The Plow

 Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:62...."To hold to the plow while wiping our tears, that is Christianity" Watchman Nee...."The life of faith is not a life of mounting up with wings, but a life of walking and not fainting." Oswald Chambers....."By perseverance, the snail reached the ark." Charles Spurgeon

We love all of Jesus' kind and comforting words to us. We don't like to look at or think about His hard ones....and there were more than a few. Luke 9:62 is certainly some of them. No one knows the hearts of the human race better than He who created us. Scripture tells us that Jesus knew, always knew, what was in the hearts of those He came to. He knew, and continues to know, how fickle our hearts can be. Like ancient Israel, we tend to look for opportunities to "return to Egypt" whenever the way becomes hard, painful, or costly. He saw those hearts in John 6, when He told them that to follow Him meant that they must do so with all their heart and be willing to lose all to do so. John 6:66 relates that at those words, "many turned back and followed Him no longer." The tendency to turn back from Him is deep within us. Only a deeper work of His grace can give us the strength, will, and desire to press on.

I was much impressed with the quotes from Nee, Chambers, and Spurgeon that I used above. They speak a depth of truth that we must come to grips with. To follow Christ will yield a joy in us that is beyond description, but it will also yield pain. There will be a price, a cost to us. Jesus said so. He warned those who said they would follow Him to "count the cost" before undertaking the journey. Plowing in the days before any kind of machinery was backbreaking work. To truly minister in the Kingdom will require a strength beyond anything found in our flesh. It can only be supplied by His Holy Spirit. In the midst of His plowing up the hard ground of the hearts He has sent us to, there will be pain and loss for us. There will be tears. Our response, if we are to continue, is to wipe those tears, and plow on. If we will do so, we find that it was really He who wiped them away....and gave us the supernatural strength to go on.

As Chambers says, the life of faith will not be one of continuous flight. It will not be one mountaintop experience after another. There will much flat, monotonous ground, where the landscape doesn't seem to change, and nothing seems to be happening. There will also be deep valleys along the way as well. There will be times when we mount up with wings, and there will be times when we ascend the mountain, but we will never spend the time in those places that we will on the plain and in the valley. Yet we keep walking because He walks with us. We trust Him for the next flight as we walk with Him "and not grow weary." We keep on walking as He keeps on leading. We know that He will get us to His purposed place for us....even when it seems that we're going nowhere.

Last, there will be those days where we feel our lives, our ministries, our efforts for Him are moving at a snails pace. We seem no closer to realizing their fulfillment than when we first began the endeavor. What we've prayed for, believed for, and worked for, seems no closer at all. We wonder where He is. We wonder why He has us in this place. We wonder why, though we've been faithful, nothing is happening that we can measure. The area around us looks no different than it did a day, week, or months before. It is in those times that He will whisper His grace into our hearts and spirit. It's in those times that we will hear words akin to what Spurgeon speaks. To persevere, to press on. To know that He is doing something beyond our present understanding, but that one day, it will all be clear to us. And that meanwhile, He's glad that we are with Him. And knowing that like that snail, by pressing on, by persevering, we will reach that place that He leads us to. We go on.

It's a hard saying indeed, but He speaks it because He knows all that is at stake in our following, our ministering, our walking with our hand to the plow. We are a vital part of the expansion of His Kingdom, regardless of what appears to be at the moment. So we go on plowing, walking, watching not the landscape or measuring the pace, but with our eyes fixed on Jesus. We will be assured that we will join the heavenly throngs that will join together in singing the words to that old hymn, "It will be worth it all.....when we see Jesus." It will be worth it for all that we gained on the journey, and for seeing, in all His glory, the One who led us all along the way......Plow on!

Blessings,

Pastor O