If you are from the city as I am a harvest may have no relevance to you. However, if you are from the country you may know something about farming. And whether you live in the city, country or suburbia you may know something about gardening, you know exactly what a harvest is. For many years though I knew the definition of the word harvest it was continually lost to me. All because I have no love for gardening or care about the why something grows. Knowing the concept is enough for me, I know that something is planted and something grows, you either pull it up out of the ground or pluck it off from a tree. As long as it’s grocery store fresh and a reasonable price I can really care less.
And this is the attitude most Christians unknowingly have regarding the harvest of the world. The harvest is actually the people and they are looking to be picked or plucked because they are ripe but we don’t recognize them. And the sad thing is, they don’t recognize us as farmers or gardeners. We believe that the harvest acts the way they do because this is what they want to do. And this is an error for the majority of them, most of them are looking for authenticity within the church body. The harvest can recognize a phony farmer and gardener quicker than we can because they are better watchers and listeners. They are doing what we have been commissioned to do.
When an authentic farmer and or gardener go out into the harvest to gather it’s never many of them but a few amount. We say we love JESUS, we say we love the Word but do we go and reap in the harvest where we work, shop, dine, play, entertain and such?
Well, let’s forget about reaping a harvest and concentrate on working for JESUS. Hopefully, you are gainfully employed and you understand the concept of what it is to work. So I should not have to explain what it is to labor. We all understand that depending on our education the result of our labor will be a reflection. People who labor with their intellect and those that labor using their muscles. All in all, they both cause exertion knowing that we’ve accomplished a job that is well done.
Every laborer will wear the apparel that speaks. Those that use their intellect will dress very business professional and those that use their muscle will dress in a uniform of some type. As clergy we dress as chameleons, we maybe in our cleric attire or dress in our everyday casual street wear or dressed in the business professional you can never tell with us.
As a laborer for JESUS, work does not cause exertion or sore muscles or emotional weariness as secular employment does. As a disciple who labors to reap the harvest, do get tired but we are so high from speaking and hopefully making a connection with people in the hopes of creating a relationship that they will see our good works in CHRIST that they will want JESUS for themselves. We rest very well with a sweet peace. As a disciple who labors to reap a harvest if our muscles are sore, it’s because we don’t see a need and just say to the one in need “I’ll be praying for you” we get in there and help to make a situation better. This too moves a harvest to ripen so that when ripe we will be able to reap it in due season. And as a disciple when a laborer is weary it’s not due to anxiety caused by stress or worry it’s due to the heartache that someone they have invested so much time in turned and walked away or maybe they thought they reaped that harvest when ripped when actually it was not.
A laborer must be a discerner of the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit is the One who calls in the harvest, not us. We are the reapers, when we reap a harvest before time what we get is either hard or hard and green. We are to always be in a posture of prayer that the Holy Spirit will increase the laborers because people who are the harvest truly do not want to remain in the state they are in. They know they are in need of GOD but they just don’t know how to reach HIM, we have HIM, we know that the only way to the FATHER is through CHRIST JESUS because HE is the only way, truth, and life.
JESUS said it when HE was here on the earth then and it remains true now, laborers are fewer than the many people in need of being harvested. (My paraphrase)
So if you are blood washed and you profess and possess CHRIST JESUS, ask yourself these questions
- Am I a disciple?
- Am I a laborer?
- Have I reaped a harvest?
- Do I care?
Matthew 9:37, Lk. 10:2, Matthew 20:16, 19:30, 22:14
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