I don't know how many of you who read this blog know anything about farming, but as the summer months slide into Autumn, my thoughts go back to my growing up years.
We spent a great deal of time and energy planting, weeding, watering, fertilizing and waiting.
Waiting till it was time to harvest the fruit of our efforts.
I remember asking Mr. Arvie Battles if I could help pick his cotton. He sized me up and said, "O.k. boy but it's hard work." He wasn't joking either. Starting on one row, dragging that big sack as you moved from cotton plant to cotton plant picking out the boles of cotton. Stickers on the plant cutting into your fingers and tops of your hands, all bent over so that you had to stop ever so often and straighten up for fear that you might permanently resemble Quasimodo, the bell ringer. But at the end of the day when you drug that big sack up to be weighed, Mr. Battles would count out your money and you went away with a feeling of satisfaction. You had earned it.
In Matthew 10:36-38 Jesus speaks of another kind of harvest.
He felt great pity for the crowds that came, because their problems were so great and they didn't know where to go for help. They were like sheep without a shepherd. He said to his disciples, "The harvest is so great but the workers are so few. SO pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest. Ask him to send out more workers for his fields."
The thing that struck me about this passage is the fact that Jesus said that the fields are ready to be harvested. The disciples did not do the work of planting the seed, or the Word of God. They did not water (that is the Holy Spirit who waters or interacts with the seed-Word planted in the hearts of those who hear that causes it to bring forth life) the fields. Jesus said that they were responsible for harvesting what God has prepared. They were to go forth into these crowds of people and make sure that they understood what God was doing around them and in them. In other words, Jesus was saying, "Hey guys....all you have to do is cooperate with God."
I believe that the world-fields are ready today. They are ripe for harvest and the only thing needed is workers to go out. Key words ----GO OUT! You won't find the harvest inside the 4 walls of the institutional church. Oh, every now and then a ripe plant may find it's way inside the church and be harvested, but the real deal is outside in the fields. God has called us to go.
If we don't then the harvest is lost until next year. The produce will rot on the plant and fall to the ground if we don't go out and harvest it and prepare it....in other words make disciples. How many more harvest seasons are we going to waste? How many times do the plants have to drop the fruit and die and wait till next year to be harvested?
Ask God to show you the fields.
You may be surprised.
It may be as close as next door or as far away as India.
NO matter where, go and be obedient to the call God has extended to every believer.
God on you........
mb
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