S7E17 - Luke 8:4-18 - The Parable of the Sower Explained for Real Life

A huge crowd can be the perfect place to hide. Luke 8 shows Jesus at peak visibility, with people traveling from town to town to see miracles, hear teaching, and satisfy curiosity, yet He tells a story that quietly exposes everyone listening. We felt the weight of that: being near Jesus isn’t the same as being receptive to Jesus.

We walk through the Parable of the Sower verse by verse and name the four soils as real heart conditions: the hardened heart where the Word of God gets snatched away, the shallow faith that withers under testing, the thorny soil where distraction and competing priorities choke spiritual growth, and the good soil that holds fast and bears fruit with patience. Along the way, we connect Jesus’ repeated warning about “having ears to hear” to spiritual momentum and spiritual drift, and we talk honestly about why modern life often isn’t a time problem so much as a priority problem.

We also lean into practical next steps for Christian discipleship: daily Bible study and prayer that reshape our desires, questions that diagnose what’s competing with God in our lives, and the power of Christian community through a connect group where we can share what we’re learning and strengthen each other. If you’re craving deeper roots and real fruit, press play, then subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review. What “soil” do you think most people are living in right now?

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Transcript

Welcome And Where We Are In Luke

SPEAKER_01 0:12

What's up, Life House family? Welcome back to the Life Talk Podcast. And we are always excited to be bringing a new episode to you. And thank you so much for joining us each and every week. And we are wrapping up the month of April. Last episode here in April. The the year is flying by and working our way through the book of Luke, which has been a total joy. And last week Jonathan led us through uh really forgiveness and the importance of women in the Bible and the life of Christ. And so hopefully you guys got a lot out of that episode. But today I'm joined with man, blast from the January past. I have our elder Mitch Poe with us today. Mitch, what's going on?

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Glad to be back.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

I had to drag you back out of a sabbatical here to rejoin us.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Pull me out of retirement.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

That's right. How many times are you going to retire now? You retire and retire, retire, and retire. So but it's good to have you. Appreciate you being here. And Jeremy Ulrich is here, our QAQC guy. He's like our parliamentarian. He's got to keep us on track, make sure we don't get off course.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Jeremy, what's going on today? What's happening? Happy to keep you in line.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Hey, it takes a village, that is for sure. That's right. But I do have some bad news for our listeners, man. Rico is breaking his streak. It's like Cal Ripkin going on the IR or something. So if you see Rico, give him a hard time for not being on the podcast. Shout out to Rico. That's right. But it has been uh we give him a hard time, but we have appreciated his input. But just a great crew. We always enjoy talking through God's word. And so today we are moving forward in chapter eight. And really cool. We're going to talk about the parable of the sower and the significance of parables, really the first one we run across here in Luke. And so Mitch is going to take us on a deep dive into these verses.

SPEAKER_00 2:07

All right. Well, I'm not sure how deep it'll be, but I'll give at least an overview of the case.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Hey, it's the we need deep soil here, right? That's right.

Why Jesus Starts Teaching In Parables

SPEAKER_00 2:14

We will talk about some soil for sure. But let me back up for a second. I always like to, when we're looking at scripture, I always like to kind of zoom out and get the context and the broader context of really what the writer is doing and maybe even what Jesus' strategy is in presenting what he what he presents when he presents it is always interesting to me. So I I took I took a quick look back at really what has happened in the Gospel of Luke up to this point. And I don't know if I mean back to the January podcast, I set up the book of Luke. That was my initial, you know, discussion about Luke's gospel. And Luke, by trade, was a physician. He's very detailed in his writing. And that same theme is is, you know, we see that in Luke chapter 8. So, but what's happened really up until that point is you find Jesus doing a lot of things. He's cast out demons, he's healed people. There was a miraculous catch of fish. He's eaten with sinners. He delivered an amazing sermon in chapter six. He heals a centurion servant, raises the widow's son. Just miracle after miracle has happened in his life. So if you think about that, just you know, here's this guy that's come to earth in chapters one and two, is born, John the Baptist. He is the forerunner, he baptizes Jesus, the ministry starts, he's tempted in chapter four, and then all these miracles start taking place. So if you just kind of zoom out and you think about it, what's happening is Jesus' popularity is just absolutely peaking. He's at a point where his miracles are incredibly widely known. His teaching is drawing massive attention, and people from everywhere are starting to come and say, Who is this guy? Who is this guy named Jesus? But there's one little key piece of tension, I think, that that surfaces in chapter eight. The crowds are growing, but not necessarily for the right reasons. Some people are curious, some people want healing, some people want to see a miracle, but very few, I think, are really true disciples trying to get after Jesus. So this story picks up in chapter eight, verse number four. And verse number four is often overlooked. It's this minor detail in the passage because we jump right into what the parable starts talking about, the sower and the four different types of soil. We'll get into that. But verse four starts out like this and it says, When a great crowd was gathering, and people from town to town after town came to him, he spoke to them in a parable. At this time in Jesus' life, he was dealing with opposition, he was dealing with skepticism. Crowds were all over the place, and people were coming from town to town to gather and to hear what Jesus had to say. He was teaching, he had given the equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew's recording of that in Luke chapter 6. He had done all this teaching. So people were starting to really, really gather around him. And verse number four isn't just this minor detail of the story, it's the setup for the entire parable. The Gospel of Luke records, I went back and looked, at least 30, arguably 40, 35 to 40, different instances where the size of the crowd, where a crowd was following Jesus or wanted to be around Jesus. I I did this study a number of years ago. I picked up on that little detail, and I went all the way through my Bible and I took the same color highlighter and I highlighted every instance where that happens in Luke's gospel. So that way I'm ever reading it again. When that one highlight color comes up, I know that's a detail that Luke is very, very consistently and goes out of his way to point out. Why? Why is he doing that? The crowds, this parable, I don't believe, you know, the the point of the parable, it's not random, it's really diagnosed, diagnostic, diagnostic of the moment that Jesus is in. The parable is about the crowd. The parable is about all these people that are gathering around him and the reaction that each one of them are having. And then Jesus goes on, he starts talking about once he gets into the the actual parable itself, there's four different types of soil, but only one seed. So the four soils really represents four different groups of people and kind of how we react to Christ or the Word of God.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

I think something you said that's really interesting before we dive into the soils that kind of jumped out to me. Like you bring out the crowd. I think what's very interesting, the reasons the crowd followed him at that time that you laid out, wanting to see miracles, wanting to see these healings. Ironically, today, we're seeing kind of the flip. We're seeing people want to follow Christ because they like his moral teachings, they like his philosophy, but they don't like the miracles because we're in the scientific, you know, naturalistic, you know, which you see is all there is, people are rejecting the miracles. You know, that was the Thomas Jefferson, I'm gonna cut that all out of the Bible because I just want the words. So this is I find a real irony exactly what you made. So, same principle of the crowds who are coming, people want to explore, but like you said, for the wrong reasons, and I think just interesting that dichotomy, and and I think the soils will play that out, but I just found that you know as you were walking through that.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Yeah, as you were talking through that, uh, Mitch, one of the things that I had in my notes for this episode was that you know, being near Jesus is not the same as being receptive to Jesus, to what Jesus is saying. You know, crowds can gather without their hearts being open, and that's what we're gonna see as you walk us through this.

Four Soils And One Seed

SPEAKER_00 7:33

Yeah. Yeah, he describes a farmer scattering seed, and the seed falls on four different types of soil. It falls on what he calls the path, and it's trampled, and birds devour it. Number two, it falls on rocky ground where it springs up, it just doesn't wither. I mean, it withers, there's just no root, lack of moisture. Number three, it falls amongst the thorns, it's choked out by really competing growth. And there's a great analogy here we'll get into it in a minute. And then lastly, it falls on what the Bible says is good soil, and it produces a hundredfold crop. But here's I think what's really striking and what's interesting about this, because he goes through the parable in these couple of verses, and then verse eight. Verse eight kind of pauses and the last half of it, and and there's this little insertion that Luke includes, and this is Luke speaking, it says, And he said these things, he called out, or as he said these things, he called out. That's Luke speaking of Jesus. So Jesus calls out the last couple of words of verse number eight, and it says, He who has ears to hear, let him hear. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. So this parable is certainly about the people, but more importantly, it's about do how we hear the word of God and how we react to that. It's interesting. I went back and looked, and I found that in the Gospels, Jesus seven different times indicates something along these lines. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Seven times throughout the Gospels. If you flip over to the book of Revelation, Revelation chapter two and three, there's seven letters to the churches. And if you look at it in a red letter edition Bible, the entirety of those two chapters is Jesus speaking. And Jesus says exactly seven times there, let him he let him who has ears to hear, listen to what what he's saying to the churches. So basically that boils down to in the gospels, while Jesus was still on earth, he's basically saying seven different times, are you hearing the truth that I'm speaking to you? And in Revelation, Jesus uses that same phrase, but he's in heaven now, and he's saying to the church, Are you living that truth that I've spoke to you? So no one, no, not everyone who hears physically is actually hearing spiritually. There's a difference. On earth, he was talking to us to hear physically, hear the truth and respond to it. And in heaven, he's telling the church, are you living out that same truth? So I just thought that was an interesting kind of side note that's that's kind of tucked into a couple of side notes, actually, that's tucked into this parable. So let's get into the parable itself. So four soils, these are conditions of the heart. The path he mentions first is really the hardened heart. This is the word is heard, but it's not received. And the bird's picture of the really the enemy takes away the soil. Jeremy, you kind of touched on it, but exposure to truth doesn't equal transformation. He said a little differently than you said. But you can hear sermons, you can you can read scripture, guys. We can sit in church all day long, but we can still remain unchanged. How are we going to react to the word of God? And this is the hardened heart. And I think there's a lot of people that come on Sunday mornings every single week checking the box, but their heart really isn't tuned in to receiving God's word and it's hardened.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

I think that's also, you know, we talk about you study some apologetics and things, you know, it's a lot of times when you're making a case for Christ, when you're sharing faith, certain people, I think it's been attributed to a few, but you kind of ask the question, like, if I could prove that Christianity is true, would you believe it? And there's a lot of people that will just say no. Like, I don't even care if you prove it because I don't even want to believe this. Like, I don't want to have to submit to Christ. I don't want to have to give my life. You know, I don't want to change, you know. And so I think that's a lot of what you're you know pointing out there with like that hard heart. Like, I don't care if it is true, like it's a volitional type thing where they're rejecting it.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

Yeah, I had this conversation with a guy maybe two, three weeks ago. This is a gentleman I meet with fairly regularly, and he was he was mentioning to me, you know, he didn't want to completely, completely sell out to Christ because I'm gonna have to give up this and I'm gonna have to give up that, and I'm gonna have to stop doing X, Y, and Z kind of thing. And I kind of reframed it for him a little bit and I said, you know what? I I think when you focus on your relationship with the Lord, you start spending time with his word, in his word and in prayer every single day. That sounds so like 101 kind of Christianity, and it is. But when you do those things, God kind of changes your the want-tos, if you will, in your life. I don't want to do those things anymore. I don't have to do those things anymore. It's not that, you know, I don't get to do them, and you know, it's something that's that's that used to be fun and is now cut out of my life. I mean, God changes your desires. He that and that's the condition of the heart that we're talking about. He changes your want-tos. And I told him, I said, just focus on your relationship with the Lord and allow the Lord to do that transformative work in your heart. And when you start to really get, you know, have that relationship with God in that respect, your your desires start to change. And it just becomes more natural to be with God's people and to read his word and to do this. That doesn't mean you're in the Bible seven days a week, 360. And that's not it. I mean, we all have lives to lead. But even while living those lives, you start to realize that the filter of God's word starts to change your interaction, starts to change your relationships and the people that you interact with. So the path is the hardened heart. The second one is the rocky soil. There's no moisture. I call it the shallow heart. First one was the hardened heart. This is a shallow heart. You might receive God's word, but you know when it really comes to a point of testing, you start to fall away. And that's what the Bible says here. The third one is the thorny soil. And I think this one today is really appropriate for our culture. I call this the crowded heart. So the first was the hardened heart, the second is the shallow heart. This one is the crowded heart. The word grows in this particular case, but it gets choked out by the Bible says cares, riches, and the pleasures of life. This is not rejection of God's word, it's distracting. It's distractions from God's word. It's competing priorities. The word is present in our lives, but it's competing with other priorities in life. And as a result, we tend to make it secondary versus primary. Matthew 6.24 is a verse near and dear to my heart. I preached on this a number of years ago in the Sermon on the Mount. It's one of my first sermons here at Lifehouse. And Matthew 6.24, the Bible says, the closing verse that says, you cannot serve God and money. It's interesting because I believe that's the only time in the Bible it tells you what you can't do in terms of serving God. At least it contrasts it with something and it pulls out money. And I think we could say that's materialism. That's the things around us, that's idolatry, that's the things in our heart that we're putting in front of God. And Matthew's gospel and Sermon on the Mail, Jesus equivalents that to you can't serve God and money. So this soil, I think, is especially relevant in today's society. We are so preoccupied with self-imposed initiatives that we fail to see really that we've, you know, the thorny soil, that crowded heart, we've crowded out room for God. Any comments on that one?

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Yeah, I think, you know, both of those, we talked about the hardened heart, the not want to, and then like you say, the testing. I think that's something we see so much, the problem of evil, the problem of suffering that people kind of believe as long as things are good, but then as soon as something challenging comes, well, now I don't. And I've heard that, you know, of course we know that's a prevalent problem, but it was a C. S. Lewis in in a book. I may have mentioned this before. If if so, hopefully the listeners will forgive me, but it's called A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis after he lost his wife. And uh everybody, if not everybody, but if you haven't heard of C.S. Lewis, if you know him, great apologist, you know, was an atheist but came to faith. If you read that book, knowing what you know about him, like it's pretty, you know, dark for him at this time. But he arrives towards the end of the book, he says, If I lose my faith now through all this, it wasn't really faith. You know, he recognizes that God knew how strong my faith was. I didn't, and I needed to go through this testing for God to show me where my faith was and to strengthen it. So, to your point, you know, when you fall away in the time of testing, that just means your faith was a house of cards. It means it wasn't really faith, and that's always been impactful to me with that type of soil.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Yeah, and we're gonna look more in coming episodes about testing and storms, but don't spoil it, yeah. Spoiler alert. But uh something. Something that you, Mitch, said earlier uh a couple minutes ago, about like the more that you get into God's word, it just echoed to me because I've been I've been thinking about my own testimony and you know, and a bit, and and it that's I mean, I for many of us that's the story of our testimony. Like for all of us, in some way, you know, at the more that we lay that foundation, the more that we allow the word of God to work in our heart, those desires of the flesh, they become less and less God reveals those things to us. And that that in very pronounced ways, I can say that that was my testimony too. The more that I the more that I allowed that like laid that foundation and fell in love with God's word, God in his kindness revealed those things that that I needed to do away with and put to death in my life.

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Yeah, a number of years ago I I was working with a guy, and I've I've said this to probably every guy that I've ever worked with, and that is I found a prayer that you know some guys will say, I you know, I'm just not hearing from God, or God's not answering my prayers. I found one that literally is answered in about 30 seconds, if you're if you're really truthful with yourself. And and I pray it often. And it's God, reveal in my heart any area where I'm not in the image of your son. And if you really think about that question, it takes about less than 30 seconds for God to immediately put something on your on your mind. And and it's and it's you know, spending that time every single and I got we we we pound this this the subject, but it's it's worth repeating, and that is spending that time every single day with God in His Word, it just softens your heart. It makes you so much more receptive to to you know what God has done for us, and then as a result, what we should be, you know, sharing with other people around us. It just it just I can't overstate this the that point.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

The last soil tills the soil, and I think just touching on the third type of soil you mentioned with the distraction and the cares. Man, that's our society today, right? And you know, we talked about that a little bit, and as you said, the distraction, like we are in such a distracted culture, and we have to cultivate, you have to fight for the time because the world wants to distract you, whether it's your phone or busyness or schedules, like we just this is a constant struggle of finding time. You know, we were just uh Mitch and I teach on Wednesdays, so if you were at a Wednesday class, but you know, people don't read God's word because they say they don't have time, but it's not usually a lack of time, it's a prevalence of distraction that's you know choking you out, and then you wonder why, like you say, you don't hear from the Lord or you're not growing in your faith. Well, are you committing the time, or do you just show up on a Sunday morning and then you forget about it the next six days? Like it really requires that cultivating, tilling the soil, I think, getting into the good, like you were saying with the guy earlier, you have to till the soil, you have to be constantly working on it, but because the world is going to fight against you in in all of those situations. Yeah.

Distraction Testing And Spiritual Drift

SPEAKER_00 18:58

Yeah, for sure. All right, the last soil in this particular parable is what I've called the good soil, or it's an honest and a good heart. We hear the word, we hold it fast, we bear fruit with patience. Psalms one, Psalm one talks about we are like a tree planted by streams of water. And it says, But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. This is a good soil. This is the soil that's reacting and responding to God's word on a daily basis and is allowing us to impact our hearts. So the key theme of the parable is really the idea of hearing, and that's emphasized several times, but more importantly, how we respond to God's word and how we respond to really the seed that is placed on each one of our hearts, and where in that pendulum are we? Because I think our hearts land in each one of those different areas at some point in our Christian walk. So Jesus continues here and he gives another analogy right after this, and this is about a lamp, a lamp analogy. Some see this as you know a totally separate idea, really, from the soil on the surface, and it does kind of just look like that, but it carries the very, very similar and a deeper message, I think, about hearing truly with an ear to learn and to be transformed. No one lights a lamp and hides it. Light is meant to be seen, truth is meant to be revealed. And Jesus says again in verse 18 of chapter 8, he says, take care then now that you hear. So there's this emphasis, there's this prioritization of hearing what Jesus is saying. And and the default or the inverse of that, if we don't hear, is really spiritual drift. And that's what he's talking about here. I think he's entering, he's ending this section uh in verse 18 with I think it's a very, very sobering statement about spiritual drifting away. And verse 18 says this says, Take care then how you hear, for to for to the one who has, more will be given, but for the one who has not, even what he thinks he has will be taken away. I think the idea here is that spiritual momentum. The more you're in tune with the Lord, the more you're receptive to his word, the more you're gonna be given. And then for the one who's not mature, who's not that good soil, whatever you think you have, you're gonna be able to, you're you're on slippery ground. You're just not on that kind of stable, stable soil that we're talking about here. So it's about spiritual momentum. The more you respond to truth, you're gonna grow. And if you neckly neglect truth, excuse me, you will you will drift. So I had a couple of uh key kind of questions, applications for this section. I think it really lands with three diagnostic questions. Number one, what kind of soil am I right now? You know, we can we've talked about four different kinds of soil, and I mentioned I think each one of us are in different areas of that soil at different areas of our Christian walk. Where are you right now? Not five years from now, not next week, where are you today? Number two, what is competing? With God's word in my life. That's a big one for our culture today. Is it what what's distracting you? What is yeah, you're right, Nate, in that class we were teaching, I made the point in there. I said that we don't have a time problem. We have a priority problem. And we have an issue with really point putting ourselves in a position where we can absorb God's word on a consistent daily basis. So we're distracted. Are we worried? Are we just too busy? What's what's the issue? What's competing with God's word in my life? And then lastly, the third question is am I just hearing it or am I actually holding fast to it? It's holding fast so that it actually produces fruit in our life. And that's how this this um the parable of the soil really kind of culminates as the good soil, it retains it and it produces fruit. The difference in the parable is not the seed, it's the soil. There's only one seed. There's four different kinds of soil. And the difference in our lives is not access to truth, but it's how we respond to truth. And I think that's really the punchline that Jesus is trying to get across to these massive, map massive crowds that have followed him all over from town to town. They're accompanying him. And Jesus is then just pauses and he gives a parable about the crowd that's around him. Where are you? Which soil are you? And he's looking at the crowd because they're all gathered there for different reasons. And I think the church at large, we come to church for different reasons. Some do it because it's a it's something I do every week. My parents brought me up that way. Some do it because you know it's the right moral thing to do, or I got a crisis in my life, and let's go. Some do it because it's Christmas and Easter. Where are you? And that's what correct, that's what Jesus is recognized, I think, with all these different people. Some are come to hear the message, some are come to see a miracle, some are just curious. Where are you today? Where are you with God's word? What soil are you? And that's the point, I think, of the parable.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

And I love the listening and a good question to ask yourself, like today, are you as close to God as you've ever been? And if the answer is no, why not? Is it distraction that's getting you? Is it testing that's getting you? Is it hardness of heart? Because and I'm not saying this to be ultra convictional, but it is something like if there was a point years ago that you were closer to God, why are you drifting? Or are you drawing closer? You know, like constantly tilling that soil, constantly drawing closer, because when the time of testing comes, if you've been strong, then those tests are, you know, the storms that we'll talk about are are not as you know bad. The highs are not as high, the lows aren't as low because we have that confidence and that faith, and we're also keeping you know the desires for the Lord up and the distractions down so that we can be consistently moving towards him and growing. So I think that's some great points.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

But yeah, good good points, Mitch. One of the things I want to pull back to what you were talking about, he who has an ear to hear, we're gonna not to be another spoiler, but we're gonna see hearing come up again next next week. And you know, this idea of hearing is actually a a form of stewardship. We have a we have a responsibility from what we hear to make our to ensure that our hearts are ready to receive that that word. Receptive hearts receive more revelation. Resistant hearts, like Jesus said, lose even what they have. So we like where is our where is your heart? Yeah to the listener.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Yeah, and that's that's the punchline of the whole of this whole parable is crisis. People, everybody's followed him. He's like, Where I think he's this parable's about the crowd. He's looking at them, and inversely, it's about us. He's saying, How are you gonna respond? How are you gonna react to God's word? And that and the Bible tells us right in what verse is it? He tells us the seed when when he's interpreting the the parable, Jesus tells his disciples in verse 11, he said, now the parable is this the seed is the word of God. So we're not making this up. That's Christ's words himself. He says this is God's word. So the question is, guys, the soil, what we're what soil are we, and the seed is consistent. How are we reacting? How are we responding to the seed and uh to that in our life? I mean, it's one of four different ways that Christ outlined here. And I think it's uh it's not an accident that this happens at this particular point in his ministry. He's really pointing back to everything that's gone on and everybody that's gathered now around him. And Luke goes out of his way to point out these crowds are continuing to come around him, and Jesus says, You let me tell you a parable about yourself.

Good Soil Practices And Community

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Well, I like what you said there about us, what kind of soil are you? Because bearing the fruit, are you pouring into other people? Do people know where you are with your faith? You know, is that something that's apparent? Because he says you're going to bear fruit if you're good soil. And I think, like you said, it's maybe not trying to take too much of it and make it different. Like where the seed falls, are you good soil both in your life and for others? You know, will you help others grow as well? Because that's the thorns and all too, if we surround ourselves with you know, too many people who are non-believers who are so close to us that that's who we listen to, and then we wonder why you know our faith gets choked out.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Yeah, yeah, and that's I was gonna hit on something very similar in a in verse 16 when in when Jesus is talking about you know, no one after lighting a lamp covers it. The word in our heart is meant to be revealed. Jesus, like we it's not we're not supposed to just take this word in, even if we have receptive hearts and cover it up. We're supposed it's supposed to be shined out to a light that we display to others.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:26

100%.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

I think it's it's neat too, kind of along those lines, Jeremy. What I've found really helpful in my own Christian walk is yeah, we're talking about sharing the gospel for sure, but but also the light of God's word. Sometimes when I read and I'm studying something, God will hand me, I've always called them nuggets, this little spiritual nuggets, something I haven't seen before, or just a just a connection between an old testament and new testament passage. My point is, I can't wait to share that with somebody and talk about it, you know. So for our listeners, I'd highly encourage you two things. One, get involved or get yourself in a in the discipline of spending time in God's word. Prepare your heart, prepare the soil that the word of God can land on consistently. And then secondly, get yourself surrounded in a good connect group. Nate, there's a good plug for that. But folks, get yourself in a good connect group. Get yourself surrounded with other men and women that have like passions and they're they're they're into God's word every single day. And share what you're learning. I I love my meets Monday morning, and man, I look forward to every Wednesday morning bright and early, getting in a room with about eight, 10 guys who had 11 last week and just talking about God's word and saying, What'd you guys learn this week? Where are you? And it's just so refreshing. But when I find those little nuggets talking about Jeremy the light, I can't wait to share it. So there's there's application here to share it with the unsaved for sure, but I think there's equal application to share it with other believers and strengthen each other. There's power in numbers, and uh, you know, we can't do anything we can, but you're you do so much better when you're in community and versus trying to do things on your own. So get yourself surrounded, get spend time with the Lord individually, let him teach you. And secondly, get in community, get yourself surrounded with some people who are like-minded that can just dig into the word itself.

SPEAKER_02 29:11

Yeah, I mean, I'm I have the same the same experience. I I you know in the connect group that I read on Wednesday nights, I I absolutely love, I get it, I get those nuggets as well. And then it's like, guys, you gotta you you won't believe what look at this connection.

SPEAKER_00 29:26

Yeah, that's like and then you can see eyes just kind of opened and minds are and then they're they're on fire. Then they're bringing in the connection next week. Look what I found this past week, and it just it's just infectious, and it's great. It's just really it's just a great opportunity to to feed on God's word, folks.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

So I think in summary, be good soil and be in good soil, and really how we how we listen, how we hear, all of those growth, like the parable, you know, it just says we should be growing, you know, and and those things that are hindering our growth, we need to pay very close attention to not giving those a place in our life. So great stuff. And we already Jeremy was like previewing next week all over the place. So I think we'll extrapolate that pretty well next week in uh going through those tests and how Christ calls us into a new family. So Life House Valley, we appreciate you taking time for the Life Talk Podcast, and we pray this episode blessed you and we look forward to hearing and seeing you next week. Thanks for tuning in to the Life Talk Podcast. If this episode encouraged you, please be sure to like, comment, subscribe, and leave a review so others can find this content as well. And we'll look forward to seeing you next Monday for another great episode.