WORK IN TERMS OF DECADES...NOT DAYS

There is a thing I do that bears significant fruit in the King's vineyard.  Should you not, then possibly this might change your life.

Years ago I was terribly frustrated (even depressed) that I couldn't make a difference.  Oddly, I learned it in Preaching School.  Each Monday chapel students would give reports.  One would call out baptizing a neighbor while another would exclaim seven responses to his sermon.  In two years of chapel....I never had one report.  Nothing happened to me other than spraining my ankle on the volley ball court.

My personal conclusion was that I graduated a failure; thus I began full-time ministry in that mode of doubt.

But then I saw something about God.  He said we would reap what we sow.  We all know that, but do you realize some crops don't show up for ten and twenty YEARS?  Today I am an enthusiastic seed sower.  That is the most I can say I do.  I love dropping kingdom seed here and there believing some will land on "it" and "wham" there will be an eventual crop.

I send notes all over the world with nothing specific in mind; just watering seed.  I plant gifts to the unsuspecting.  Sympathy cards are sent to near strangers who would find no reason for me to have even known their pain. 

But God is faithful to our planting. 

How was I  to know that in writing Sherri for nine years four states away (and getting zero indication she got any of the notes) that she would come back to God and the church?  She did...after NINE years of watering with NINE years of no response.

How was I to know that by knocking on my neighbor's door on purpose to ask for a favor I really didn't need, that God just might be there?  He was and I baptized my neighbor six months later. 

How was I to know that because I handed Curt Flood one of my books that we would become such close brothers I would be asked to speak at his mother's funeral and then at his?

I gave one of my books to Carole Buck when at baseball camp.  How was I to know that her husband would die that summer and she would ask me to write a book about him because she liked my writing skill and that book--Voice of Silver, Heart of Gold would be purchased by the Cardinals and given away at the turn styles on Fan Appreciation Day?

All I did was hand her a book!

How was I to know that in innocently sending my high school classmate (that I had seen only once in 35 years) a greeting card that it would be waiting for him when he returned home from 90 days in the hospital with brain cancer....that I knew NOTHING about?  Yet God sprouted and I flew to Chicago in October of that year to baptize him and then flew back in February to do his funeral.

How are you to know you matter?  What are you/we to do when we feel so.....well, so insignificant?  What we do is believe His organizational system.  The reason anyone has no fruit is always because that one has sown no seed.  Usually, the reason one sows no seed is they want a crop in ten days and since God doesn't work that way....they don't plant.

While you and I may be oblivious to any good we are doing in such planting....work in terms of decades, my friend, not days!