Producing
Saturday, July 2, 2022
Good morning, Lord
Verse of the Day: Romans 12:1: Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
Memory verse: Romans 12:1: Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.
Today's reading: JOB 22-24 ACTS 11
Producing
(this is from January 2012)
Agriculture, farming in particular, has become such a science and has grown so much in the last 150 years. From sowing seed by hand and making a crop for the family on a few acres to sowing hundreds of thousands of acres by a relatively small number of machines that yield food for the world.
I grew up where farmers lived on the land they farmed; crops were raised to sell and support their families; produce was raised to help feed the family; livestock was raised on plots of unplowed ground to also feed out or sell and help feed the family and the field hands and their families that lived in little shacks somewhere on the property.
These experiences are all in color in my mind-some more vivid than others- but the smells are still as real as they were 50-some years ago. In those days corn was corn and milo was maize. Nothing smells like a truck load of 'maise-berries', (as I learned to call them from a Tadpole), and nothing smells like a trailer full of picked corn. Cotton even had a smell about it.
There were years of dry weather but the ground was so rich that if you planted seed it was going to get out of the ground-at least long enough to burn up in the hot sun.
We had to dig a ditch with a machine through some of that soil and found that the rock was a mere 3' to 4' under the surface and there was no subsoil. The topsoil was as black as coal down to the rock. (That all smelled like freshly plowed ground.) But a strange thing happened. As we dug through the rock, water started to fill the ditch. The water table, that year, was just below the top of the rock. The next morning we could actually see the current in the water as it ran slowly in one side of the ditch and into the fractures in the rock on the other side. Something God initiated in the beginning continues still even though not in Eden. In Genesis in the Garden of Eden, the scripture says in Genesis 2:6, "but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground."
Today we read in Matthew 13 'The Parable of the Grower' and in verse 23 Jesus says, "But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it."
Don't worry about not understanding everything. The important thing is that we know the Water of Life runs through the Rock:
John 4:14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
Matthew 7:24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.
Deuteronomy 32:4 ►He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.
Putting the words of Christ into practice is what 'produces' a harvest. Some plant in a very large way but most of us sow by hand. And be patient-the 'smell' of the harvest is something you will never forget.
...because He loves us...
Father in Heaven,
Create in me the drive to plant seeds and then to follow You into whatever You have planned for me. Give me a love for the work of the evangelist. Forgive me my reluctance.
Great Father of all,
In the name of Christ Jesus,
Amen
Give this a listen please:
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