What Thorns Are in Your Life?

Now these are the ones sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful. Mark 4:18-19

Jesus characterizes three types of thorns in this parable explanation. The first thorn is—

The Cares of This World Thorn. When we become too occupied with the things of the world, instead of being occupied with the things of God, God is gradually crowded out of our thoughts. Our spiritual life gradually deteriorates. We can become so engrossed in just trying to live that there is no time for God. However, if we put first God at the center, no matter what arises, what events the day may bring, what fix we find ourselves in—we can keep God first.

Keep God at the center of all that you are doing, allow everything to revolve around him, and the cares of this world will not choke God out of your life.

The Delight in Riches Thorn. When our preoccupation with money and with the physical things of life separate us, distract us, from our spiritual life it is acting as a thorn that will choke God out of our lives. For every verse in the Bible that tells us the benefits of wealth, 10 tell us the danger of wealth. Money has a way of binding us to what is physical and temporal and blinding us to what is spiritual and eternal. It is one thing to have money, another for money to have you.

The Desire for Other Things Thorn. Everyone should have a reasonable amount of recreation, or pleasure, to live a balanced life. The problem lies in pleasures getting more of our attention and interest than is good for us. As our interests shift more in the direction of pleasures, we seem to need increasingly more pleasures, and we gradually lose interest in the things of God. This thought is summarized in the first epistle of John 2:15-17. If we are going to activate God’s power in our lives, we must not allow ourselves to become consumed with the pleasures of life. We must enjoy living without allowing the quest for pleasure and fun to compromise our spiritual integrity, to separate us from the God. He must be our first love.

Prayer: Lord, we pray that the Word of God may be sown in each of us, sown in good soil. We pray that the day-to-day cares, envy for what others possess, greed, and the desires for self-satisfaction that are trying to choke the Word from us will not make us unfruitful and unproductive.