Jesus spoke in parables in order to keep the truth about God's kingdom concealed from those who were not really interested in the truth. The parable of the soils is one such parable. In each part of this story, the message is the same and the messenger is the same, but the outcomes are different because the hearts of the hearers are different. God knows our hearts perfectly; better than we know them ourselves. If we reject God's Word, we harden our hearts against Him. Eventually, after several rounds of hardening, we lose our ability to hear Him at all. So then, our freedom of choice is real, but it is also finite. We can choose which type of soil we want to be, but we should choose wisely and immediately.