TODAY’S PROPHETIC THOUGHT

I have made an investment in you and the fields we plow together. Be steadfast and patient. I have a plan and it’s a good one. Partner with the Holy Spirit and together we will have a wonderful harvest.

PUT THE MATCHES DOWN

Every time you burn a field, there’s terrible collateral damage. Burning a field is a broken relationship or a divorce. You don’t walk away from a divorce and just resume life. It takes years to recover from a divorce.

A lot of times, people never recover from a divorce. It changes the family dynamic so much, it’s never the same. Instead of caring for the field or fighting to pull the thorns and thistles out, they decide, “Well, there’s too many weeds in this field. I’ll torch it and I’ll just deal with the damage later.”

Later is usually a few decades away. A huge majority of the salvations we see in church is from people 40 and older.

People make such terrible decisions in their 20s. It takes the entire decade of their 30s for them to get past the decisions they made in their 20s. Then, they don’t even begin to have a right mind until their 40s. Meanwhile, they raised kids in their 20s and 30s and now they’re all kinds of messed up.

The collateral damage from all the fields we burn causes us to fight a lot of battles we don’t need to fight. How much easier is life when you’re committed to a harvest through selflessness.

When Peter denied that he even knew Jesus in Matthew 26:69-74, Jesus could have just burned that field, but He didn’t. In Mark 16:7, He tells the women to tell the disciples and Peter that He would meet them in Galilee. Jesus knew that God would bring a harvest out of that field and He did.

Not everything worth having is going to be easy. Sometimes a field needs to be burned so it can grow back healthy. Sometimes a bit of patience and a little forgiveness can save the field and bring in a crop for the Lord of the Harvest.

FROM MY SERMON SERIES LORD OF THE HARVEST