Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope

Shana: This is Shana on Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope. Joni, I just love the stories of your childhood and the songs that you learned.

Joni Eareckson Tada: Especially songs I sang in Sunday school.

Shana: Yes ma'am.

Joni Eareckson Tada: And there's one I still sing today, decades later, and maybe our listeners know it: "We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves." And we kids would march around the room, singing the chorus, and it was a simple song about plowing the earth until harvest time, that is heaven. The glorious season of finally reaping the harvest from your labor and bringing in your sheaves. On earth, that's bundles of grain, but the song reflects Psalm 126, "He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall return home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him." That is the labors he's done in Christ.

What a happy Bible verse that is, and heaven's harvest will be a glad time. But in the meantime, sometimes working in God's vineyard, laboring in our fields of service, it can be burdensome. It can be tiring. It's why Galatians 6:9 encourages all of us who serve the Lord. Yes, we're working in God's vineyard, but Galatians 6 says, "Be not weary in well-doing, for in due season you will reap if you faint not." And that line, "We will reap if we faint not"—after years of pressing on through afflictions, I have often straightened up from my labors, leaned on my hoe or put my hand on the plow, and I gaze out at the horizon and I long for harvest time.

For that better country where we will finally bring in the harvest, that is our sheaves. When I feel plain tired with the trials of life, I remember that in every trial, God has a purpose. He's doing something big, and that purpose is so beautifully expressed in this Puritan prayer from the book Valley of Vision. So if you're tired today and a bit weary from your Christian labor, be encouraged by these words: O Lord, give me a deeper trust, that I may lose myself to find myself in Thee, the ground of my rest. You are the spring of my being. Give me a deeper knowledge of thyself, give me a deeper power in private prayer, more sweetness in thy word, more steadfast grip on its truth.

Give me deeper holiness in speech and thought and action. Plow deep in me, Great Lord, that I may be a tilled field, the roots of grace spreading far and wide until Thou alone art seen in me, Thy beauty golden like summer harvest, Thy fruitfulness as autumn plenty. I have nothing but that I have received from Thee, and I can be nothing but that Your grace adorns me. I read that prayer and I think, "Oh Joni, in due season you're going to reap if you faint not." So do not be frustrated that harvest time seems so far in the distance.

In the meantime, Lord Jesus, plow deep in me, Great Lord. That's a risky prayer because we're asking God to take His plow, the sharp cutting edge of His will, and run our lives through, furrow us, unearth parts in us that need to be tilled, places in our soul that have been faced down for far too long in the dark. Turn those places in our heart upright toward the sunshine of God's love and the showers of His mercy. So plow deep in me, Lord. Yes, it's a risky prayer because it's an invitation into the school of suffering. But harvest time comes when we will be singing, "Bringing in the sheaves, bringing in the sheaves."

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves. Singing it! We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.