Change in the Weather

Ecclesiastes 3:1-2
There is an occasion for everything, and a time for every activity under heaven. A time to give birth and a time to uproot. A time to plant and a time to uproot.

There is something that I have noticed that happens (at least to me) every year around this time. It started 25 years ago, and has been as consistent as the sun coming up every day. 

As the hot days of summer given way to the coolness of autumn, a shift in the "spiritual" wind seems to take place. Every year during the months leading up to October, God seems to reset the table for me. By this, I mean that He refocuses me on someone or some thing that I normally would not have noticed in the past. 

The desire to start a Saturday night service began to stir in me in October of 1998. The seed was planted but it needed time to grow and produce fruit. It took 10 months from the time the God-seed was placed in me until the first meeting of the House Of Blue. But that one seed produced a harvest of souls beyond my wildest dreams. 

I've noticed that over the past few weeks, God has placed people around me that I normally would not have encountered. I didn't think much about this at the time, but it has begun to happen with great frequency. So yesterday while I was praying, I got a mental picture of a cotton field, ripe and ready for the harvest. My first thought was of picking cotton when I was a boy. Hard work, but the money was much needed. Dragging that sack down the rows.....God began to speak to me. The weight of the sack, and having to bend over to get to the cotton spoke of God's burden and His call to humble myself. To bow before Him in worship daily. 

You can't pick cotton without getting your hands cut and bloody . Just part of the package I guess. I was reminded of the blood that Jesus gave in order to save my very soul. So even with the little amount of blood that was physically shed....even with the pain that comes with the cuts and torn places in your hands....it was a reminder of the price that was paid so that we could "enter the fields that were ripe for harvest".

Taking up a harvest is a matter of timing.
Too early and you loose a lot...
Too late and the harvest rots....
A good farmer knows how to watch the weather and the fields so that at the right time, he can enter and reap a harvest reward.
I still love the motto of the Moravian's ---"To win for the Lamb, the reward of His suffering". Isn't that the call we as believers have to follow? I think maybe yes.

So as September gives way to October (the time of harvest) look around yourself and ask.."Father, where is the field you want me harvest for your kingdom?" Rest assured, He will show you.

God on you..
mbb