Ripe for Harvest

Dear CBC Family,

John 4:35-38 “Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.” There have been times in my life, and no doubt yours too, when God’s kind of nudged us in one direction to do His bidding, but we’ve found it far more convenient to head in the opposite direction, to do ours.

When someone wants us to do something that we don’t really want to do at that moment it’s so easy for us to make excuses. “Now’s not the right time. I need to get this other thing sorted out.
I’m too busy right now” etc…. We are really good at excuse making when our heart isn’t in something. They’re our perfect strategy for avoiding what God has for us to do, here and now.

Here’s Jesus talking to His disciples and He tells them that they think they have “four months until harvest”. Jesus is saying the time for harvesting and God’s will is now and not some time in the future. In other words, stop making excuses. The time is now. The field is plowed, the seed is planted, the crop is ready. And to prove the point, He’s telling them this just as He’s just finished ministering to the Samaritan woman at the well while He was tired, thirsty and hungry, and amid cultural circumstances (she was a woman and a Samaritan!) that were far from right.

Note to self and CBC: Stop making excuses. The time to follow Jesus and do God’s will is now, not later!

“The will of God.” There is hardly a more significant concept for the one who has been born again. It is the basis of our being found faithful. So, what is it? How do we know it? When will we learn to base our decisions upon it? These questions are so important as we consider our meeting with Jesus on that great day. The good news is that we are not left in the dark to try and figure these things out. Paul wrote chapters 12-16 of Romans to teach us all about this.

Join us this weekend as we learn what the renewed mind is and, more importantly, how to have it. I called the sermon “Out with the Old, In with the Renewed.” This is a very important and life-changing study from God’s holy word.  

Remember that this Saturday is the annual business meeting. It will begin right after church around 6:30 PM. We will try and keep it to under an hour. If you have any questions please submit them to me and I will either send you an answer or I will address it at the meeting.

Blessings,

Pastor Scott