One of the struggles many people have is trying to figure out where their relationship with Jesus is. 

There are seasons and moments when things feel like they are going well. You are in community, spending time with Jesus through prayer, reading scripture, and practicing other spiritual disciplines. And then there are times when those things fall off, and we wonder, “What happened?”

It isn’t just about practices or disciplines but about where our heart is or is not. 

But how do you know?

Because discerning our hearts can be very difficult. 

Yet, many of Jesus’s parables address this idea, helping us to see where our hearts really are. 

In Matthew 13, Jesus tells the parable of the sower, seeds, and soils. While this is often called “The Parable of the Sower,” the parable is, in many ways, about soils. Through this lens, we begin to see where our hearts are or are not. 

James Montgomery Boice has a helpful lens of these four soils: 

• The hard soil = The Hard Heart
• The Shallow Soil = The Shallow Heart
• The Strangled Soil = The Strangled Heart
• The Open Soil = The Open Heart

The Hard Heart

The hard heart wants nothing to do with Jesus or the things of God. 

They are completely turned away from God. They love their sin; they love being in charge of their life. 

Paul described this person in Romans 1 as suppressing the truth of God, being spiritually ignorant or against God. They love their sin. 

In many ways, our culture is like this. 

But it isn’t just about sin; it is about ruling your life. This parable and many others that Jesus tells are about the kingdom of God. 

Who is the king of the kingdom of God?  God. 

This is the key to the hard heart, the one who wants to be king of their life. 

The hard heart is not just someone who doesn’t attend church. Many people who sit in church every Sunday have a hard heart. This is the person who says, “I know what God says about money, sex, loving my enemies, forgiving those who hurt me, but ____,” and then they tell you why they don’t have to follow that. 

That’s a hard heart.

Do you have a hard heart? What about this soil resonates with you right now? Is there anything you need to confess?

The Shallow Heart

This is the person whose faith cannot handle difficulty. 

Much of their faith is built on emotion and their feelings about God. How they evaluated Sunday mornings or Bible readings is based on whether they “felt God” or had a “good feeling during worship.” Did the hair on my neck stand up?

The shallow heart is here for God’s promises and “the best life now” that Jesus promises, but the moment that difficulty comes, I have to take a stand for Jesus. They tap out if God doesn’t answer my prayers the way I prayed them. 

Another example is the person who has attended church for years and is still a spiritual infant. They have experienced no growth. 

Do you have a shallow heart? What about this soil resonates with you right now? Is there anything you need to confess?

The Strangled Heart

Jesus is very specific with this soil: They are unfruitful and choke the word out because of the worries of the age and the deceitfulness of wealth. 

The worries in every age and every culture. A few things to consider are: What keeps you up at night? What things give you that empty feeling in your stomach? Do you worry about your health, wealth, kids, or other relationships? This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t worry about those things, but it does start to reveal what takes up space in your heart and mind or things you are trying to control that you need to hand over to Jesus and trust Him. 

Another one is the worry you feel about the upcoming election. Will you be okay if your candidate loses? If the answer is no, as a follower of Jesus, that reveals something in our hearts. 

Do you have a strangled heart? What about this soil resonates with you right now? Is there anything you need to confess?

The Open Heart

As you read through the parable in Matthew 13, you see that all of this leads to the soil where the seed takes root and grows, “the open heart,” as Boice calls it. 

An open heart that receives the word of God and obeys. When it says “hears,” that means “to obey.” 

Not just in one ear and out the other. 

This means that when we hear the word of God, read the word of God, and feel the move of the Spirit of God in our lives, we obey. We don’t say, “That doesn’t apply to me. I don’t feel like doing that.” We do it. 

This parable warns us against superficial hearing. And shows us what real hearing is. 

Fruit comes from obedience. 

But how do we know? How do we know if we have an open heart?

The fruit. It produces fruit. 

The fruit of a changed life evidences an open heart. 

I love that Jesus says, “Some will be a hundred, some sixty, some thirty times what was sown.”

The fruit that comes from your obedience might be a world-changing fruit that is 100x. 

It might not. It might be thirty. 

Notice that Jesus doesn’t say, “Shoot for 100 times.”

He says, “There are different levels of fruit, and they all matter and are important. One is not better than another.”

This truth should free us from having to produce what someone else does. 

Jesus doesn’t judge us on a curve or compare us to others. 

The question isn’t, “Did I produce what the person next to me produced?” The question is, “Did I produce the fruit I was supposed to produce?”