A Time for Everything

A Time to Plant

Ecclesiastes 3

A Time for Everything

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,”

The Lord gave me this word for my local church which is relevant and, I think, worth sharing – albeit modified a little.

It is time to plant. Many of you have sowed and sowed and then cultivated and grown. Now there comes a time to harvest but it’s not the usual harvest that most of us expect. Rather it is a harvest in preparation for the coming great harvest. It is time to plant new churches, and new ministries, and the Lord is waiting to bless your planting just as He has blessed your sowing.

There are many places where the Gospel is rarely, if ever, heard. Joshua 13:1 says, “When Joshua was old and well advanced in years, the LORD said to him, You are very old, and there are still very large areas of land to be taken over.” ‘There are still large areas of land to be taken over’ – interesting phrase for these times. I see the church at long last leaving the safety of its own four walls and going out into the market places to gather the harvest in.

The example for us is in Matthew 22:1-10 – “Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come. Then he sent some more servants and said, 'Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.' But they paid no attention and went off— one to his field, another to his business. The rest seized his servants, ill-treated them and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. Then he said to his servants, 'The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. Go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.' So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, both good and bad, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.”

The clue is in verses 8-10 where the servants were told to ‘go to the street corners . . . .’ Another translation says for the servants to ‘go to the highways . . .’ This is our clue to leave the church building and get out to where the people are. For too long we have said, “All are welcome” - but hardly anybody ever comes. So, like the king in the parable, we need to go to the highways, the by-ways, and the street corners and invite people in.

I believe with all my heart that the Lord is calling us, His church and His Bride, out of the safety and sanctuary of our buildings and calling us on to the streets with the message of salvation through His precious Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. He is telling us to drop our smug sanctimony and adopt His servanthood – to get up off our comfortable seats and get out into the harvest fields – to begin to be the servant church that He has always called us to be. We need to heed His call to us or we will miss much of the harvest.

If that happens, how will you explain to Him why you didn’t do it?