Some twenty years ago, I took a job as a youth director, never suspecting what a wild ride it would be! Noisy van rides with teens jumping out at stoplights to run around the van, stuffed into tents with 10 teen girls (and a few uninvited cockroaches) on mission trips, and many a game of Capture-the-Flag gone terribly wrong! Plus, the well-earned gifts of one ruptured disk, two messed-up knees, three bloody noses, “and a partridge in a pear tree!”
But none of those compared to the great adventures of discipling the teens I grew to love! It is in the hundreds of small groups and intimate conversations that the rubber meets the road with youth ministry. This is where teens spill their guts and stretch their hearts. Some moments were full of tears, some full of laughter; but most took these young seekers a step closer to knowing they mattered to me…and they mattered to God.
Now, years later, I see that these precious moments of hard questions and hurting hearts were where the growing of faith began. These young seekers wanted to know who God was. They needed to know they are loved, valued and that God cherishes them just as they are. Perhaps this is what creates the good soil in which the sprouts of faith start to grow.
In those fertile moments, I found the real work of sowing the seeds of faith. The harvest that came out of those years is priceless, but at times it was costly to both me and my family. But, of course, anything of great value is worth the time and sacrifice that is necessary. I consider it one of the best times of my life, and it has made me who I am today.
I have become not just a “Fisher of Men,” but a “Farmer for God,” planting seeds and celebrating a season of harvest!
Jesus speaks of the same kind of harvest in a parable. He tells a story of a “Sower” that spreads seeds today with hope of a great harvest in the future. Not all the seeds fall on fertile soil. Some are lost to distraction or hard hearts, but…
”…Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.”
Matthew 13:8-9 (NIV)
Where in your life are you spreading seed in hopes of a future harvest?
Where are you spreading goodness and kindness in hopes that those that received it will pay it forward, producing “a hundredfold” of goodness and kindness in the future?
What are you doing today that will let someone know that they are loved, valued and cherished by God, just as they are?
Or maybe you are in a season of harvest that came from seeds YOU got to sow? What’s that look like?
Guess what? I saw God’s harvest just last week!
I had a coffee date with one of those teens I shared many an intimate conversation with! She is 22 now and has small groups and intimate conversations of her own with a youth group she loves. She bathes in God’s Word daily and pours it over the kids she leads. And I think she feels even more loved than she did back then!
She is the one sowing seeds now. She will be the one reaping a harvest in the future! She is now the one God is blessing with noisy vans rides, crowded tents and stretchy hearts!
And my heart couldn’t be more grateful and proud and joyous!
She, and many others that I am still connected to, are the harvest! They are what God has grown from the small kernels HE planted years ago. Each one has gone out into the world with a faith that is contagious and a sower’s arm that throws the seed wide and well.
You can be a Sower, too, my friends!
All the times you have love for your neighbor and especially for a stranger.
In the moments you have shown Jesus to those who are seeking.
And when you love justice and defend the small and helpless, you are a sower.
YOU are sowing God’s seeds! You are bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to earth! You are planting the tiny mustard seed in a field, and the harvest it will bring provides a home for the hearts of many! (see Matthew 13:31-33 ESV)
My hope for you, fellow farmers, is that you are blessed as you sow seeds, that you are filled with the joy of seeing God’s harvest, and that your pockets will always be full of seeds with plenty of places to plant them!
Shalom,
Namra
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