Wayside soil!

Wayside soil (The Sower and the seed Matthew 13:1-23)
The boys love to watch Scooby Doo and to be honest we love to watch it with them. If you watch enough Scooby then you are going to see a classic scene of Shaggy going through a fridge making him a snack and as he builds this monster sandwich and returns to the fridge to get more, Scooby sneaks over and eats Shaggy’s snack right behind his back. Shaggy returns to where the sandwich used to be and is confused and dismayed as to what could have possibly happened to his snack, all the while Scooby is standing there licking his lips. Shaggy comes off as the goofy hippie teen who foolishly left his sandwich unguarded around Scooby while the audience laughs at his misfortune. It is a reoccurring theme throughout the history of the show that Scooby is going to steal Shaggy’s food every chance he gets, yet Shaggy always lets his guard down. We laugh at Shaggy for his loss, but did you know that in the parable of the Sower and the Seed Jesus said that many are just like him. He says that seed sowed in the wayside soil is snatched away by the enemy before it has time to take root. (v.4 &v. 19)
How do we keep from this happening to us? How do we keep from becoming the wayside soil were something valuable is snatched away from us? If Shaggy kept guard over his snack there is no way that a 100 plus pound Great Dayne could snatch it way from him and if we keep guard over God’s Word, there is no way the devil can steal it away from us. We guard and protect what is valuable to us and there is no way that we are going to leave our valuables laying out unprotected, yet we will do this with God’s truth. If we valued the word of God, we would keep it before our eyes continually (constantly reading it), we would hide it away in our hearts so it could not be stolen, and we would value it over the opinions of this world. When we heard the Truth of God our ears would perk up and we would know that what we were hearing was important and we would do everything we could to guard and protect it from the enemy, including isolating ourselves form the lies of this world. Wayside soil can be fertile soil as long at the seed is guarded and protected from the enemy who seeks to snatch it away.