Emotions Were Not Meant to Sustain Us
From Pastor Kevin King
Jesus taught His disciples about the Parable of the Sower in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The parable characterizes four different soils and how those soils react when seed falls on them. The seed is the Word of God and the soils translate to four different heart conditions and how those heart conditions react when the Word of God falls on them.
One of the soil types is called "stony ground". This type of soil is rocky and has no depth of earth; meaning, it was not of sufficient depth for a seed to properly germinate and root. The seed could, however, still sprout up. Parables have a natural part and a spiritual part. Jesus explains the natural part for the stony ground as follows. The seed that falls on this soil springs up immediately because it does not have depth of earth. The seed would normally root sufficiently in the soil first and then grow up. But with no depth of earth, the seed simply springs right up. Jesus continues to explain that when the sun comes up, the little plant is scorched and withers away, also because it has not root. The lack of root means the plant has no means to be nourished, and so what life it does have, is burnt out of it.
Jesus explains the spiritual part: when the Word of God falls on a stony heart, the person immediately receives it with gladness. These kind of people get excited and emotional when they hear the Word of God. Jesus further explains that their excitement endures until persecution and affliction arise. Because the person has no depth of heart, the Word cannot properly root in them, and so their emotion is all the fruit they bear. They don’t have real belief, they only have emotion. But this emotion is short lived. Persecutions and afflictions will come as surely and as often as the sun comes up. They come solely to abort the Word that was sown in their heart. Persecutions and afflictions are like the scorching heat when the sun comes up. They apply intense pressure and can only be endured by a strong rooted belief. The sun is cyclical and so will rise and go down again. Likewise, persecutions and afflictions are cyclical, they will come and go.
People that have no depth of heart can only hope to endure pressure with emotions. This is futile as the pressure will wither emotion just like heat withers the infant plant. Our emotions were not designed to sustain us through trials and trouble. Only faith, or a rooted belief, can sustain the fruit in our lives. So don’t be alarmed or condemned if your emotions wilt under pressure and can’t take the heat. They weren’t meant for that. Only faith was. Hence, we are instructed to walk by faith and not by sight.
