Spiritual Harvest

Gregory and Heidi Whitaker, missionaries to Cambodia, tell about the spiritual journey of a man named Yang:

Yang’s son, Mabt, belongs to the Bunong people, a tribal group in Cambodia. Mabt met the Lord when he moved to a city to continue his education and stayed with Christian dorm parents. For years, he was the only believer in his family.

During one of his visits to his home village, Mabt prayed in his home, welcoming the Holy Spirit and breaking the curses of the mountain gods. He then began playing the guitar and worshipping Jesus. As he sang, the high shelf holding the family idol crashed to the floor, and the idol shattered. His father, Yang, rushed in, saying, “My son, what have you done? Now I will not believe in anything. Not in the mountain gods, and not in your God.”

Yang held to that statement for years, before his heart softened toward the truth and he slowly turned to the Lord. During that time, his vision deteriorated. Yang had lost an eye to trauma decades earlier, and now his remaining eye was becoming cloudy. Mabt approached us to ask for advice, and we referred Yang to Mercy Medical Center for evaluation. He made the daylong trip by bus from the province and underwent successful cataract surgery.

After Yang returned home with restored vision, he was able to read the beautiful words of the Gospel in his own language for the first time. Yang has become a follower of Christ, and freely shares his story with other villagers. “I received my sight back, and then I could read God’s words for myself, and now I believe Jesus.”

It took a team effort of the Body of Christ to touch Yang’s life--from dorm parents to Bible translators to medical personnel.

In his most recent book What Good Is God?, Philip Yancey writes:

This is a true story from Afghanistan that took place in the early 1970s, before the Russian occupation or the Taliban regime. At the time, the government allowed a small Christian church to service internationals who worked there, though no Afghans could attend.

A friend of mine named Len organized a musical team of young people to tour countries in the Middle East. With some trepidation, he also accepted an invitation to extend the trip to Afghanistan for a concert in downtown Kabul. Len made the teenagers write out exactly what they would say, subject to his approval. "This is a strict Muslim government," he warned them. "If you say the wrong thing, you could end up in prison and at the same time jeopardize every Christian who lives in this country. Memorize these words and don't dare stray from them when you perform." The teenagers listened wide-eyed as he described the ominous consequence of a slight misstep … .

The night of the official concert in Kabul, almost a thousand Afghans filled the hall and spilled outside the open doors to listen. All went well until one teenager on the team put down his guitar and started improvising: "I'd like to tell you about my best friend, a man named Jesus, and the difference he has made in my life." From the side of the stage, Len motioned wildly for him to stop, drawing his finger across his neck. Ignoring him, the teenager proceeded to give a detailed account of how God had transformed his life.

"I was practically beside myself," Len told me. "I knew the consequences, and I sat with my head in my hands waiting for the sword to drop. Instead, the most amazing thing happened. The Minister of Cultural Affairs for Afghanistan stood and walked to the stage to respond.

"'We have seen many American young people come through this country,' he said. 'Most of them come for drugs, and most look like hippies. We have not seen nor heard from young people like you. God's love is a message my country needs. How thrilled I am to hear you! You are a prototype for the youth of Afghanistan to follow in the future. I would like to invite you to expand your tour so that you visit every college and faculty and also give this same message on Kabul Radio. I will make it happen.'"

Len was dumbfounded. That night he gathered the musical group together. "Did you hear what the man said? We're changing our tickets, of course, to lengthen our visit. And he wants you to give this same message— you'd better not change a word!"

Over the next few days, the musical team held other performances. After each event Afghan young people crowded around with questions. Tell me more about this Jesus—we know of him through the Qur'an. You speak of a personal relationship with God. Can you describe it? How does your faith change you? Some asked to pray with the teenagers. Nothing like it had ever happened in Afghanistan.

On the last day, after a triumphant tour, the teenagers met J. Christy Wilson, a revered figure in Afghanistan. Born of missionary parents in Iran, he … [had] spent 22 years in Afghanistan, serving as principal of a government high school and teaching English to the Crown Prince and Afghan diplomats. He also led the Community Christian Church and founded the School for the Blind in Kabul.

Wilson drove the teenagers to an unusual tourist site, the only cemetery in Afghanistan where "infidels" could be buried. He walked to the first, ancient gravestone, pitted with age. "This man worked here 30 years and translated the Bible into the Afghan language," he said. "Not a single convert. And in this grave next to him lies the man who replaced him, along with his children who died here. He toiled for 25 years, and baptized the first Afghan Christian." As they strolled among the gravestones, he recounted the stories of early missionaries and their fates.

At the end of the row he stopped, turned, and looked the teenagers straight in the eye. "For 30 years, one man moved rocks. That's all he did, move rocks. Then came his replacement, who did nothing but dig furrows. There came another who planted seeds, and another who watered. And now you kids—you kids—are bringing in the harvest."

"It was one of the great moments of my life," Len recalls. "I watched their faces as it suddenly dawned on these exuberant American teenagers that the amazing spiritual awakening they had witnessed was but the last step in a long line of faithful service stretching back over many decades."

In a sermon, John Ortberg said:

A little while ago, my wife kidnapped me and took me to Napa Valley for a romantic, overnight getaway for just the two of us. I had never been to Napa Valley before. It's lovely. What struck me as I was going past the vineyards was all of the thought and action that went into the rows of vines. A fruitful, productive vineyard is a thing of beauty. But here's the thing about vineyards: they don't just happen by themselves. Vineyards don't just spring up by accident. Someone is behind them.

The writer of Proverbs 24:30–34 says: I was going past a vineyard, and it was a mess. There were thorns all over the place, the grounds were covered with weeds, and the walls were falling down.

To understand the angst behind this proverb … you have to understand that in the ancient Middle East, a piece of land capable of growing crops was one of the most valuable things in the world. To be the owner of a vineyard was to be blessed with the opportunity of a lifetime. …

Everybody gets a vineyard. When you were born, you got a vineyard. You got your body, your mind, your will, and some relationships. You got financial resources and the chance to do some good work. You got a soul. Everybody gets a vineyard, and that vineyard is your one and only shot on this planet. It's the opportunity of a lifetime, and you don't even have to care for it on your own. God will partner with you.

Nonetheless, God never forces anybody to take action and care for their vineyard. The writer of this Proverb says, "I was walking past a vineyard, and I thought of what it might have been." He sees that the vineyard could have been a thing of beauty. It could have been a source of pride, joy, and income to the owner. It could have been a blessing to everybody around it, because in ancient cultures, a place that grew things that people could eat or drink from was a blessing to everybody. But the vineyard the writer observed wasn't any of those things. It fell tragically short of what it might have been. The writer wonders why: Was there some catastrophe? Was there a drought, flood, fire, or some other disaster? No. It was just sheer negligence on the part of the owner of the vineyard. He had no idea what he had. He was throwing away the opportunity of a lifetime. That's the strange power of entropy. It's not even a thing. It's sheer neglect, and people throw their lives away because of it everyday. …

People have these fantasies: I want the perfect marriage, I want the perfect circle of friends, I want the perfect career and the perfect education; if I can't have that, then I won't do anything. The writer of Proverbs says we must start with reality. Work the land that is your land—your body, your life, your relationships, your work—because that vineyard is all you have. If it's ever going to be different, it won't be because the vineyard fairy comes and sprinkles fairy dust on it. It will be because you asked God to help you. It will be because you've asked him, "What's the next step that you want me to take?"

As tedious and tiresome as it can be, there's something soothing about the sound and smell of leaves as you rake, and something satisfying about seeing them all bundled up when you're done.

What is it about raking leaves that's so satisfying? It has to do with the harvest. Human beings have a primal urge to sow and reap, to gather a crop, to bundle the fruits of their labor. To a farmer, the harvest represents a year's worth of planting and tending, of watching and waiting and wondering. When the last sheaf is bundled and the storehouse is full, the farmer feels a sense of satisfaction and gratitude.

Most of us are not farmers, so raking leaves is about as close as we'll come to bringing a harvest home. But the satisfaction we find in gathering that weightless, worthless crop is an expression of our God-given longing to do something with our lives: to sow and reap a harvest of significance. When we come to the end of a year, or to the end of our lives, we want to have something to show for our efforts. We want to gather the fruits of our labor, and we hope for an abundant harvest.

How can we manage our resources in a way that yields an abundant harvest? According to Paul, the answer is to give generously. Paul writes in verse 6, "Remember this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously." That seems to have been a popular saying of Paul's day. Something like today's "what goes around comes around." But Paul takes it to a new level of meaning.

It's often called the law of the harvest: you reap what you sow. If you sow barley, you reap barley. You'd have to be pretty foolish to sow barley and expect wheat. Not only that, but the more you sow, the more you reap. If you sow 10 acres of barley in the springtime, you can expect 10 acres worth of barley at harvest time. But don't expect a harvest of 40 acres if you only sowed 10. It doesn't work that way. The more you scatter, the more you gather. Paul applies that simple principle to finances: the more you give, the more you gather. In the same way that a farmer who sows generously reaps generously, a person who gives generously is blessed generously. Put another way, the more generously we give, the more abundantly God provides.

In an interview with World magazine, author and speaker Mike Bechtle questioned the church's use of what he would call spam evangelism. He believes that when the gospel is shared outside of relationship, unbelievers often put up thicker emotional walls. He shared a personal story from his past to emphasize his point:

A college classmate decided to walk down Central Avenue in Phoenix at lunchtime and ask women to kiss him. He wanted to see how many people he would have to ask before someone took him up on it. After being repeatedly cursed, ignored, and slapped a couple of times, the 98th woman gave him a kiss. Using the logic of spam evangelism, he might say, "It was worth it, because I actually got one person to kiss me." I wondered about the other 97 women who might be more hardened than ever, more suspicious, and more wary of men approaching them on the street. In the same way, I think a lot of unbelievers have been hardened by aggressive witnessing techniques.

The last thing LaShanda Calloway saw before she died was people literally stepping over her to continue shopping as if nothing had happened. Calloway had stopped to shop in a convenience store in Wichita, Kansas, when she was stabbed in an altercation. As she lay dying, a surveillance camera recorded no less than five people stepping over her to continue down the store's aisles. Only one stopped briefly—to take a picture of Calloway with a cell phone camera.

"It was tragic to watch," police spokesman Gordon Bassham said. "The fact that people were more interested in taking a picture with a cell phone and shopping for snacks than helping this innocent young woman is, frankly, revolting."

Wichita police chief Norman Williams had even stronger words: "That's crazy! What happened to our respect for life?"

Churches and individuals have come up with creative ways to raise money. Potlucks, plant sales, walk-a-thons, concerts—the list goes on and on. But in the fall of 2005, 8-year-old Briton Nordemeyer of Brandon, South Dakota, thought of something new.

It all started when she lost her tooth. Briton had heard about the victims of hurricane Katrina, and wanted to help the little children who lost all of their possessions. So, she decided to donate the money the tooth fairy would bring for her missing tooth to the local chapter of the Red Cross.

Instead of waiting for the tooth fairy to arrive, however, Briton mailed her tooth to the Red Cross. She included a letter explaining her desire, and her confidence that the tooth fairy would render payment upon arrival.

When news about Briton's generosity reached the public, the Red Cross received a $500 donation from an anonymous donor who had heard the story and wanted to help provide a fairy-tale ending.

[Eighteenth century pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards'] most famous composition, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (1741)…is stunning: it recalls a then-current style of sermons preached to condemned criminals just before their execution, during which the minister would stress their imminent encounter with God and exhort them to repent. Such sermons were often published, so most would have recognized the genre.

In a shocking move, Edwards applied this form to his hearers in Enfield, emphasizing the sinfulness of even respectable church folk. As he hammered home the instability of their position before God, whose hand alone held them from immediate death and the judgment that followed, he was in effect comparing them to condemned murderers.

The form of the sermon echoes and reinforces its content in a magnificent way. But that is not the source of its power, or at least not the only source. We can know this because, a few weeks before preaching at Enfield to the accompaniment of the screams of convicted sinners and the joyful weeping of new converts, Edwards had preached virtually the same sermon (we have his manuscript and can see how few amendments were made) to his own flock in Northampton. But his flock responded only, as far as we know, by shaking his hand and saying "fine word, pastor" as they went home to lunch.

All of this reinforces Edwards's own analysis of the revivals: the word is the occasion for awakening, and a necessary one, but the Spirit of God does the work, and he "blows where he wills." His passing could be seen in lasting changes: People made humble, faithful, prayerful, holy. Churches made earnest in worship and hungry for the word. Towns where, to quote Charles Simeon, a century later, "goodness" became "fashionable."

Screams, faintings and other such spectacular phenomena were nothing either way: they did not demonstrate the Spirit's presence, and they did not preclude it either. Such was Edwards's final analysis of the revivals in The Religious Affections (1746).

Every generation is strategic. We are not responsible for the past generation, and we cannot bear full responsibility for the next one; but we do have our generation. God will hold us responsible as to how well we fulfill our responsibilities to this age and take advantage of our opportunities.

My garden has taught me to think ahead. For it to be fruitful, I must plan. I must build soil, plant, and nurture what I have planted. It has also taught me to hold the harvest lightly. Over the course of a season I can lose a crop to spring rains that rot the seed, slugs that eat new shoots, rabbits that eat everything, hail that breaks the strong, and drought that withers the weak. I can lose a crop because of my ignorance or my carelessness. Until I have the fruit in storage, where it can also spoil, I live with uncertainty. I do my best, work faithfully, and hope.

I know perfectly well that, wherever I go and preach, there are many better preachers known and heard than I am; all that I can say about it is that the Lord uses me.