An X-Ray of the Human Heart

The Gospel according to Saint Matthew, chapter 13. I want to speak about an X-ray of the human heart, an X-ray of the human heart, and specifically with regard to our reaction to the Word of God and to the Gospel.

Chapter 13, that well-known parable, the parable of the sower and the seed. It says: “That same day,” verse 1, “Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea. And great crowds gathered around Him, so He got into the boat and sat down, and all the people stood on the shore.”

“And He spoke many things to them in parables, saying: Behold, the sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some of the seed fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate it.” First scene, first scenario, let’s say. Second, it says: “Some fell on stony ground, where there was not much soil, and the seed sprang up quickly because the soil was not deep.” It says: “But when the sun came up, it was scorched, and because it had no root, it withered away”; that is the negative result.

The third says: “The seed that fell among thorns”—some fell among thorns, verse 7—“and the thorns grew up and choked it.” The fourth seed: “But some fell on good soil and yielded fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixty, and some thirty. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” May the Lord bless His Holy Word, amen.

Here we see the Lord Jesus speaking in parables, and it was possibly one of the first times He used that device for which He is so well known: using images and symbolic accounts to express certain profound spiritual truths, truths of the Gospel and of the spiritual life. And here we see that the Lord is speaking about what happens with the proclamation of the Gospel and what the hidden elements are that determine the success or failure of preaching or an evangelistic endeavor. And here we see that there are many factors, different factors that we sometimes fail to take into account, which at times are the very things that determine what happens.

It is mysterious; the truth is that it is mysterious. When a person comes forward and accepts Christ as Lord and Savior, gives his life—whatever we want to call it—behind the scenes, behind that moment, there are thousands, I would say, of factors, perhaps even millions of circumstances, not only in that person’s life, not only at that moment, but even in the generations that perhaps led to that instant. Secret intercessions, experiences the person has had, divine and demonic interventions; culture—a host of different elements that come into play in whether a person comes forward and receives the Lord or does not receive Him. It is something very mysterious.

And we cannot be aware of everything that happens, but here the Lord takes a moment to point out, as it were, a little of the many things that happen behind the curtain in the proclamation of the Gospel. Not only in that, but also, I would say, in the very life of every believer and the result—whether he bears much fruit, whether he bears no fruit, and to what extent he bears fruit, and so forth. All these things are portrayed here in a sort of capsule form.

And the Lord points out four destinies for the same seed. Notice how interesting it is that the seed does not change; the seed is the same. The seed has everything it needs to bear fruit. The problem is not the seed; it is not even a matter of different seeds with different internal makeups or anything of the sort. It is one single seed. What is the seed? The Gospel, the Word of God, the truths of the Gospel, the mysteries of the Gospel. That does not change; it is the same in every circumstance. Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Christ heals, Christ saves, Christ baptizes, Christ is coming soon; that does not change, and neither can we change the seed. It is not our place to change the seed’s content; that belongs to God. The sower does not reconfigure the seeds; the sower does not change the seeds’ genetic composition. The sower simply obeys the seed’s internal dynamic and natural constitution. What he does is operate within the established laws of nature. He can play around with them a little, but the laws are what they are.

When grafts are made and other species of flowers, other types of plants, or whatever else are created, the law of nature is not violated. What happens is that people discover what the laws are and learn to work creatively within those laws, but the laws are not violated; the seed is the seed. And so what is happening here is that one single seed, which is the Word of God, is cast by someone called the Sower. Who is the sower? You, me, the Church of Jesus Christ.

We are sowers. The sower simply obeys within a context that has been given to him. The sower wants life, he wants fruit, and so he does what he was commanded to do, what nature requires. To have fruit, you have to sow; to have fruit, you have to work the land; to have fruit, you have to be patient; to have fruit, you have to have vision; to have fruit, you have to persevere; to have fruit, you have to overcome storms and droughts and plagues and sow again if it did not bear fruit the first time. It is a long-term undertaking.

And that is what the Church of Christ does: it continually sows the Word, and I believe that we are sowers. And I believe that one of the things this passage reminds me of is that there are things beyond our control. We cannot control the human heart; we cannot control the culture into which we were born to preach the Gospel. We cannot control God’s timing in people’s hearts or the mysteries of how God interacts with people. Our part is to be obedient and sow.

As that beautiful hymn says: I will sow, I will sow, and I will leave the outcome to the Lord. The apostle Paul also said: I planted, Apollos watered, but God gives the growth. We have to be obedient. God has placed us on Earth to sow the Word, and we have to sow the Word, brother, wherever we are placed. We are perpetual, steadfast, tireless sowers. We have to sow in our workplaces.

Someone was telling me the other day about a person to whom she spoke about Jesus Christ. I do not remember who the person was; she was telling me this week, I think it was. She spoke to someone at VJ’s. She overheard a conversation—I believe it was Sister Fanny. She heard two people, two friends who ran into each other at VJ’s, that warehouse store over there where so many things are sold, and she was there in an area where they were serving all sorts of things, as they sometimes do in those places.

Then she hears this conversation between these two men, in which one says, “Wow, I haven’t seen you in so long!” And the other says, “Yes, I lost my wife recently, and I’m very sad. I’ve been very depressed, and I’m struggling with it.” Then the other man comforted him and greeted him; they talked for a little while, and then they said goodbye. And Fanny was there with her ears perked up—a sower. We are sowers, and we have to watch for opportunities; we have to pay attention to the circumstances.

I believe that you have to develop the awareness of a sower. If you do not see yourself as a person who has been called to preach the Word, many times certain situations will pass you by, and you will not hear the voice of God saying, “Hey, go and sow; this is the moment,” just as Philip was told, “Go near that chariot,” because there is a need. Everything is ready; the stage is set. Just light the fuse and the fire will ignite; just light the fuse and it will do what it has to do.

So Fanny was there, hesitating as she listened. When the man left—the companion left—the other man, the widower, remained there, and she says, “What should I do? Should I speak to him? He’s going to think I was eavesdropping. Perhaps it’s something very private and I shouldn’t speak to him. But you know what?” She said, “No—in the name of the Lord,” and summoned her courage. She said to the man, “Goodness, I couldn’t help overhearing what you were saying. I’m so sorry.” Then the man opened up. Instead of being closed off, surly, and sullen, no—he spoke to her, opened his heart, and told her, “Yes, I lost my wife recently. I feel terrible, and I’m sad.”

Notice that she was bold enough—with this English-speaking person, double jeopardy: he is English-speaking, she is Latina, and we are a mostly Latino church—yet she dared to tell him, “Look, at our church we have a bereavement group. It is a group of brothers and sisters, something that arose very spontaneously here in our congregation, made up of people who have experienced different kinds of loss in their lives. Among those losses, clearly and evidently, is the loss of loved ones. They meet periodically; the group has been going for several years now. Sister Marina started it some time ago, and it has continued meeting. People who have suffered different kinds of loss come together, have coffee, talk, pray, and so forth.”

And she told him, “Look, we have this group at our church. Don’t worry; we can translate for you—we’ll work something out.” The fact is that the man said, “Of course. I need to talk; I need to open up to someone because this is very heavy for me.” And the man came and accepted the Lord there at the meeting. And not only that, but he is attending the English service downstairs; he is coming regularly (applause).

So I believe in this idea, right, that we are sowers and what the sower does is sow. The Lord made it very specific: he is not even a farmer, a farmer in general; he is a sower—that is what he does. And the Word of the Lord is very clear: the modus vivendi, the reason for being of the Church and of the Christian, is to inseminate this world with the Word of Christ, with the values of the Kingdom of God. That is what we live for and what we exist for. The sole purpose of your life, brother, in light of eternity and of what God has destined for you, is to be useful to the Kingdom of God. There is nothing else; nothing else justifies your existence except that you be an instrument in the Lord’s hands and that you help other people come to know that Christ and enter into that sublime destiny of eternal communion with the Father through Jesus Christ.

And I believe that there is no greater calling than that, and there is no greater task than that, and we have to set everything else aside so that this may become a reality in our lives. May the Lord increasingly shape our congregation each day into a sowing church, a church that always sows the Gospel and that, as Paul says, has filled everything: I have nothing left, I have nowhere else to go because I have already leavened everything with the dough of the Kingdom of God, with the leaven of the Kingdom of God. And that is what we have to do.

There is a way forward; here there is a field, there is fertile ground. This is a fertile time for the proclamation of the Gospel, of the unchanged and unchangeable seed of the Gospel. And if we cast the seed, the seed will do what it has to do, I assure you. The Lord will take care of it; the problem is no longer ours. The matter then rests with the seed, the soil on which it falls, and the spiritual dynamic, which is beyond our control. Let us simply speak to people and allow the Lord to take care of the rest, okay? That is important in this image.

So I believe that another very important thing that emerges from this passage is that there is an element beyond our control—there are several here. One of them is the person who receives the Word and where that person is in his or her inner condition at that moment. When we preach the Gospel, people are at different stages and in different states of receptiveness. With some, all you have to do is cast the seed and, as if by magic, it sprouts immediately because they were absolutely fertile and prepared soil. With others, the seed bounces off as though it were a basketball because the person is not prepared, and we will see that in just a moment.

But there are things we cannot control, and neither can we fall into the error of wanting to tamper with the seed or wear ourselves out trying to make the seed sprout somehow and forcing things. As a pastor, I have learned that I cannot agonize too much over things that are sometimes beyond our control. In the life of a church, the Gospel is proclaimed and many people are converted and come forward over the course of a year. Many visitors come; people come and hear the Word, and some take offense, others respond lukewarmly, and others with great enthusiasm. Some stay for a while and then disappear permanently; others leave and come back. That is the dynamic of church life, brothers and sisters.

We do not have control. Yes, we must do everything possible, everything within our power, to retain people, to anchor them in the Word of God, and to convince them of the Gospel. But you know what? There comes a point when you cannot keep straining beyond measure to make that person accept Jesus Christ. And I believe that the Church sometimes, in these times—as I shared with the brothers and sisters in that address I gave—is in a culture that can at times be very skeptical of and resistant to the Word of the Lord. And the Church’s tendency may be: “Okay, then let’s change the seed; let’s tamper with the seed so that the soil will interact better with the seed.”

And so we begin to water down the Gospel; we begin to tailor the Gospel to people. We dye our hair like a woman who is not sure whether she is pretty or not; we change our hair, then the following week we are redheads, the next week we are blondes, the week after that we have black hair; we men grow a mustache, shave our beards, lose weight, go to the gym, change our wardrobe, trying to please people, and nothing works because very often there is something internal: the way you are on the inside will determine your beauty and your attractiveness; if you are confident in yourself, that will communicate something.

If you are insecure, forget it: the harder you try, the more insecure you become and the less attractive you are. And I think that happens with us too, doesn't it? I believe we have to be certain of whom we have believed, certain of the sublime Gospel we have, certain that the world needs what God has given us. And yes, we are going to do everything possible to love people and give it to them in ways they can receive, but there comes a time when, as the Lord Jesus Christ says, we are not going to cast our pearls before swine.

Once we have proclaimed the Word with love, gentleness, kindness, and transparency, then we step aside and let the Lord do the work. Nor can we pressure people beyond reason. Sometimes we make ourselves unbearable to our relatives and friends. We come to know Christ and start preaching to people, wanting to shove Christ down their throats whether they like it or not, at all hours, making them feel bad, and sometimes what they do is speak badly of us, and when they see us, they take off running because here we come.

I believe we have to preach the Gospel persistently, yes, as the Word says, in season and out of season, but not compulsively, right? We have to do it wisely and intelligently, knowing when to speak and when to remain silent. When to wait until that very person hangs himself with his own rope and then comes to us and says, “Listen, what was it you told me three years ago about the Gospel?” And I think we have to blend that subtle combination of being earnest while at the same time being confident and knowing that what we have is something sublime, and preach the Gospel with confidence, knowing that the product we have to offer is unparalleled.

And if you want to receive it, glory to God; I will rejoice with you, I will celebrate, and even if you do not want to receive it, I will knock a little harder, but I am not going to beg you to receive something that is for your blessing and is something sublime. The Lord Christ said, “Do not cast your pearls before swine.” I always see that combination in Jesus: earnest and loving; He came into the world, emptied Himself of His Glory, suffered the unspeakable, endured great things so that people might be saved, but I never see Him begging people or crying for them to accept Him. I see that dignity with which He always speaks, that restraint, that self-assurance. Earnest, but also confident in what He has.

I believe that if our Church cultivates that confidence, then we can do the work. Many people are going to come to our Church; I have stopped agonizing over the fact that hundreds of people come and not all of them stay. That is how the preaching of the Gospel is; it is mysterious. We sow, sow, sow, and leave the outcome to the Lord. Perhaps that person who came here on Sunday, then stayed here for six months, and afterward disappeared will come back at some point, or will go to another Church where they will bless them and continue building them up, or will go to another country and years later the seed will sprout.

I have seen how marvelous it is; it is an ecology over which we do not have complete control. Our part is simply to do God's work as well as we can and then let the different dynamics—the devil and the angels and God and circumstances and people's hearts—do their work there, have their chemistry, and then let what God wants to happen take place. That is how we have to be as a Church: we are not going to change the Word; we are going to distort the Gospel, nor are we going to be continually overexerting ourselves and compulsively criticizing ourselves because we do not have ten thousand people or because many people come. Let us do everything we can, but then leave the outcome to the Lord.

I see that here because the sower sows, and then other things intervene when he sows. So there are three, four kinds of different seeds; different hearts, different sensitivities, different psychologies that interact with the Word, with the message that this sower, this evangelist, is proclaiming.

It says, “The first seed fell beside the road, and the birds came and ate it.” And afterward the Lord explains it to the disciples, who are not accustomed to this mode of teaching, and says: What does that mean? Then later, in verse 18 of that same chapter, He tells them the meaning of that first seed that falls beside the road. It says, “When anyone hears the Word of the Kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the one that was sown beside the road.”

So that seed that falls beside the road symbolizes the person who hears the Gospel and does not understand it, and since he does not take hold of the Gospel, the devil then has the power to come—the evil one means the devil, Satan. Look how interesting: Christ knew very well that Satan was not a metaphor or a blind principle; he is a being who has a will, a purpose, and intelligence, who has a strategy, and whose desire is for people not to know Jesus Christ. That is the principal work of evil in the world: to distort, subvert, and prevent the Gospel from advancing and the Word of the Lord from finding a foothold in people's hearts so that the Word may save them.

Satan is committed to keeping nations, communities, individuals, and families from being healed and from hearing the Gospel, from retaining the Word. When we sow the Word, when the Church moves through the world, it must understand that we are at war for every soul and that there is an enemy who does not want souls to be saved and healed. We have to understand that we sow in a hostile world; the prince of this world, it says, “Blinded their understanding so that the light of the Gospel would not shine upon them.”

There are people who are lost because the devil has sworn to the death to prevent people from being saved. The devil does not want cultures to be saved or nations to be saved, and we preach within that context; that is why we have to put on the whole armor of God. Churches that want to be effective evangelistically and spiritually in this time have to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Churches skilled in handling the weapons of the Spirit, churches that understand the dynamics of spiritual warfare.

Intercessory churches, churches that pray, churches that cry out to the Lord. Churches made up of people who have themselves died and who know what it is to fight the devil hand to hand, and to fight the flesh and the world, so that they can then preach the Gospel from this perspective: we know the mysteries; we know that this is an all-out struggle against the forces of evil.

The Gospel is not preached on neutral terms. The Kingdom of Heaven, it says, “becomes forceful,” meaning that it advances by force. The Gospel does not advance neutrally like a ship on a placid sea; it advances against the wind of culture and the wind of man and the wind of the devil. And so we have to know that in order to live lives of prayer, to pray to the Lord and wrestle for souls so that he will let go.

Just yesterday, a sister was telling me about her struggle with her husband, who seems hardened to the Gospel; he does not even believe in God and delights in rubbing it in her face that he does not believe in God. He seems to be a good man, but that discourages her. I said, “Sister, the only thing you can do is cry out to God for his soul, pray, intercede so that God...” Do not fight with him, because that is clearly not going to work; hand him over to the Lord, hand him over to the Divine Hound, and God will pursue him and soften him there. That seed will have to be put in there like beans, for two or three days, so that the fire and water will soften it.

Sometimes we have to sic the Divine Hound on people so He will go after them, pursue them, and put them through a few scares to see if that works—and sometimes even that does not work. So the evil one comes and snatches away; we have to preach the Gospel in a militant and fierce way and snatch souls away from the devil, knowing that sometimes we have to pray and cry out, and what is more, when we are preaching, we have to be stronger in the Spirit because the devil is going to come after us too, to neutralize us, to destroy us.

But it is also interesting that there is a protagonist, a very powerful actor behind the scenes in the proclamation of the Gospel, namely Satan and the forces of hell, and we have to understand that in order to proclaim the Gospel effectively.

The other thing it says about this person is that he did not understand. It says, “He hears the Gospel and does not understand it,” and that is what makes this person easy prey for Satan's work. What does it mean not to understand the Gospel? For me, I think that not understanding it means—well, first, at a purely cognitive level, it means that the truth of the Gospel does not shine upon him. He does not understand the mysteries, the paradoxes, the contradictions, the subtlety of the Gospel, because it is something very subtle and cannot be understood with the mind; it cannot be understood with the brain or through culture or intellectual frameworks. You have to breathe it in, lower your guard, and let the Word penetrate your heart as a child would. It is not understood through the mind.

If you are wrestling with questions like: Ah, whom did Cain marry after he killed Abel, and how did he later have descendants if it was only him and his brother Abel? Or whether there are flying saucers, whether Martians on Jupiter will be saved, whether there are other planets and people on them, why there are hypocrites in the church, and why they did not visit you. Look, if you start down that road, you are never going to understand the Gospel; you are never going to receive it, because there will always be hypocritical people—perhaps you yourself will be one of them someday—and there will always be imperfections in the Church, and there will always be something we cannot explain, whether it is the theory of evolution or how the world was ultimately created in detail. There are a thousand possibilities, and we are not going to understand it.

We have to become like children. The Word says that unless we become like children, we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. So do not try to understand the Gospel, because you will never understand it, nor will you understand it through arguments, because none of them will satisfy you.

I think there is another aspect to not understanding the Gospel: it also means that a person does not understand the importance of what is being preached to him; he does not recognize how sublime, profound, beautiful, and important the Gospel is. People often do not understand that this concerns their eternal destiny: where they will spend eternity, whether they will go to heaven or hell. Whether they will be with God or with the other one.

And I think we have to make them understand that: this is your eternal destiny; this is going to determine where you will go. Human life and the time you spend in this world are an infinitesimally small dot compared with that endless expanse which is eternal life, and what you decide here regarding Jesus Christ will determine where you will be for ever and ever and ever, multiplied ad infinitum. So I think these people do not understand; when you speak to many people about the Gospel, they think you are simply telling them about one more fruit in the marketplace of religions or philosophies.

One more thing, however: the Gospel is infinitely important, and Christ is the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Him. It is the most important thing, the most important decision you can make, and I hope you can understand it, attach importance to it, and consider it. But many people are so preoccupied with so many different things and do not understand the importance of that decision. It should not be left until the last minute, because you do not know when your time will come, and you have to do it at that moment.

There is one more thing about this before continuing. We have spoken about God's action in the proclamation of the Gospel—sorry, the devil's action—but what about God's action? That is something we cannot control either, and I place it there almost as an extra little point, an asterisk. Do you know that God too is sometimes involved in the proclamation of the Gospel in a neutral or positive way? There are people for whom God has purposes in the Gospel, and for some mysterious reason God chooses them from the foundation of the world, and God is going to save them and deal with them, and He is going to mobilize all the forces of His Kingdom so that those people may come to know Him, receive Christ as Lord and Savior, and be saved.

As in Philip’s case there: God wanted to use him, and He mobilized all His Power so that Philip would have an encounter with Him. The Lord met the Samaritan woman there, made an appointment with her, spoke to her, dealt with her, and led her into His ways. But there are also people for whom God may have no plans—did you know that? That is one of the mysteries. There are people for whom—I do not know why—but I believe the Word makes it clear that there are people whom God often chooses as well, and there are people with whom God simply has not activated His Holy... Ultimately, He is sovereign in every case; no one comes to Christ unless the Lord draws them.

But it is also as though there are people with whom God has no dealings. I have known people—and perhaps what is also happening is that it is not yet their time, perhaps it will be later—but there are people who are dull when it comes to the Gospel. It is like dropping a coin into a deep well, and it is so deep that the coin keeps traveling and traveling, and it is so deep that you do not even hear it when it hits the bottom. There are people who are a black hole, and the Gospel simply seems to find no resonance in them. I believe that is partly because God may have no plans for those people.

But you know what? I think something else about this is that, within the mysteries of sovereignty and human freedom, we can pray for people so as to activate them and put them on God’s agenda, so to speak. I believe our prayers and our intercession can activate God’s grace on behalf of people and place them in the divine sights, and so we can intercede.

Sometimes I am driving and see someone along the way, and I feel as though God tells me, “Pray for that person.” The thing is, God needs things to be done for Him here on Earth so that He can then do them up there in heaven. And the mysteries of the Church’s authority are incredible. And sometimes God needs prayer to be offered so that, for example, workers will come into His harvest. Well, if God knows that workers are needed for the harvest, why do we have to pray for them to come? Why does He not simply activate them?

The thing is, God needs there to be action among His people, because God is a very orderly God. And so we must also pray for people, that the Lord may bring them to the knowledge of Him, that the iron helmet covering their understanding may be removed, that God may activate His Power and they may be healed and come to know the Lord and understand the importance of the Gospel.

In any case, it is important for us to understand that there are people who will not understand any of this, and then the enemy will have free rein to do harm. Another thing here: I believe this parable has two levels, as it were. One level concerns people—the unconverted—but another level also concerns us. I believe there are people whom God does not use more in the Christian life because they do not understand the importance of the Gospel; they do not consider it important, and so they do not do everything they must do to work in the Lord’s vineyard, to recognize how important their actions are, and to understand that serving the Lord and advancing the interests of the Kingdom of God is a matter of life and death.

They are not possessed by that sense of urgency regarding their position and identity, and so the enemy also snatches away their good intentions, the calls issued in the Church, the invitations to be a servant of the Lord and to work hard for the Gospel. Then the devil takes all of that away from them, and they leave and forget. How interesting that this seed is beside the road, where all the coming and going of life and the constant rushing about take place—but that is another matter.

Second, it says that some of the seed fell on rocky ground where there was not much soil, and it sprang up quickly. Ironically, there is a type of person who receives the Gospel and, because they are changeable and soulish people—how do you say it in English?—they are people who are in one place today and quickly change their mood, temperament, and convictions. Fickle—who said that, so we can give them a round of applause? Oh, fickle! Listen, sister, that is some good Colombian vocabulary: fickle, exactly.

And so those are people who change very quickly. One day they are Hare Krishna, and another day they are Buddhists or Adventists or whatever. For them, you know, anything is possible, and the Gospel—well, all right—they try it for a while, but then they leave it. They are not people who last, and they do not remain faithful to the commitments they make. So the Lord says here that this kind of person “has no root in himself, but endures only for a short time; for when affliction or persecution comes—the stones, the rocky places, are symbols of affliction and persecution.”

This seed sprouts quickly because the ground is shallow, and so it is in contact with the heat of that rock, the heat of the rock and of the stones around it. And because it does not have much room for roots to go, the process seems to speed up, and it sprouts immediately. That is why I like it when people take time to consider the Gospel. They are often solid people, and when they are converted, they do so firmly. Sometimes much of the work is because people have a purpose and want them to go deep, so that when they sprout, they will sprout with strength.

But paradoxically, the people here receive the Gospel and think, “Wow, the Gospel is a bed of roses; everything is going to go well for me. These people who invited me to church pinned a flower button on me when I arrived; they introduced me and asked me to stand; they called me when I did not go to church the following Sunday; and when I arrived, the Pastor came running over to give me a hug.” But the days pass, and the Pastor says to me, “Hello, sister, God bless you,” and keeps walking, or they do not call me. Or problems come.

Do you know that when many people come to Christ, that is when the devil turns against them and comes at them? And sometimes they have difficulties, problems, and struggles. I have spoken many times with brothers and sisters like that, and I say, “Wow, goodness, it seems things went worse for you after coming to know Christ than before.” But I admire their tenacity; I admire the fact that they hold on, that they refuse to give in, and that they continue loving God. I tell them, “Brother, remain steadfast there until the storm passes. Put on the whole armor of God. Do not disown your God, and stand firm, because one day the Lord will cause that storm to depart, and a time of refreshing and blessing will come into your life. But do not become discouraged.” Because that is what the devil wants: for you to turn your back on Him and run away.

You know, sometimes we enter the Kingdom of God through afflictions, difficulties, and struggles. The Gospel is not easy. You cannot tell people, “Come to Christ and everything will go well for you. You will have no problems; you will not get sick; your wife will love you more; your children will be paragons of virtue.” Is it a mystery? There is no struggle. What we gain is this: God does not change the world; He changes us and gives us power and weapons to overcome, persevere, and keep moving forward. But the Gospel is difficult and is accompanied by many tribulations. And sometimes many trials will come to strengthen us.

Because our scale of values is no longer how much money I have, how many clothes I have in the closet, or how much fine food I can eat. Rather, God’s values now involve producing a man or a woman who reflects the character of Christ, and sometimes that will require arduous training—the training of the soldier, of the athlete. Character. Character becomes more important than food or money, and so God’s intention will be to make a man or a woman who is like Christ. And that will cause trials and struggles to come in order to temper you and train you. The enemy will also seek to destroy you, and you must know that this is not what legitimizes the Gospel or establishes its truthfulness; God can use all things, as the apostle Paul says, for good in your life.

Whether trials or difficulties, He will use them to bless you. But do not turn away from the Gospel simply because you are going through a difficult time. Persevere; stand firm. This applies both to newcomers who do not yet know and also to us. Let us not be short-lived in our service, in the Church and in our service to the Lord, in our steadfastness, and in the things to which we commit ourselves. Let us be people whose yes is yes and whose no is no. If you put your hands to the plow, keep them there. If you committed yourself to a ministry, do not simply leave because people did not show up on the day you scheduled a meeting.

Keep moving forward; keep persevering in what God gave you. Be faithful to what God called you to do, and do not become discouraged simply because things go badly for you one day or another. Right? If God called you, keep moving forward. And if God called you, do not quit simply because things go badly for you. Continue, because ultimately God will give you the victory.

The third seed is the seed that fell among thorns. It says, “The thorns grew up and choked it.” Then the Lord explains what that seed is. He says, “The one sown among thorns is the one who hears the Word, but the cares of this age and the deceitfulness of riches choke the Word, and it becomes unfruitful; it bears no fruit.” So who is that person? It is the person who hears the Gospel, but there are many things competing with that person’s capacity to accept what is being said.

That person loves the world more than God. They love the story in which they are embedded more than the eternity to which God calls them. They love the gratification and pleasure of a moment more than the inconceivable pleasure of eternal life with Christ, which they cannot see right now or even imagine. A coarse, superficial, and vain person lives in vanity of vanities. And what matters to that person is the latest dress featured in Cosmopolitan, or the latest movie, or the latest song released by one of these singers, or the latest technological toy to come out, the latest game. They are so immersed in the world, so absorbed in the things of the world. It is the businessman who knows he is doing things he should not be doing and that, if he enters into the Gospel, he will have to give those things up, but he is willing to sell his soul to the devil rather than give up the things he knows are keeping him from entering into the Gospel.

It is the person who knows they are in an improper relationship, or who does something they know does not please God, but loves it far more than the salvation of their soul. Nowadays there are so many people who create entire apologetic systems to explain and justify an addictive practice in which they are involved. They dress it up and adorn it with an entire philosophy, a support system, a culture, and everything else. Then they say, “That is what I am; that is how I am.” You can be many different things, because they do not have the courage to put that aside and sell everything in order to inherit the Kingdom of God.

Brother, no matter what it is that you love, what it is that you love, or what it is that ensnares you, sell everything and surrender everything. Lose an eye, a hand, whatever it may be, in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Do not love the world or anything in this world more than God’s calling upon your life. Sacrifice whatever is necessary to enter the Kingdom of God. Put aside everything you must put aside; sell it all. That image of selling it all, of leaving everything behind: “Whoever does not leave father and mother, brother or sister, son or daughter for My sake is not worthy to be My disciple,” says the Lord.

That is why the Gospel is more difficult: because you must establish a scale of values very different from the world’s. You must examine all the little glass marbles in your hands that fascinate you so much and say, “What do I do? Do I keep them, or do I accept the bread of life, which is Christ Jesus, and leave everything behind for the incomparable value of knowing Christ as Lord and Savior?” And I believe that we, at the level of believers, must do the same. Brother, there is nothing more valuable in this world than being an agent for the advancement of the Kingdom of God on Earth.

What are you doing to advance the Kingdom of God? What is your calling? Where is that direct dealing with God between you and Him? What has God called you to do? And are you putting everything else aside for the incomparable delight of being used by God and being an instrument in the Lord’s hands? What is holding you back?

Thank God that there is a fourth seed, which we do not have to dwell on at length. I hope that all of us here, or the vast majority, are examples of that fourth seed. It is the seed that falls on good soil. I hope that all of us are good seed. These are the people who understood the importance of the Gospel. They are the people who did not allow the affliction, trials, or vicissitudes of ordinary life in this world full of affliction to turn them away from the Gospel. And they are the people who love God more than the appetites, pleasures, and vanities of this world, and more than the treacherous offers of this world, and who have lost everything in order to gain Christ.

And I hope that everyone here is an example of that fourth kind of ground: fertile soil that bears fruit. Notice that it is not soil that merely receives the seed, a plant sprouts, and that is all. They bear fruit thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold. If you have truly received Christ as Lord and Savior, God expects you to bear fruit in some form, in some way—to be used for the glory of the Lord and the advancement of the Gospel.

Let us bow our heads for a moment, brothers and sisters, and ask ourselves: Where am I on that scale of values? What kind of soil am I? To what extent am I bearing fruit in my life? Have I received the Word for the first time?

Many people have been sowing; the Pastor preaches in the sermon on Sundays. My friend who brought me to church has told me to accept Christ, to be reconciled to Him, to open my heart so that He may enter my life, and I have not done it yet, and I want to be good soil. I want to be open to the Word; I want to understand the importance of the Gospel. Ask the Lord to open your heart; ask the Lord to open your mind right now. Ask the Lord to show you its importance.

The greatest decision you can make in your life is to accept Christ as your Lord and Savior. Nothing will have a greater impact on your life here, where you are only passing through—not only on your eternal life, I would say, but also on the quality of life you have here on Earth. Whether you are going to live a superficial and empty life or a sublime and profound life, engaging with the most beautiful things you can imagine: the Word of God, the mysteries of the Gospel. That is what God wants for you, and it all begins when you become good soil that receives the Word, and that Word falls deep into your heart and takes root for eternal life.

If there is anyone here who has not yet taken that step of inviting Jesus into their heart, I want to invite you to do so at this moment. Is there anyone who wants to accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, who has not done so before and wants to take a step of faith? And to say: Lord, I am good soil; I receive You. Let Your seed enter deep into my life. I give You my seed; I give You my heart. Is there anyone? Raise your hand; we want to pray for you, brother or sister, wherever you may be. Is there anyone who has not done it yet? If you have come at some point but have not yet given your life to the Lord Jesus Christ, we want to pray for you. Raise your hand.

There are two people over there, two brothers raising their hands. Is there anyone else? We want to pray for you, brothers; do not miss the opportunity to do so. Would one of the brothers, one of the ushers, accompany that sister? Come this way; come for just a moment. We want to pray for you. Or stand up, then—that is fine, right there where you are. Do not worry; we understand very well. Stand up there, and we will simply pray for you. Do not worry; however you prefer is fine. The important thing is that there in your heart there is an openness to the Lord.

Never let whether or not you come forward keep you from speaking to the Lord. No, do not worry; God knows how that is dealt with in your heart. But there does have to be some kind of inner movement for that chemistry to take place there, for us to confess the Lord actively. Is there anyone else? We will keep this moment open just a little longer for anyone else who needs prayer, so that we may place you in the arms of the Lord Jesus Christ and you may then continue on your way fully assured, fully certain, that the seed of the Gospel is planted in your heart.

And from there no one will be able to snatch it away, you know? If you enter into Christ and remain there and say to Him, “Lord, I entrust myself to Your Grace,” the devil will never be able to snatch the seed from your heart, you know? Trust that God will be with you at all times, and then begin to walk that Christian life, confident that the Lord carries the burden. Your part is to keep the seed there in its place, to tend it, to nourish it with the Word of God and prayer, and the Lord will see to it that you reach your destination.

So let us pray for these brothers and sisters, these two brothers over there who are standing and this brother here in front as well. Extend your hands toward them, and let us bless them. Lord, thank You because these lives accept You. I encourage you to say to Christ there: “Enter my heart and take control of my life; I surrender myself to You.” Tell Him in your own words, inwardly there; speak with the Lord and open your heart and mind so that He may do the work in you.

And say to Him: “Lord, enter my life; take control of it. I receive You as my Christ, the One sent by God, the Lord’s Anointed One, the One whom You, God, have sent to be my mediator and my way of access to the Father. And I receive Him as such, and I accept Him as such, and I believe it to be so, and I confess it to be so. I believe that Christ is my Savior, the One who forgives my sins, the One who heals all my wounds, and the One who pays all my debts. And today I become a servant of Christ, a servant of Jesus; I will follow Him until death, and I will be faithful to His Word.”

Thank You for entering my life, Lord Jesus. I receive You and declare myself Your servant, Your bondservant, Your possession, belonging to the Kingdom of God; and I renounce every work of Satan and of the flesh, and I embrace the values of the Kingdom of God and of eternity. Thank You, Father.

Lord, I bless Your children and declare Your Presence in their lives. Seal them with Your Spirit, and thank You, Father, for the mystery of salvation. In the Name of Jesus. And the people of God say: amen. God bless you, my brothers and sisters. God bless you, brother—brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters, God bless you here.