But the grain is not for eating, it is
what has been saved to plant for the next harvest. Finally
the rains come and the father takes the only grain he has
and scatters it across the ground. Tears stream down his
face because he knows that his family is hungry and that he
is scattering their only grain across the ground.
The man believes in the harvest and he
sacrifices short term fulfillment for a long term reward. In
the man did not have faith in the future, he would not let
his family suffer for the moment. As we spread the gospel,
we will not see results immediately but we must have faith
in the future and that what we are doing will see results in
the end. In the same way, the foundation we looked at last
chapter is only the start and more work must be done before
we can hope to see the reward.
Last chapter we looked at three values
for evangelism that give us a solid foundation to build on.
These are three things that we must fully believe if we are
going to able to make the sacrifice to scatter the seed in
hopes of a harvest. These values are the foundation on which
we will build our entire structure upon. The values
discussed last chapter were: People matter to God, People
are spiritually lost, People need Christ.
If we truly believe these things, we
are going to be able to make the sacrifices needed to reach
out. We will be willing to spend our time and our money and
our talents on things that we believe will enable us to make
contact with those who do not know Jesus.
Once our foundation is laid, we can
begin to build the structure that will house our plan for
evangelism. Just as every room has four walls, so we will
construct four walls for our plan.
Once again, I turn to Mark Mittelburg in Becoming a
Contagious Church. You can look at these points as either
walls (information) to build upon your foundation from the
previous chapter, or you can view them as walls (barriers)
to tear down in your relationships.
Next Section -
Wall # 1 - People Need Answers
