The harvest truly is plentous

The Great Commandment

Matthew 22:37-40

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

The Great Commission

Matthew 28:18-20
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Been attending the Blueprint course for the past few weeks and it has been a huge blessing to me in many ways. Though it is simple, yet it's the simplicity that speaks to me. It's the Word of God made easy to understand that I'm able to absorb the deep truths in the Bible.

Just last Saturday, one thought stuck me from the course.

The Great Commission is really the supreme fulfillment of the Great Commandment. We obey it because we love God and love man.

The moment we lose our fire for evangelism, we have lost the reason for our existence. Often times, the first sign of a declining church is when the passion for souls decline. Often the first sign of a declining Christian is when the passion for souls decline.

I have lost that fire. I have lost that passion. My heart have been hardened to the cries of all the people around me.

I was so encouraged when someone dear to me shared something with me.

These few days have been really busy but good. Yesterday, I went to street e and was paired up with Marcus. I've just known him for a short time but it was such a blessing to see his faith and watch him witness to complete strangers and it really encouraged me. I dunno, I've been to street e heaps of times before but somehow yesterday was different and I was really touched by it. It just amazes me, seeing his ability to interact with so many people who are complete strangers from such different backgrounds and I guess that gave me more courage and just made me rethink evangelism and has encouraged me in a huge way.

I don't know if you remember that night. I didn't think about it until I read that entry and it all came back to me. That was the night that I first got to know you properly and we went to Long John Silver for dinner (well, I was the only one eating cos you already had dinner) and when I was paired up with you I was thinking "oh no" cos I hardly knew you at all and didn't know how it would turn out. But I thank God for the way things did. That night you spoke to a man (I think he was Filipino) and you shared with him Acts 8, about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. I still remember that night clearly. I was so encouraged by you and your passion for souls, your courage and your love for souls.

I guess I just wanted to remind you of that to encourage you. God has given you a gift Marcus, of being able to speak to anyone and even large groups of people and not everyone has that gift. He's used you in mighty ways for His glory before and He can do it again. He wants to use you, if you just let Him.

If I can be used by God in the past, I can be used by Him again. I want to be winning souls once again. I want to have a passion and fire for the lost around me. I want to be able to share the good news with those around me. I don't want to be ashamed of the gospel.

Use me once again...

I'll end with this story.

The following article is based on a sermon by missionary Del Tarr who served fourteen years in West Africa with another mission agency. His story points out the price some people pay to sow the seed of the gospel in hard soil.

I was always perplexed by Psalm 126 until I went to the Sahel, that vast stretch of savanna more than four thousand miles wide just under the Sahara Desert. In the Sahel, all the moisture comes in a four month period: May, June, July, and August. After that, not a drop of rain falls for eight months. The ground cracks from dryness, and so do your hands and feet. The winds of the Sahara pick up the dust and throw it thousands of feet into the air. It then comes slowly drifting across West Africa as a fine grit. It gets inside your mouth. It gets inside your watch and stops it. The year's food, of course, must all be grown in those four months. People grow sorghum or milo in small fields.

October and November...these are beautiful months. The granaries are full -- the harvest has come. People sing and dance. They eat two meals a day. The sorghum is ground between two stones to make flour and then a mush with the consistency of yesterday's Cream of Wheat. The sticky mush is eaten hot; they roll it into little balls between their fingers, drop it into a bit of sauce and then pop it into their mouths. The meal lies heavy on their stomachs so they can sleep.
December comes, and the granaries start to recede. Many families omit the morning meal.

Certainly by January not one family in fifty is still eating two meals a day.

By February, the evening meal diminishes.

The meal shrinks even more during March and children succumb to sickness. You don't stay well on half a meal a day.

April is the month that haunts my memory. In it you hear the babies crying in the twilight. Most of the days are passed with only an evening cup of gruel.

Then, inevitably, it happens. A six-or seven-year-old boy comes running to his father one day with sudden excitement. "Daddy! Daddy! We've got grain!" he shouts. "Son, you know we haven't had grain for weeks." "Yes, we have!" the boy insists. "Out in the hut where we keep the goats -- there's a leather sack hanging up on the wall -- I reached up and put my hand down in there -- Daddy, there's grain in there! Give it to Mommy so she can make flour, and tonight our tummies can sleep!"

The father stands motionless. "Son, we can't do that," he softly explains. "That's next year's seed grain. It's the only thing between us and starvation. We're waiting for the rains, and then we must use it." The rains finally arrive in May, and when they do the young boy watches as his father takes the sack from the wall and does the most unreasonable thing imaginable. Instead of feeding his desperately weakened family, he goes to the field and with tears streaming down his face, he takes the precious seed and throws it away. He scatters it in the dirt! Why? Because he believes in the harvest (Italics added).

The seed is his; he owns it. He can do anything with it he wants. The act of sowing it hurts so much that he cries. But as the African pastors say when they preach on Psalm 126, "Brother and sisters, this is God's law of the harvest. Don't expect to rejoice later on unless you have been willing to sow in tears." And I want to ask you: How much would it cost you to sow in tears? I don't mean just giving God something from your abundance, but finding a way to say, "I believe in the harvest, and therefore I will give what makes no sense. The world would call me unreasonable to do this -- but I must sow regardless, in order that I may someday celebrate with songs of joy."

Psalm 126:5-6

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.