Good Soil
Mark 4:20 (NKJV) But these are the ones sown on good ground, those who hear the Word, accept it, and bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some a hundred.
We have looked at three types of soil. Jesus named them wayside, stony, and thorny. The last kind of soil is the good soil that produces the Word of God. Some people get 30-fold, some 60 and some 100. There is not much to say about this kind of soil except it is good and a person with this kind of soil maintains their soil and keeps it, so it won’t get back into the shape of the other three kinds of soil. We must constantly watch over our soil because as Proverbs 4 states, “Out of our soil or heart flow the issues of our life.”
What I want to look at next is what I call the gates or doors to your heart. What gets into our soil comes from these three gates, and we must understand that so we can protect what goes into our heart.
There are three gates to your heart. They are the eye gate, the ear gate, and the mouth gate. We will discuss these gates and the importance of each, and what the Bible tells us about each gate. The eye gate is what you see, i.e., what you watch on TV, read on the internet and in books, what you look at when at work or at the mall, etc. Proverbs 4:20-21 tells us to fill our eyes with the Word of God. In Psalm 119:37, the Word says to turn your eyes away from beholding vanity. Jesus told us in Matthew that the eye is the light to the body and the window to our soul. There are a lot of weeds that try to get into the eye gate, so be careful what you let into this gate.
The ear gate is also important because the enemy can make sure we hear all kinds of things. The devil would love to fill our hearts with bad reports, untruths, and circumstances. All day long, every day, we hear things, even facts that are naturally true but are not the truth from the Word of God. That’s why the Word says in Proverbs 4:20 to incline our ears unto His sayings. Jesus said it this way in Mark 4:24 and Luke 8:18: He said be careful what and how you hear. The ear gate should be full of the Word of God, so only that seed is going into our heart. Things that don’t line up with the Word of God are seeds that will choke out the Word.
The last gate is the largest and the most troublesome gate to watch over. It is the mouth gate. In Proverbs 4:24, we are told to put away from us a forward mouth or a mouth that speaks against what the Word of God says. We know from Proverbs 18:21 that death and life are in the power of the tongue and in Joshua 1:8, God told Joshua to make sure the Word of God was always in his mouth. I am often amused by people who fight against Jesus Himself and try and tell people that their mouth and words are not important. I would say it like this. Words can kill or words can bring life; they are either weeds or fruit seeds – you choose.
When you get an understanding of these three gates, you will be more cautious of what goes into your garden. Get the seed of God’s Word in all these gates on a regular basis, and you will begin to see a bumper crop of the promises of God coming to your life.