Spiritual growth, spiritual
maturity is a choice. You are as
close to God as you want to be. Don’t blame anybody else. It’s
not God’s fault. If you feel far from
God, guess who moved? God did not
move. You cannot blame your husband or
your wife or your parents or your kids or somebody who hurt you.
Jesus said this is what the
second kind of soil represents. Verse 6,
“Other seed fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. This seed began to grow but soon it withered
and died for lack of moisture.” What’s He talking about
here? Jesus is telling this story in
Israel. In Israel, most of the nation is
covered by a thin layer of topsoil on top of a solid bedrock of limestone. It’s not like the good soil goes real deep
there. When it talks in the Bible about
rocky soil it’s not talking about a bunch of rocks in the ground. It’s talking about a very thin layer of
topsoil on the bedrock of hard stone, usually limestone. As a result, when you plant things there they
will grow to a certain depth but if they
don’t have any roots they can’t dig down deep because the bedrock prevents them
from getting deep roots and when the desert winds come and the heat’s on and
the summertime comes, all those plants are going to wilt unless they are
continually watered and irrigated.

Jesus is saying a lot of
people are like this. In verse 13, ““Those on the rock are the ones who receive
the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a
while, but in the time of testing they fall away.”” Jesus is saying that
the shallow soil represents a superficial commitment. Hard soil represents a closed mind; shallow
soil represents a superficial commitment.

It’s not going to last
unless you do something about it. The
point is I’ve got to invest some time. I’ve got to let it sink in. You’ve noticed maybe in your own life, how easy it is to make a
commitment to grow spiritually and yet to find yourself when the tough times
come, when the heat’s on, find yourself letting go of that commitment
incredibly easy. Does that bother you
when that happens? How do you make sure
that the desire to grow, that commitment to grow is something that sticks?

You put down roots. How do you do that? How do you put down roots so this desire to
grow that most of us have becomes a reality in our lives? You put down roots by making and keeping
commitments. When you make a commitment
and then you keep that commitment, that inevitably puts down roots in your
life. In James 1:22, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so
deceive yourselves. Do what it says.”