Parables and Miracles

Day 14

Chicago

I can’t tell you how happy I am to be receiving so many wonderful reports from people on this two month journey who tell me they are really discovering Jesus in a new way. Every day I receive many testimonies of how people are gaining new passion for the “Unvarnished Jesus.” YES! I was talking on the phone today with my good friend Georgian Banov; I told him what was going on and he asked me, “Is it revival?” I said, “Well, people are excited about Jesus.” Georgian said, “That’s revival!” He’s right. This is another late night post (past 1:30 AM) — so I’m going to keep it short.

“Seed” seems to be Jesus’ favorite metaphor in His parables about the Kingdom. Nothing about the seed process is instantaneous. In the American Charismatic culture we love the instantaneous but despise the process. Yet almost everything pertaining to the Kingdom happens by process. If you expect things to be instant that can only occur according to process, you will become discouraged, abandon the process and miss out altogether. Don’t despise the process — the best things that God will ever do in your life, will be accomplished through the means of process. Consider the Parable of the Growing Seed in Mark 4…

The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.

You don’t have to know how seed grows for seed to grow. If you get good seed in good soil, it will grow whether you know anything about how it works or not. This is true in our lives as we sow the Word of God into our own heart and it’s true as we sow the Word of God in the heart’s of others. Don’t expect every person to immediately become a Christian in the same instant that you give them the Gospel. This almost never happens. Sow the Word, go to bed, get up in the morning and go about life. As the seed finds good soil and the process of time does its work, the day will come when the sickle can be put in. Of course we are always tempted to rush it along, but when we try to do that, we usually just mess things up. Allow the Word of God and the God of the Word time to work in a person’s life. Let things ripen. I have the privilege every week to “put in the sickle” and see people respond to an invitation to receive Jesus as their Savior; but with those who really meet Jesus, there is almost always a long complex story of how God has been at work in their life to bring them to the point where they make faith decision for Jesus. So learn to be content to sow the Word, go to bed at night and allow time to do what only time can do.

Now I’m going to follow Jesus’ advise…and go to bed.

Well my heart’s in the Highlands wherever I roam
That’s where I’ll be when I get called home
The wind, it whispers to the buckeyed trees in rhyme
Well my heart’s in the Highland,
I can only get there one step at a time.