Sowing Seeds

Sowing Seeds

I am an inveterate quotation collector – usually Christian quotes but always things I wish I had said rather than those which I only heard. You know the sort of thing – a pithy little short but memorable saying that is both instantly understandable and memorable. One such quotation is this - "Do not judge each day by the harvest you reaped, but by the seeds you have sown." – Anon. Another such saying, and one that I did write this time, is this – “We plant seeds. We may not see them grow and ripen, but someone will harvest them eventually. God will honour your sowing and planting.”

Many speakers, most of the speakers I have heard anyway, speak about their previous meetings where 27, or 512, or thousands of souls were saved. Very few talk about sowing, but nearly all talk about reaping. I don’t hear too much talk of team in there either – very few, if any, ever try to acknowledge that there is “no ‘I’ in team”.

However, this is not a preacher bashing blog, this is a sowing one. Any fresh water fisherman will tell you that the more bait you cast onto the water, the more chances there will be of catching a fish. So it is with fishing for men – the more seeds you sow the more chance you will have of reaping a harvest.

Most of the time, we have no idea how many, if any, of the seeds we sow may or do come to fruition. I can illustrate that with this story about the man who led me to salvation in December 1962. He was at that time a poor Elim pastor of a tiny struggling church in North London. I was 19 and, due to peer pressure, I soon left the Elim church for my local C of E because it had a very good youth club. We lost sight of each other for about 40 years !!

Around the millennium period (1996-1999?? I really can’t remember) I felt a prompting from the Holy Spirit to find him again. Through some contacts in the Elim church, I located him in Wales. It appears that he had become a very well respected and quite well known evangelist with a diary stretching three years ahead. I still did nothing until one day the Holy Spirit prompted me, with some urgency, to contact him. I dug out his phone number and, with some trepidation, I called him.

The conversation I had was with his daughter, who I had probably met as a baby because he had lived about 6 doors away from me. My pastor was ill – seriously ill. He had a brain tumour and was dying. His wife didn’t come to the phone but asked if I would call back again in a few days. I did this and she told me that, they believed that my call was their answer to prayer for healing, but it didn’t turn out that way as Pastor died a day later. However, as he lay dying, the enemy was whispering and asking him and his wife, “Where is your fruit now?” Even at deaths door, he was still trying to rob Pastor of his inheritance and eternal life – even on his death bed. Yet even at that stage, apparently as my call went through to her, the Lord said, “Here is your fruit – 40 years on and still bearing more fruit.” When you sow a seed, you have no idea of where it will lead or what the effect will be.

So here is your challenge – if you will accept it. "Do not judge each day by the harvest you reaped, but by the seeds you have sown."