The Life-Renewing Words of Jesus by Adam RamseySample

“The fields are white for harvest”

“Good things come to those who wait.”

“Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

“Slow and steady wins the race.”

In Jewish culture, at the time of Jesus, “There are yet four months, then comes the harvest” had a similar meaning. This saying pointed out that a person shouldn’t expect to harvest a field they had only planted that morning. Miracles don’t happen overnight.

But while that is always true in an agricultural sense, it is not so in a missional sense. Jesus warns us from settling for an evangelistic mindset that has forgotten that when he is involved, miracles can happen overnight. While patience in God’s mission is vital for long-haul faithfulness, the harvest isn’t only some time off in the future. There are people whom God intends to draw to himself—with saving, reviving impact—each and every day.

Jesus had just prophetically revealed himself to the woman at the well. And apparently, this evangelistic interaction had had a nourishing effect on Jesus himself! No longer hungry and fatigued by his journey, Jesus has been revitalized. He says to his disciples, “I have food to eat that you do not know about ... My food is to do the will of him who sent me” (v 32, 34). He wants them to understand that the Father has woven our joy into his mission. And when God’s mission becomes the lens through which we see our day—including those parts of our day that often seem like interruptions to our plans—there is a nourishing impact on our lives.

After all, what is a sandwich compared to a soul?

Let’s open our eyes to the people God brings across our path this week and pray that we will follow Jesus into the Father’s work that he has set before us.

Quote for Reflection"

“Some of you good people, who do nothing except go to public meetings, the Bible readings, and prophetic conferences, and other forms of spiritual dissipation, would be a good deal better Christians if you would look after the poor and needy around you. If you would just tuck up your sleeves for work, and go and tell the Gospel to dying men, you would find your spiritual health mightily restored … Do but win souls, beloved, through the power of the Holy Spirit, and you shall find it to be a perennial spring of joy in your own souls.”

Charles Spurgeon, “A Golden Sentence,” Sermon 3135