2011 Fasting Week Friday
-John Port

We are not really an agricultural society anymore, so when we talked about going into a year of proper planting, it was necessary to explain what was involved in planting—preparing the soil for the seed, and so forth. As we move out of the year of proper planting, we now need to realize what comes after the planting—which, by the way, a year is a really long window for a planting season. But after the planting comes a period of growth and not until after the growth and ripening comes the harvest. There are things that have to be done during those times in order to improve the odds for a good harvest.

Just as the soil must be prepared and the seed scattered or planted during the planting stage, in the growth stage, the new young plants must be watered, and fertilized, and weeded, and protected from birds and insects and vermin and even disease.

I honestly don’t know what that would mean in a spiritual analogy, but we might need to find out, because after the planting comes the growth, and typically the growth season is much longer that the planting season. I understand we’re subject to God’s economy and timetable here, so it might not be very long at all, but if planting season is typically a few weeks, and growth and ripening several months—we just went through a year long planting season and we may be several years growing before we get to the harvest. That could be a whole lot of watering, and fertilizing, weeding, and protecting!

And if the analogy holds to the next stage, harvesting includes things like cutting, and hauling, and storage. What does that mean, and how do we get ready for that?

Sowing: The natural verses the spiritual
-Glenn Beaty

Sowing in the natural take a lot of patience, time, and work. The farmer plants his crop then works it weeding, watering, and waiting for something to happen. When another farmer plants a fruit tree he waters it, prunes it, and waits ( for 7 years ) for it to bear fruit. This takes much patience.

Sowing in God takes a lot of faith. As you sow your money, time, help, or work, it goes with a lot of prayer. You must have faith, for this is a miracle in progress. For when it comes, it comes in the blink of a eye. It may happen at the moment you pray, or it may happen at another time, but it happens in a blink of an eye because it is a miracle of God. This takes much faith.

Jesus said if we only had faith we could move a mountain. (Matt 21:21,22)