This is the time of year when seed catalogs arrive. For those that love gardening it is just about as good as receiving that toy catalog before Christmas when we were children. It generates the same excitement and captures our dreams of the future season ahead.
But my meditation today is more abstract than that. It is from the Bible. I Corinthians 3:6,7. In these verses Paul is describing in terms the gardener can understand what sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ is like.
“I have planted, Apollos has watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth, but God gives the increase.”
These verses are speaking of soul winning. So often we think when we seek to share the gospel with someone we have to drive home our point that they need to be saved right there and then. This is a valid desire because we know the eternity that waits the lost person is hell. Hell is a place of eternal torment with no reprieves. As one old time writer said,”There are no exit signs in hell.”
But in my experience I have learned that God calls each of His children to different places in the process of winning a soul. What we really want is to some how impress on a person his or her need for Christ when they may not understand. Remember Satan has blinded their minds.
It’s like that barren field. If you went out there and stomped on the ground and expected a harvest –well you get the picture. That would be a futile attempt to grow anything.
So first the soil is tilled and then planted and then watered and then—–
Soul winning is the same. I am a big believer in handing out Bible tracts or leaving them in places to be found. I see this as planting the seed. Then I pray that God will use that tract in the heart of some needy person and that someone will water that seed I have planted. Then in God’s good timing that person will come to know the Lord and escape an eternity in hell.
Yes, sometimes a door opens to do more. The person is receptive. Asks questions and the Holy Spirit gently nudges us into the position of that person watering the seed or even that person that has the opportunity to harvest. That is a true joy to win a soul to Christ.
So don’t be discouraged if you are called simply to plant a seed. Paul, one of the greatest saints of all time, said that he even was often just that one that planted the seed. So we are in good company.
And let me add these verses from I Corinthians for an encouragement—“He that plants and he that watereth are one and every man (woman) will receive his own reward according to his own labor. We are laborers together with God.”
While you thumb through that magazine of magnificent blooms. For a moment stop and see them as people. People who are longing to bloom in God’s garden even though they do not know it yet. Imagine how beautiful they will become and you will have a part in it.
Simplemeditations 