Your Marriage Grows What Your Hearts Receive

What if the biggest issue in your marriage isn’t the latest argument, but the soil underneath it? We’re David and Tracy Sellers, and we take Jesus’ Parable of the Sower in Mark 4 and apply it straight to real-life marriage: the unseen heart posture and relationship culture that decides whether God’s Word gets stolen, withers under stress, gets choked by thorns, or grows into a harvest.

We talk about what “marriage soil” looks like on a normal Tuesday: how you can often tell the condition of the ground by the fruit coming out of your home, your tone, your patience, and your ability to reconnect. We also name the rocks and weeds that block growth independence, dishonesty, bitterness, unforgiveness, pride, disunity and the quieter thorns of worries, wealth pressure, and the constant pull of “other things” that steal attention from your spouse.

Then we get practical with five steps to cultivate good soil with the Holy Spirit’s help: get your heart ready, let the seed of Scripture be planted daily, water those seeds by rooting yourself in God’s steady supply, stay in the light with honesty before the Lord, and dig out the weeds and rocks of sin before they choke what’s tender. We even imagine what a 30x, 60x, 100x harvest of peace, gentleness, and love could look like in an ordinary household.

If you want a biblically healthy marriage with deeper roots and lasting fruit, press play, share this with a friend who needs hope, and subscribe for more. After you listen, leave a review and tell us: which “soil” best describes your marriage right now?

Transcript

Welcome And Series Setup

0:00

Welcome to Vows to Keep Radio with David and Tracy Sellers. The mission of Vows to Keep is to help couples develop a biblically healthy marriage through the application of God's Word and a deeper relationship with Him. They desire to help you and your spouse grow closer to each other and closer to the heart of God's design for your marriage. Now, here's David and Tracy with today's broadcast. Hey, we are David and Tracy Sellers, and we have made Vows to Keep. We're so glad you have joined us today as we get ready to start the ninth, I believe it is, part in this series, The Bible for Marriage. What we've been doing over the last several weeks is looking at some familiar Bible passages like the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Sermon on the Mount, and applying them not just to our Christian walks, but to our marriage relationships. God has given us passages like these to make the path before us clear so we don't stumble in the dark in our marriage relationships.

The Parable Of The Sower

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Today we're going to continue this series with a familiar parable from Jesus in Mark chapter four. It's the parable of the sower. Wait a second. Wait a second. Did you know that I was a professional sewer? You were? Yeah. Were you a farmer? Well, no, but when I was in 4-H, uh, one of the things that I did, and maybe we've talked about this. Planted corn? No, I I sewed. I actually made a pair of camo sweatpants. Oh, yes. Oh, a sewer. Yeah, yeah. Needle and thread. Gotcha. That's what you do in 4-H, right? Well, that's why I married you. That's not the kind of sewing we're talking about, is it? No, this actually has to do with farming. Yep. And Jesus, as we're going to see today, is actually the great farmer. So this parable of the sower has four different kinds of seed, and I want to read it together with you now from Mark chapter four, starting in verse three, so you can pick out those four different kinds. A farmer went out to plant some seed. He scattered it across his field. Some of the seed fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate it. Other seed fell on a shallow soil with underlying rock. The seed sprouted quickly because the soil was shallow. But the plant soon withered under the hot sun, and since it didn't have deep roots, it died. Starting in verse 7, other seed fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants so that they produced no grains. Still other seeds fell on fertile soil and they sprouted, they grew and produced a crop that was 30, 60, even a hundred times as much as had been planted.

Your Marriage Has Soil

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We're going to apply this passage today specifically to our marriage relationships because your marriage has soil too. The soil in your marriage is the heart and culture of your relationship. And Jesus is the farmer, like we said, and he wants his word, which is the seed, to grow in rich, good soil. So if the soil in your marriage is a heart and culture, what does that look like? If you dig below the surface, do you find the rocks of independence, the rocks of disrespect or dishonesty? Or do you have weeds of bitterness and unforgiveness that have taken root in your marriage? Now God wants to help you dig those up, and in their place, He wants to plant the seeds of love and joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. All of the fruit of the Spirit. He has a great harvest in mind within your marriage. We don't always think about our marriages having a culture, but they do. It's an underlying soil, the environment of our marriage, and it affects everything we do in our relationship. The health of the soil of your marriage always needs to be tended to. And I'm reminded of a couple we were speaking with here a few days ago. A husband mentioned the fact that he touched his wife's butt in the kitchen and she jumped and roared at him. That's true. That tells you something about the soil. We also talked with a couple the other night that were fighting over the purchase of something that one of them wanted, and the other one said, absolutely not. You could tell what the heart and culture of that marriage was in that argument. Your marriage has a soil that's either ready to receive the word of God, ready to hear it, ready to act on it, or your marriage has a soil in which God's word is having a hard time growing right now. And you can tell by looking at the fruit that comes from your marriage.

Reading The Soil By The Fruit

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Almost 10 years ago, we moved to Ohio and we pretty quickly realized that the soil in Ohio is so different than it is out in South Dakota and Wyoming where we grew up. So I thought, hey, it'd be pretty cool to plant a garden in the backyard, but someone recommended to me that I get a soil test done on my property. I'd never even heard of such a thing. Don't you just put the seed in the ground, water it, and you know, something good is going to come from it. OSU recommends that you do this to pinpoint what your plant needs for nutrients, what they need for fertilizer application to get just the right amount. Having a soil test done can even help you make the best plant selections so that the right plant is in the right place. They want to help you get a good harvest from what you're planting. So the land around my house has a lot of clay and rocks in it. We found that out pretty quick. Takes quite a bit of digging and tilling and mulching before anything's able to thrive in that soil. As we listen to Jesus' explanation of the parable of the sower, listen with an ear on the heart and culture of your marriage. The seed is the word of God. Verse 12 says, Those along the path are the ones who hear. As soon as they hear

A Soil Test For The Heart

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it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown to them. Verse 16 says, Others like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they only last for a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others like seed sown among thorns, hear the word. But the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires of other things come in and they choke the word, making it unfruitful. Others like seed sown on good soil, hear the word. They accept it and produce a crop. What a beautiful thing to produce in your marriage. Some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown. Now I'm no master gardener, but several years ago when I wanted to plant this garden in the backyard, we decided to totally bypass the clay and the rocks and build two raised bed planters. David built them for me. So we didn't touch the grass underneath. Instead, we just brought in fresh soil that was already fertilized. It was ready to put those little seeds into. And I researched that garden to no end. So I knew just where to put my carrots and peas and spinach and tomato and zucchinis and how far apart to plant them. Now I'm priligent that first year. Yeah, I thought you were gonna have a green thumb there. I know, right? This is like my first attempt at gardening here. I'd go out there every day to check the progress. And while I was there, I'd reach in and pull out any naughty weeds that had snuck their way in. Hey, this is my garden. I'm gonna protect it, right? So one of the best things about a raised bed garden, of course, is that there's no rocks, there's nothing to contend with. And it's really easy for those young, tender plants to become strong enough to withstand a rainstorm or a wind because there's nothing to stop the growth of their roots. They reach right down through that filtered soil and they become vegetables that we enjoyed eating and even canning that fall. Now, if I would have started with any old dirt lying around, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have had the crop that I did. So as you think about the kinds of soil mentioned in Mark 4, what kind do you think the heart of your marriage has? Is the soil of your marriage really more of a hard surface where nothing even has the chance to grow? I know I'm striking a chord with some of you right now as I say that. Is your soil too shallow, too rocky to keep anything good for long? Sometimes you think, okay, we're doing good, and then all of a sudden you hit another rock and you say, Here we go again. Maybe there's just thorns and weeds that choke out the life of your love and passion, and they're so big now you don't even know how to pull them out. Or do you have soft tilled soil? Do you have a marriage that awaits the harvest of all that God has planted? Some of our marriages are of that first kind. Ours is the hard, hard surface. It's fast-paced soil where the wind is blowing fast, where the good seeds of truth are being cast out and like a highway. The footpath can become so dry. It can feel like a desert. It's this barren wasteland with nothing but cactus around. And we're just relieved to not get poked or hurt by our spouse in the process. Is your soil the kind that Jesus described as shallow? Roots dissolve quickly, and life is coming up all roses. Then, like Jesus describes, though, this young plant withers in the heat. Life is too much for your marriage, and things die because the roots aren't deep. So if God went tilling up the soil of your marriage today, I wonder what rocks would be unearthed as he did that. If you were to till far below the surface, would you hit boulders of infidelity, dishonesty, selfishness, maybe financial independence? In Mark 4 7, we see that third kind of soil. Jesus says, Other seed fell among thorns that grew up and choked out the tender plants, so they produce no grain. Now it's a no-brainer, even for those of you who have more of a brown thumb than I do. If you don't weed continually, nothing good is gonna grow in any garden or field. Weeding is that constant process that needs to be tended to. Now I can leave things unattended in my perennial beds, but before long it's hard to tell what's what anymore. In our marriages, too, sin takes root quickly, and maybe you're seeing the effects of those choking thorns right now. The soil in your marriage is gonna determine the health of your marriage. Hard, shallow, rocky, full of weeds. Maybe it's just one that represents the culture of your relationship. Other times, though, I think Tracy and I fall into several of these categories at the same time. It's this last kind of soil that's in Mark IV that God has really created for us. It's yielding hearts, receptive to

Raised Beds And Real Change

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the planted word of God. Do you get this? Not lying dormant, but ready to grow, ready to produce this crop of 30, 60, 100 times beyond what was planted. And this is where math and the fruit of the spirit combine. So if you're good with math, you're gonna like this. Can you imagine 30 times more peace in your house? Can you imagine 60 times more gentleness, a hundred times more love? What, seriously? I can't even wrap my mind around what that would look like. But I think that's exactly what God is saying here, David. I think you hit the nail on the head. God is the master sower. He knows just where to plant the seeds of his word to produce in us and our marriage the fruit of the Holy Spirit. I can't tell you what that would mean to me, to have 60 times more gentleness coming out of my mouth towards you. See, God scatters the truth of how to be long-suffering in our hearts. He sows the good seed of gentleness, he sows the good seeds of patience. So as a listener today, you might be kind of scratching your head saying, Okay, if this is what he's doing, why am I not seeing the harvest of this? Here's where you and I do our part with the power of the Holy Spirit.

Five Practices For Deep Roots

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Here's five things if you're taking notes today. Number one, get our hearts ready. Number two, let the seeds be planted. Number three, water the seeds. Number four, stay in the light. And number five, dig out the weeds and rocks of sin. Here's the first thing you and I can do. We can get our hearts ready. So here's a couple that we've talked with several years ago. We'll call them Dan and Lori. They came to Vows to Keep. David, do you remember them? They were determined to seek marital help that used the Bible as their foundation. They both professed faith in Christ, but the marriage and the problems that they described showed what kind of soil they had. It showed their methodology of farming, too. Each of them had struggled with substance abuse, and empty promises were the norm. There was clear evidence that their faith was in question, but they had this desire to know God. Well, as we talked about the importance of scriptures of foundation, their retort was all about an emotional response to how their spouse was making them feel. The depth of the soil made the penetration of God's word, letting that seed of truth be pushed in. Well, it made it ineffective. As much as they believed God to be powerful enough to save them from their sins, when the rubber met the road, they weren't convinced that God's word was adequate to heal their marriage. And that's how shallow soil is. It's common in marriage because it's deceptive. Seeds quickly take root and things pop up out of the soil, and everything is just feeling so good at first. But then comes the first real trial. We let these tests and trials of the day turn us against each other rather than letting them be a tiller that turns over the soil to make it better and deeper than it was before. But if we turn to Ezekiel 36, 26, God gives us a promise, and it says this I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Here's where you start today. Invite him in and let him make that swap your hard heart for a soft, pliable new one. A big part, David, of getting our hearts ready to go from that shallow soil to deep soil is in those little moments of life. It's in the little baby steps of obedience to God's word. It's forgiving when you've already forgiven 76 times that day. It's going that one more step and forgiving one more time. It's loving when your spouse seems completely unlovable. Now, of course, God's word is filled with instruction for us on how to have healthy relationships. But I love 1 Peter chapter 3 because it just boils a lot of it down with how we should treat one another. I'm going to read you four verses. I want you to pick out some things that you could start applying right now, even today. Pick out one thing you could do. Starting in verse 8, finally, all of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other, love each other as brothers and sisters. Be tenderhearted, keep a humble attitude, don't repay evil for evil. Don't retaliate with insults when people insult you. Pay back with a blessing. This is what God has called you to do, and He will grant you His blessings. For the scriptures say, if you want to enjoy life and see many happy days, keep your tongue from speaking evil, your lips from telling lies, turn away from evil and do good. Search for peace and work to maintain it. These are words to live by. Totally. So the next time your spouse has wronged you and you don't do what you feel like doing, instead, you do what God's word asks you to do. You know what? You just went a little deeper. And it says in verse 12, the eyes of the Lord are watching over those who do right. His ears are open to their prayers. Is that you? When your spouse intentionally stirs up some trouble at home, search for the peace that God says he'll provide, and then work to maintain it, knowing that God will give you what you need. You're breaking up some hard ground when that happens. When your spouse says something fiery at you, and what comes out of your mouth is actually building up of your spouse rather than tearing them down. That's right, it's deeper soil still. Every act of obedience to God's word lets your somewhat shallow roots reach a much deeper, further distance. They build

Getting Hearts Ready For God

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strength that you're gonna need for the future. Before you know it, you're gonna be seeing those seeds of scripture just sprouting out in some beautiful crops. They're gonna yield something worthwhile.

Letting Scripture Get Planted

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The first David, I think the seed needs to get in there. So number two is we have to let the seed be planted. And we talked earlier about what the seed is. It's the word of God. In order to let the word of God be planted, we have to be in his word. We have to be in it daily. And we can't just kind of skim over a text and say, okay, I read my chapter of the day. We have to let it teach us. Sometimes, though, I think we plant our own seeds, hoping in the end that we'll be pleased with the harvest. I bet you've done it. I know I have, because if we look at Galatians 6, verses 7 and 8, it says, A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, that's someone who's planting their own seed from the flesh will reap destruction. Whoever sows to please the spirit, and that's planting God's word from the spirit, will reap eternal life. In order for your marriage to go deep, to produce that kind of fruit that Tracy's talking about, you've got to desire the right kind of seeds in your life. So, what are the seeds that you're planting? And I don't want you to be deceived, because the harvest you're gonna get, the harvest you're actually getting right now, is directly correlated to what you've been planting. So, where do we spend our time and our energy? And how does that begin to impact our marriage? A simple thing of playing video games or going out to hang out with the guys after work, even though these things aren't necessarily bad, can be affecting your marriage more than you think. Consider how texting constantly or spending your time in front of the TV or YouTube are seeds that you're planting for tomorrow. Are your resources being spent outside of your marriage? And at the end of the day, you've got nothing left to give your spouse, nothing left to keep the culture of your marriage healthy. You might be saying, Yeah, that's pretty much where we're at right now, but I want something different. That's awesome. I'm so glad to hear it. If you're looking for something other than indifference between the two of you, if you're looking for something other than selfishness or maybe the cold shoulder, change your seeds. Invest your time specifically in your spouse, loving on them, loving on your kids. Spend your time studying the life of Jesus to see how he treated people. Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all the other things that you're worried about not having in your life will be added to you as well. You can read about that in Matthew chapter six.

What Seeds You Are Planting

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Now, Tracy, I grew up in Wyoming and it was basically high country desert. And we learned something very important about farming out there because we did farm some, that it was so important to have water. So you were a farmer. I was both kinds of sowers. That's right. We had 200 acres of land and we didn't farm all of it, but what we did farm was only alive because we got our water out of the Bighorn River. We couldn't rely on what was going to come from the rain. Let me read something from Jeremiah 17. It says, But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. They're like trees planted along a riverbank with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green and they never stop producing fruit. This is where you and I we say, Yes, Lord. I want you to have your way in my relationship. I'm not just coming to you for a watering can full of water when my marriage soil starts to crack from dryness. We're gonna plant ourselves right next to your continual water source, God. If you've ever tried to grow a flowering pot on a shady porch like I have, I told you I had a brown thumb. Don't laugh at me. You know that it does not work, right? Well, I found this out the hard way. Because we need the final element for growth. You can't just have a seed, you can't just have water, you need light, and that's the next step for us. Number four, we have got to stay in the light. Jeremiah

Water And Light For Growth

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17 continues the human heart is the most deceitful of all things and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards according to what their actions deserve. See, this is an open and exposed place before God. It can get uncomfortable, letting him see what's really in your heart so that it can be continually improved upon. That kind of light is so important. But the final step for us in working towards a good harvest in our marriage is to dig out the weeds and rocks of

Pulling Weeds And Removing Rocks

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sin. So while your shallow soil is being dug up to make more room, you're gonna hit some rocks along the way. It's inevitable. Buried rock is easier left alone because when it gets attention, it disrupts everything around it. If you run across a big rock of sin and you've got some new great stuff growing in your marriage, it's gonna disturb those tender roots, but it's better dealt with sooner than later because then more healthy plants will be able to grow. If there's a hidden sin in your life, in your marriage, don't leave it alone, hoping that you can just grow good stuff around it. We drove past a farmer's field not long ago near our house, and the family was all out working in the field, and they were heaving basketball-sized rocks into a tractor bucket. Even though they've been harvesting that field for years, new rocks keep coming to the surface. David and I have encountered rocks we didn't even know were there in our relationship. Rocks we thought we had removed with truth from God's word years ago, only to realize we left one behind. Many marriages hit these rocks of selfishness, pride, lust, disunity. The seeds of love and joy and peace and gentleness just can't get past these obstacles. So they have to be removed when you want to see a good harvest. The best and the only bulldozer in the rock removal business is the Holy Spirit and the work that he does when we put in the Word of God in our lives. If you're sensitive enough to him to recognize when he points out some boulder in your life, something that's affecting your marriage, ask for his help in removing it because no rock is too big for the Holy Spirit to yank out. Weeds, too. Those can choke out what's good in your marriage. Mark 4 talks about soil where the seeds of God's word grow quickly, but they're soon choked out by the cares of this life. This can happen in marriage too. It's happened in ours because when as a couple we place the things of this world as a higher priority than those things that God would want for our lives, nothing good can grow. David and I have experienced this recently. We have a good garden. We've been peeking out the kitchen window for a while now, keeping an eye on how it's growing, but life is busy and we've been tending to other things. So it's no surprise that weeds have sprung up while we were away. It only takes a few minutes for the cares of the world to overshadow the good plants and soak up the sun that was intended for the crop. The world and its pursuits are thieves. They are stealing the nutrients of your marriage. Mark Force says the cares of the world, the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things, here's what they do: they choke the word of God and they kill opportunities for growth and fruitfulness. But these thorns, I think, can be deceivingly benign. They can start out as something as simple as having our kids involved in too many extracurricular activities. Perhaps it's the constant arguing and disagreements that you have that has now become the biggest weed. The clamoring for what you feel is your right to have downtime. Any disunity will choke out the growth of your marriage. Maybe it's time you got into the garden with some gardening gloves and you started to pull out those weeds. Not just the tops of the nasty green things, get them all the way to the root. If that means changing jobs, do it. Get down to the root of bitterness that may be choking out kindness. Use the tool of forgiveness. Pull out the root of independence. Dig deep. Pull out the rocks that cause your roots to be shallow. Read the Bible on a daily basis so that the seeds of the fruit of the Spirit will grow.

Closing And How To Support

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In conclusion, today on Vows to Keep Radio, as we look at the parable of the sower for marriage in this Bible for marriage series. Let's remember this is not our job. This is the job of the master gardener who wants to change the heart and culture of your marriage. But he's asking you to get involved. He wants you to make that great exchange for a soft heart towards your spouse. Vows to Keep is a not-for-profit marriage ministry designed to bring God's encouraging truth to the marriages of our area. If you are unable to donate your time or abilities, but would like to help support Vows2Keep financially, visit VowstoKeep.com and click on the donate link. Join the community of Christian fiction readers when you pick up my new series, Roots Run Deep. The first installment in this trilogy, Roots Reawaken, has an interwoven thread of God's redemption and grace. Readers say over and over that they stayed up all night to finish. Stungle up with a book that will keep you turning the pages, but will also leave your heart full with the certainty of God's love for you. Order Roots Reawaken on Amazon, and to learn more, go to VowsToKeep.com. This program is sponsored by Vows2Keep of Zanesfield, Ohio.