White Unto Harvest

Since I grew up in church, I got to hear many a sermon on John 4:35. Invariably it was more like a sales pitch on at least two levels. On one level it’s talking about the “lost souls” that are just ready for harvesting. On the other hand, it was also about needing “workers” to go out and “win souls”. I’ve always hated sales. Ever since I was little and I had to go around the neighborhood and get sponsors for a “Jump rope-athon”, to selling candy door to door for some prize. Later on, as an adult, I worked in a call center as an outbound sales agent for a telephone provider, and selling Kirby vacuums door to door. In every case, I hated it. The Kirby thing didn’t work out. The only ones that bought the vacuum were my folks. With the call center, I nearly got fired for not making quota. So whenever a pastor talked about this, I always rolled my eyes and groaned quietly; here we go again.

I was always the quiet, shy kid, with an ADHD problem. Since I was quiet and shy, you can imagine that I didn’t talk about Jesus much. I was never sure how to broach the subject. There were always a thousand questions that I had in my mind. It wasn’t until high school that I lead someone to Christ. But even the way I did that was not the norm. Instead of telling him how great his life was going to be, I told him he was essentially painting a target on himself and then running in between the front lines. Ironically, it worked. I was never the type that was one to “win the soul” and then drop them at the door of the church. That just wasn’t me. I never considered that right. I considered it my responsibility to disciple him, and I did.

Today, I saw something that reminded me of all this, but this time I had another thought. It occurred to me, that yes, the field is white unto harvest, and, it’s not just us harvesting!  The enemy knows his time is short, and knows that the field is indeed white unto harvest. He knows that there are people who are hungry and desperate, so he has his workers out there too. They may look like us. They may sound like us, but they are not us. We will know them by their fruit. Fruit is always revealed in the end. All this time I only imagined that it was us, the Father’s workers, working in the vineyard. Something to think about.

 

In Yeshua’s service

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