To This Generation

“ Now also when I am old and grayheaded,
O God, do not forsake me,
Until I declare Your strength to this generation,
Your power to everyone who is to come.”

A little over a week ago I received the collection of books that I ordered. The seven volume set titled “The Works of John Wesley”. There’s almost 9,000 pages in this collection and I’m getting through about ten pages an evening after Bible reading. Now the way I figure it I won’t be seen in the local library for almost three years at that rate. I’m about eighty pages into the first volume and at first I thought it would be kinda dry reading, but figuring the seven volume set would at least look fairly nice on the book shelf upstairs, but I endevoured to take a crack at the set and see how I could read something almost three hundred years old. To my utter amazement the first volume, which is John Wesley’s journal from his earlier years, has got me hooked! And now I look forward to the next couple of years reading and learning. Now I know it might sound out of style for the more up and coming, modern day approaching ministries, to even think about reading something like this. The differences between the people back then and the people now really don’t exist. They were sinners back then and since then nothing much has changed. The main line church at the time had about as much interest in getting out and about as the mainline church does nowadays. Not very much.

Its hard to describe, but my spirit just leaps when I read the accounts of how JW would minister to anyone and everyone, much to the church’s dismay at the time. So anyone that drops by this little blog might be getting some writings from a slant that changed the world a couple hundred years ago for the next couple of years. Back then he would preach to anyone and everyone. White, black, rich, poor, free, slave, didn’t make any difference. Young or old and anything in between, that’s the generation he preached to.

A couple of weeks ago, in my nightly Bible readings, I came across a verse that leaped out of the page and got planted firmly in my spirit. It’s in Psalms, chapter 71, verse 18. One part of it is what I’m writing about tonight. “Until I declare Your strength to this generation” Nowadays it seems popular to have a target ministry, and that’s fine by me. By that I mean the ministry is geared to one sort of folk or another, nothing wrong with it at all. But I never had anything like that stir me at all. When reading the above verse it struck me, “this generation” is everyone alive today. That’s what I get out of God’s Holy Word in this. This generation is everyone from birth to the folks well over a hundred. The folks on this world at this time. It dawned on me, in our own family’s personal ministry we’re leading folks to the Lord, anywhere from toddler to well over a hundred years old. The field that was placed in front of us is the field we’ll work the harvest in. Every nook and cranny of the field will be reached, just like in our regular farm fields we don’t leave anything behind.

The verse above has become a personal prayer of mine. I say it out loud several times a day and want to get it into the very marrow of my bones. This generation, no matter what the social standing, no matter what the economic standing. No matter what the present situation the folks are in, Christ died for them as much as He died for anyone ever living. Yes, I’m learning, learning from the Word and learning from the past, in things like John Wesley’s writings, the importance of us taking the Gospel to any and all. Young, old or in between, they are this generation according to the Word of God and if it says it in the Word, I believe it!

From Joy to Heartbreaks

As the days go by the harvest is coming closer to being completed. In a few days I think we’ll be starting the main chop of corn silage. Its drying down much faster than I had planned. There hasn’t really been any rain to amount to anything for a month around here and the dry down of the corn is starting to show it. The pastures are basically burned down with little or no grass and we have to feed the cattle in all four pastures seven days a week. The creek is going dry in one pasture where I pump water out of and the cattle from that one might have to come home this week. But even with that all said its really a good year here so far. The corn made the maximum height and if all goes well the silage pit will be filled this fall as it has never been filled before. Plus I think its just possible to make another pile near the feedlot across the county road just to have some feed out there for some of the cows I’d like to put out that way in a few weeks. Kinda get em good and fat for winter. Something we haven’t been able to do for a few years. I put my notice in at church today that I might miss a couple of weeks of teaching Children’s Church and there’s no problem with that at all. The folks there know and understand that the harvest must come in, just like the Good Book says and have given their blessing on the whole matter.

This sure has been a year of new beginnings around here in many more ways than one. From sad times to good times there’s been a fair share of both. But through it all we have to just keep our eyes focused on our King! The farm is producing again and there’s much more harvest work than the last few years. But that also means there’ll be allot less worries and stress trying to find feed during the winter. Something very difficult to do in a region wide drought. There’s been new beginnings at church, things I wouldn’t have dared to even dream a year ago. After surviving the first ever for me full service preaching a calm has come knowing that this major hurdle has been jumped, and jumped well from what they tell me. I have no idea when that will happen again, but first things first, time for the farm harvest to get put under the belt.

Today after church we had us a fish fry, some fried potatoes and some sweet corn. In Midwestern tradition everyone brought a dish or two of their really good foods from home and the only thing that makes me sad is that I wasn’t able to try em all out, there was so much. And when it was all said and done this afternoon we came home and finished up chores for the day and chopped tomorrow’s silage for feeding. All is done, all is well. And a surprising thing happened this weekend. I mean it really surprised me! I found out that the organization that gives covering to our little country church thinks my idea’s for ministry are good. I was nervous about that, very nervous, but nothing would have changed my mind in doing what I believe is my calling. But the fact that it sounds supportive really calms me down in my heart.

So I’m thinking tonight, dwelling on where we will go from here, how this will fit in with our lifestyle on the farm. The good thing is I can’t see one thing that would ever hamper our life here farming, not one thing. This will work and should work well. But instead of being an answer to many of my questions its opening up more and more doors that I never dreamed possible, or had ever thought about. Sitting under an ancient basswood tree today I talked with a brother in the faith and he told me about his vision of ministry that was working at his heart. After coming home and thinking about it while chopping silage I’m convinced that his vision is for real and would “fit” with mine. Later at the fish fry a pastor offered to help me in the future start a ministry, a legal one, and again once I came home and got to think about it, it fit! Funny how God works.

These writings on the internet the last few years also have taught me allot. Its for real and the folks that read it are for real. When someone has joy, I feel the joy. When someone has deep sadness I again feel the sadness. It can be a burden many times, but a burden well worth it.The real fact is, the people are real and so are the joys and heartaches. Right now there’s a heartache that has me crying out to God these last couple of day. I don’t know if I should do this, but I will anyhow. Folks, anyone that has ever read comments on this humble little rural blog knows Brad who comments most every morning here with me and a couple other folks. In fact I figure he writes about half of the words in the comments section of this blog. He’s been around for a few years, first starting on my Northern Farmer blog and then finding a welcome home here. Brad e-mailed me yesterday, Saturday, that his wife whom I know he loved very, very much passed away from a traffic accident this past Friday. I was totally floored when I opened that e-mail and my heart is just crying out to God for them folks. This has shown me that the folks that come around here are real and are my friends, even the invisible ones that pass by here daily. And I’m asking all who come by this little blog to remember Brad and his boys in this very hard time. He’s my friend, a very good friend and I know allot of folks feel that way too from reading his daily comments here. I regret having to be so far from them at this time, but our prayers are reaching the Throne in their behalf!

We serve such a wonderful God! And in these times its a privilege to come to Him in behalf of a friend. To tell the truth it hit me so hard I am wondering about blogging, but I know the answer even as I wonder. In my own simple country way we’ll keep on going because I know that it touches folks and I know it glorifies our Lord. To serve the Lord in anyway we can is an awesome privilege and it will continue no matter what. It might be very quiet around here for a while and that’s OK. I’ll write from time to time as always and welcome any and all to comment. I pray for Brad and his family and will continue to pray.

Tending the Garden

Oh Glory!! Sweet corn season has to be one of the most blessed times of the year around this old farm! As long as its sweet and juicy I don’t get tired of eating it every day at both dinner and supper! Might be considered a small blessing by many, but for me its much more than that! Its a great blessing! Meal after meal totally from our own garden and farm. Had us some great chicken tonight with the sweet corn, cucumbers, tomatoes and taters from the garden. Small blessings I know, but blessings never the less. That’s one of the only sad things about summer ending, how we will miss the daily abundance from the gardens, always fresh and tasty!

Simple pleasures, simple blessings. Done the work with our own hands and sometimes sore backs, but the rewards are big! Dwelling on the Word while out in the gardens, seeing the miracle of life out there, how God supplies the needs we have. Sometimes the best things are received when a person is right down in the dirt, such as in the gardens. Tending one plant at a time, but the harvest becomes huge even after giving everything individual attention and pulling out weeds one at a time by hand. It teaches a person that personal ministry is the same way. Every person is important, and sometimes it takes time to get the weeds out, sometimes it seems downright impossible when they kinda get away on a feller, but persistence and getting right down in the dirt will sooner or later take care of the overwhelming problem. And faith that the job will be accomplished even though it sure don’t look like it at the moment.

I’m looking forward to September. The largest job we have will be looking us in the eye, making silage. The corn crop is huge here this year and that means allot more work, and I ain’t complaining because when the work is done there are no feed worries for the first time in years around here. And I’m looking forward to the time the silage is done, oh there’ll always be work around here but after this I’ll free up for a visit here and there after the work is done for the day. Just like the garden, its time to go out in God’s field and tend to it. There’s no problem figuring out places to go, folks to visit. Private homes, nursing home, whatever pops up. Start getting a route in order. The funny thing is how a person never runs out of places to go, and also how surprise invites do come besides the regular route. This should be about a seven month period and I pray that I can be of service for the Lord. This won’t be a high profile thing, in fact it can be rather thankless as far as that goes. But done it must be!

Never in my life have I had a pull like this. Its just every moment, every day. Start with the small things, start where very few go or cares about. A ministry that will never be big as far as I can see. By big I mean in the world’s eyes. Just like a garden compared to a huge field of vegetables in California or somewhere. That small garden can out produce those big high profile fields as far as quality and taste every time. No exceptions. Yup, that’s my field, the small garden ministry. But a person ain’t stuck in some big field getting sprayed with pesticides and herbicides making a person sick, nope, the small garden gets tended and produces the best, the healthiest, the most amazing crops! One on one.

Just rambling tonight, just thinking out loud. I love our little church, very, very much and always hope that I can be a help there. But the call, the main call is out in the countryside, around the farms and fields, the hills and lakes of the area. My prayer is that I can be of a service to the Lord our King! To proclaim His Good News to any and all who will hear it. I am so thankful that through such a mixed up life that God would still use someone like me to be a fool for Him!

A Verse From Psalms

Here it is almost the middle of August and the yearly Bible reading is still right on schedule, Glory! I never figured I’d make it this far, usually kinda sputter out in February reading the Books of Moses. This year though I stuck to it no matter what and low and behold the daily readings are still being done every evening, rain or shine and no matter how busy we are. Now this ain’t some sort of a brag, just joyful praise that its still going. I’m finding out that I never want to quit the daily readings, they’re not some sort of goal or anything like that, but I want to continue them non stop till the day comes when I leave this here world and cross the River Jordan! My studies have really slipped though in the summer months, but I’m not all to worried about them, they can be intensified once silage is done in a few weeks and the sun goes down earlier.

Every once in a while when reading the daily Bible readings a person comes across something that personally floors them and I ain’t no exception. Lately the readings have been in the Book of Psalms and a person usually reads two or three of them every evening. Now this book interests me quite a bit the more and more I get into it. I’ve read many of them before, many times but now I’m “forced” to go through every one of them in order and its starting to become apparent that this is a wonderful book, to say the least.  Now I can see why the oldtimers put so much stock in reading the book, and also Proverbs. Words to live by. But as far as Psalms goes the raw praying to the Lord is really getting to me. And the amazing thing is that so many were written about three thousand years ago and the situation ain’t hardly any different today than the problems them folks went through. Kinda timeless! And a few evenings ago I came across a verse, several really, but will just put this one down here. The moment I came across it I stumbled around the house looking for a pen to mark that verse with in my old King James Bible. I was reading allot of the Old Testament with the Living Bible but switched back to the KJV when I got a little ways into Psalms, must be I like the old way it was written in . Plus then a person can catch a verse here and there that I’ve always heard preached or something and know where it came from.  Well anyway I’d better get the verse down that I was writing about before I forget I was writing about it, (its happened before).

Now also when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.

This is from Psalm 71 verse 18. It has become my personal prayer out of the prayer book of the Bible!

Foolishness

For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

The Bible has a way of just talking to a simple farmer like me. And these verses just keep coming back to me over and over that I decided to write them down. When something keeps coming over and over, where it really is in me that day I do like to write it down, sometimes not even knowing why. Now if the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who aren’t saved that makes the person preaching it a fool as far as what the world see. OK, no problem with that one, been called worse! But as the Word gets more and more into a persons heart the preaching of the cross really becomes the power of God. The Gospel, the cross, the resurrection, foolishness to the world, but not to the born again, well saved Christian who knows that they have been pardoned by a merciful God, a loving God. The pardoned sinner knows there was nothing he or she could have ever done to justify themselves to God Almighty, nothing. And in the repentant person’s total surrender the cross pardoned all.

So simple its just foolishness, who could ever figure that one? Preaching the cross, no matter what a person does is the number one thing that a Christian is on this earth for. Preaching in words and in deeds, or actions. The Kingdom of God looks so unbelievably upside down compared to how most of us have been brought up in the western world. But I figure we were upside down when we were totally immersed in the world which made heaven look upside down from where we were standing. A couple of posts ago I wrote from Matthew chapter 25. In it was one of the most powerful, and upside down things written in the Gospels. I’ve read it over and over the last few years but never was struck by it until recently. It came clear that in the Christian walk that those verses were some of the most important Kingdom basics anyone could ver come across. The preaching of the cross has always given hope to the hopeless, not this new American religion where middle class believers are hoping to get blessed and get rich money wise. But hope to those who have no hope. Its becoming clearer and clearer to me every day what the Gospels mean and what they want us to do to spread the Kingdom. I was once somewhat interested in evangelism, still am, but in a much different way. The way I feel extremely lead now is what I’d call a full service ministry. Where did I ever get that idea? From the Gospels! Also studying the lives and times of the old circuit riders showed me that was what they did too. All this week I’ve been wrestling with this. Most of the time on the tractor or swather where a person just keeps going for hours and hours.

The Bible is so incredibly awesome! After a while it gets into the very marrow of a person’s bones. The more its read and taken in the true foolishness of the world starts to get more and more exposed. Then the more it gets read the Word starts to place a courage in a person’s heart where it doesn’t matter if they look like a total fool to the world. They know with all their heart that they are becoming a servant of the most high God! I know some don’t like the word servant, especially in this day and age, but I know of nothing greater in this world than being a servant for the Lamb that was slain for our sins. Does this mean that we have to quit everything we do and start a ministry? The answer is no. A ministry doesn’t have to rely on outside donations to survive and thrive, a ministry doesn’t need a tax number and be non profit. It can be run right with a person’s regular life. There was no such thing as any of this modern day stuff a hundred years ago, worrying about legal status and such. They just did it. The old circuit riders sometimes only got paid six dollars a year, if that, and had to find their own way to support themselves and families. The job they did truly was foolishness when looked at in a world view. Looking at it from a Kingdom view it was beautiful!

I’ve been wrestling with a problem, the fact that the moment a person recognizes a calling, a true calling from God to spread the Gospel its instantly accepted. The problem is that I don’t really know if folks understand where I’m coming from. I don’t have any calling to do church stuff. I love church, I really do. But my calling is the unglamorous outside of a church. Farm to farm, village to village. Maybe I get viewed a fool for thinking this way but it doesn’t change anything. God has worked this into me for a long time and if it means preaching in the church once in a great while, that’s fine. Outside of the walls is where the true action is. Making a fool out of one’s self in the eyes of the world and maybe the church too. Its not a comfortable ministry, no glamor at all in comparison the a preacher that has a well established church and walks through town every day greeting the church folks. Attending all the local events as the town’s pastor. No, this has none of that at all. So why the pull to do something so upside down compared to the way that’s totally accepted? Because taking the Gospel to those that need it is one of the greatest calls anyone could ever hope to answer!