Spiritual Health: Your Heart, Part 1 – Birds Are Stealing Your Seeds!

This devotional is part 1 of 4 in a series based on The Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13, Mark 4, Luke 8), which compares various conditions of the human heart to a farmer’s field.

Jesus uses the Parable of the Sower to depict our hearts as a farmer’s field. Just as the Sower sowed good seed, so God uses a variety of ways to plant His seed – biblical truth – in the soil of our hearts. We receive His seed through studying the Bible, hearing a message, holding a conversation with a believer, reading other Christian books and resources, and even through circumstances of life.

Our responsibility is to prepare and cultivate the soil of our hearts so that as we receive God’s Word, it can grow in us and produce the best possible yield of spiritual fruit.

There are four kinds of soil in the field. Each represents a different condition and determines whether our heart is fickle (not adequately cultivated and prepared to receive God’s word), or fertile (ready to receive the seed and bring forth good fruit.)

The first type of soil is found in the garden path that cuts through the field.

The Path: A Vulnerable Place for Seeds

The path has been tread on year after year leaving the soil compacted. Parts of our hearts can be hard, like the path, leaving what falls there exposed.

When seeds of God’s Word fall on this hardened path, they are vulnerable. And along come those pesky birds to eat the seeds. Any opportunity for growth is snatched away immediately.

The Seed Snatchers

Birds represent the Enemy, working with our flesh and the world, to steal the seeds of God’s truth. They gobble up the truth before it has time to germinate. In place of the seeds, the birds leave thoughts of doubt, discouragement, despair, and distraction.

Get There Before the Birds

Farmers cultivate a field and then set up scarecrows as sentinels to guard it.

In the same way, we can create a safe environment for seeds to germinate when we recognize our mental battle against the Enemy. Jesus explained that as truth falls on our hearts’ “paths” it is snatched away almost instantly with no opportunity to sprout. But cultivated soil is more receptive to seeds planted there, giving God’s truth more traction when planted.

Part of that process includes warding off the “birds” – those thoughts from the Enemy that negate God’s truth and “steal” the good seed of His Word from our hearts. When you are aware of your own weaknesses, the world’s temptations that can push those triggers and the Enemy’s methods to steal away the truth, then you can ward off negative thoughts, replacing them with God’s truth.

Keep working to keep those pesky birds of doubt and darkness away. In other words, prevent the seeds of God’s Word from being stolen from your heart by cultivating your soil, giving the seed a fertile place to take root, and standing guard against any negative thoughts and temptations.