Don't Let the Cares of This World Choke The Word

 "The cares of this world choke the word." This statement caught my eye when I read it in the devotional My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers yesterday.  The sentence just hit me in a very sensitive area of my life.  The funny thing is that I didn't even recognize the phrase.  I re-read it this morning and the words: "said Jesus" slapped me on the face.  My brain had totally skipped over that part of the statement.  I simply did not remember seeing that...I just thought it was a very inspired thing the author had said, and completely missed the fact that those were the words of Jesus...I had missed the Word Himself.

As it happens, my mind is preoccupied with a million things at this time...all of which are "cares of this world." My constant worry about all these things had just "choked the Word."

Jesus said this in Mark chapter 4, verse 19 when He was explaining the parable of the Sower to His disciples.  He explains how many hear the Word, but their lives are plagued by worry, like a thorny field where the Word is "choked" by those worries and cares, 

And these are they which are sown among thorns; such as hear the word, and the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful. (Mark 4: 18-19 KJV)

I'm afraid I have allowed too many thorns to cover my soil lately.  And for what?  None of it matters in the end.  What happens to me, what happens at work, what happens to my loved ones, what happens in society, in the government, in the world is not what matters.  The important thing is how I react to the situations that surround me.  Do I react in faith, trust and surrender, breaking the levee of my soul to let the peace that passes all understanding flood my heart and mind? or do I take all those worries and cares upon myself, becoming my own god, forgetting the Word...forgetting that when I say: Jesus is the Lord of my Life, it means, He is in charge of it all, not me.  He is in control and complete command of what happens to me.  And most importantly, He walks with me through it, through all the fires and storms, He is here.  And He delivers me, one way or another, according to His plans and designs for my journey in this world into the next.  All I have to do is faithfully seek Him, trust Him and surrender to Him.

The cares of the world are many, indeed...some more intense than others.  But the Holy Spirit, God with us and in us is way more intense.  He is stronger than any worry.  Like Chambers wraps it up: "be rightly related to God, find your joy there, and out of you will flow rivers of living water."  That's the only pursuit that truly matters.  That's the only care worth the worry.

May the Holy Spirit guide us and make our soil new, with no thorns or rocks or birds, but a good soil so the Word can blossom and produce fruit, rather than be choked or ignored.  In the Precious Name of Jesus, The Word, The Lord.  Amen!