990B: Don’t Choke the Word
The cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in - these things choke the Word. And when they do, no matter how much we study, no matter how much we hear, no matter how faithful we seem to be to the outward evidences of religiosity - little by little, the cancerous disease of compromise eats away at the fiber of our beings, and the Word becomes unprofitable. We never stopped planting the Word in our life, but we didn't tend the garden. We didn't root out the weeds as they began to grow, and because in the spiritual realm they didn't show, we assumed they were not doing any damage. Wrong!