand science, but don't understand God.
The second problem was that their faith “had no root”. They believed at first, but it was shallow or superficial. It's easy to say you are a Christian, but harder to show it in our lives. And if some sort of problem arises then decisions have to be made. Just how important is God to us?
I think the third problem is the hardest one, and probably the one that applies most to me. That is that the world gets in between us and God. I've got too many things to do at the moment. There's the house (and selling the other house), the contract IT development work I'm doing, looking for new clients, promotional work and sorting out my web site, not to mention the family, school, etc. All these take up time and commitment. And on top of that, there's things going wrong! With all these, where do we put God? Some things in life need prioritizing, but we need to make sure that God is always at the top. The more we try to do, the more problems we encounter (as each activity can create problems of their own). The Bible says to be content, and don't spend your efforts on being rich, but God will provide exactly what we need. Sometimes what we need is a bit of 'weed killer' so our faith is not choked.
The final scenario is the perfect one. That we hear and understand. If we do understand that God comes first, then we will bear fruit. Because God will do it for us.
Which of the four areas that the seed landed in do you think applies most to you?
How can we make sure we are 'bearing fruit'?
And what does it mean by 'bearing fruit'?