Which is Better?

 

To say we live fast-paced lives is truly an understatement.  My knees are still weak from when I heard the account of Felix Baumgartner stepping into the void nearly 128,000 feet (24 miles) above southeastern New Mexico.  He landed safely on the desert floor about 20 minutes later. His harrowing plunge shattered the skydiving altitude record, which had stood for more than 50 years.  Felix reached Mach 1.24, breaking the sound barrier on his decent.  In laymen’s terms that’s 833 mph and in anybody’s book, that’s fast!

 

But there are different speeds for different situations.  Sometimes we need to move fast and at other times The Speed of Seed will do.  Do you know the difference?

As Honi The Circle Maker, our spiritual guide, was coming to the end of his life he was walking down a dirt road when he came upon a man planting a carob tree.  “How long will it take this tree to bear fruit?”  The man replied, “Seventy years.”  Honi said, “Are you quite sure you will live another seventy years to eat its fruit?”  The man replied, “Perhaps not.  However, when I was born into this world, I found many carob trees planted by my father and grandfather.  Just as they planted trees for me, I am planting trees for my children and grandchildren so they will be able to eat the fruit of these trees.”

Honi concluded that prayer is planting!  Each of our prayers is like a seed that gets planted, gone from the naked eye for a while only to return bearing fruit that blesses generations.

So here’s our struggle with prayer: we want our prayer to have rapid responses from God, like falling 128,000 feet in four minutes.  We want to reap in seconds what we’ve sowed.  In other words, we want things to happen at the Speed of Sound rather than at the Speed of Seed.

 

·  Your dreams will NOT become a reality over night!

·  Questions don’t always get answered in hours!

·  Harvest starts with a season and ends with a season (spring to fall).

Mark Batterson says about this:

      ·  We need the patience of the planter.

      ·  We need the foresight of the farmer.

      ·  We need the mind-set of the sower.

Try as you might friend, you can’t make anything grow.  God put that principle in place and no one can change it.  That’s why the Apostle Paul would use the analogy in 1 Corinthians 3:6: “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.” 

In your circle of prayer, what seeds are you planting?  What you plant is what you will get.  Planting the right seeds will secure that right harvest at the right time.  You will get what you sow!

I’ll meet you at the Throne,

Pastor George