Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: I want to talk about sharing your faith and the parable that I've been thinking about and studying and trying to apply to my own life and evaluate my own life is the sower and the seed. So if you would turn with me in your Bibles to Matthew chapter 13 and have it open and ready.

We're talking about life in the kingdom. What happens when you come to know the king? Well, one thing that happens when you come to know the king is you want everybody else to know him too. That's for sure. And perhaps that strikes a little note of guilt in some of your lives. Maybe that's not a priority. Maybe that's not something that comes, as it were, naturally to you to want to share what you have found with other people.

Don't feel bad if that's the case, but I do want to make a very clear statement that if things are right between you and God and you've come to find him, it's like finding the cure for cancer. If you had found the cure of cancer, I doubt if you'd keep it to yourself. And of course, the cancer of sin is much worse than the cancer of the body. For the body only lasts a mere 70 years or so, three score years and 10, and a soul lasts forever.

And so when you come to know the king and he makes the way into the kingdom of God for you, then usually what happens is you desire those that you love to join you in the kingdom and those that you don't love even to join you in the kingdom. It's an amazing thing. You want to share your faith with everyone.

The farmer was a very typical picture that Jesus used in many parables. When Jesus talked of farmers, everybody immediately clicked into his point. And some of the stories he told about farmers were about good farmers and some were about bad farmers. Sometimes he would depict the farmer as a foolish man who built barns to hold all his grain and every time he'd fill a barn, he'd build another barn and fill it up.

And then one day he said to his soul, "Soul, we have much. Eat, drink and be merry. We've nothing else to do but enjoy what we have laid up for ourselves." And then of course, God speaks to that foolish farmer and says, "Thou fool, tonight thy soul shall be required of thee. Then whose shall these things be?" And it's a very foolish man who lays up for himself treasures on earth and thinks not about the treasures in heaven. For we know not, even this night, if our soul will be required of us.

I was looking after Judy's children in Chicago and I was doing grandma duty. One of the neighbors was trying to get the ice off the roof. The ladder slipped on the ice and he was killed instantly. This neighbor happened to be a good friend of my daughter's and her husband and had spent the whole day before he got up on the ladder with the leaders of the Presbyterian church, going through a catechism to reiterate his faith because he was to have been ordained yesterday in that church as an elder.

On the way home, his wife said, "I've never really heard you tell how you came to faith." And so he reiterated everything that he had just said to the elders to his wife. They got home, had a cup of tea, he got the ladder out, climbed up it, and went to heaven.

His wife said to us, "What an incredible thing that he spent his last day affirming what he believed about Jesus Christ and his salvation. What an incredible thing and how wonderful that he was about to give all his free time to serving that community church."

But immediately into my mind sprang that particular parable that Jesus told about the foolish farmer. This man was not a foolish farmer. This man was a faith farmer who farmed his faith, who sowed his seed because he believed he needed to share his faith and serve the kingdom. And he wasn't a fool. And that night his soul was required of him. We never know. We can climb a ladder at the age of 50 and go to heaven.

So we look at the stories Jesus told. Some were about people that were foolish like the foolish farmer, and sometimes the story suggests that the farmer is God or is Jesus. And sometimes the story suggests that the farmer is you or I. And specifically in the story of the sower of the seed, I see the Christian—the one who knows the king, the one who's been born from above, born anew of the Spirit of God, the believer.

As we read the parable, hopefully you're going to see yourself there. Now, just before we do read the parable, however, let me just tell you one or two things about faith farmers, sowers of the seed. When you think of the farmer in Jesus' day, what do you think of? Usually I think of a Sunday school picture of the farmer dressed in Middle Eastern clothes with his big basket of seed in his left arm, striding over the earth that he has hand-tilled, no doubt, with his sons and maybe his brothers and the extended family, scattering the seed out of the basket.

That is a very familiar picture, even though it's not our own culture. Isn't it the most natural thing in the world to look at a picture like that and say, "Well yes, that's what farmers do." I mean, what a silly farmer if he had all that seed and kept it locked up in a barn and never went out to sow. What sort of a farmer would he be?

And yet I have people, believers, that say to me, "Well, it's not my gift," or "I feel awkward doing that," or "I don't want to impose my beliefs on somebody else." Everybody has a right to believe what they should. I don't even influence my own children, a mother told me not long ago. I want them to be able to choose for themselves. And I said, "Well, at least give them a chance to choose right. Give them the option."

Well, they'll find out. Well, if they're going to find out from everyone else, wouldn't you like to have your point of view in there as well? It's an amazing thing, but even believing families sometimes feel that it's the most unnatural thing in the world to go and sow the seed in the world. Just absolutely unnatural. And yet when you think about it, it's the most natural thing in the world.

And I believe that if you're a believer, it should become for you the most natural thing in the world, the most joyful thing to do what farmers do. Once you become a Christian, you become a farmer. And God puts in your arms a great big basket of seed. All the seed you need to scatter on your particular fields.

You're responsible for your fields. I'm responsible for mine. I am not responsible for yours. You are not responsible for mine. All of us are given land. All of us are given the ability to scatter that seed. So every Christian is a farmer.

And it's not that hard. I was talking to somebody else the other day and they said, "Well, it's just so difficult. I get tongue-tied. I can talk about my vocation, I can talk about my job, I can talk about my family, I can talk about my hobbies, but when I start and try and talk about my faith, I just get all tongue-tied and maybe I'm just scared of saying the wrong thing and putting people off or not doing a good job."

But when you think about that man just chucking that seed, some might throw it further, some might do it quicker, some might do it in grand style, and some might look very awkward doing it, but anyone can chuck seed around. And the more you chuck it around, the easier it becomes.

One of the problems is as soon as we become a believer, we join the Christian ghetto. And so there's no point in chucking seed all over people that are already sprouting and are other little sheaves already brought into the barn. And so we stop. And some of us don't even know any barren land that needs seed upon it because we're not out. And you're going to see in a minute that the farmer went out to sow the seed. But every Christian a farmer. Every single Christian a farmer.

Now, just before we turn to the parable itself, would you turn to Mark chapter 4, verses 26 to 29. This is a little piece of scripture that I don't think I've ever looked at properly. I've read it. And there's a wonderful hymn in England. I don't know if you have it at Harvest Festival time. You don't have Harvest Festival. You have Thanksgiving, which is not quite the same. But in England we always celebrate Harvest Festival, and especially in the country churches, everybody brings fruit and vegetables.

Maybe you used to do this in some of your rural areas and decorate the entire place with vegetables, with the firstfruits of the fields. And then when it's all over, all the families in the church bundle all those things up and take them around to all the farmers and all the people that are poor in the area and give them fresh fruits and vegetables.

And there's a wonderful hymn that talks about all of those harvest festival things. And there's one that says, "First the blade and then the ear, then the full corn will appear." Do you have that? "Come, ye thankful people, come." That's right. Well, that's what these verses remind me of. Look at 26 in 4. He, Jesus, said, "This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how."

All by itself, the soil produces grain. First the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. And as soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it because the harvest has come. Now, this is a parable of the kingdom. Jesus is talking. And it seems a very simple little parable. The absolute focus of this parable is the seed. And what Jesus is saying is there is dynamic life in the seed.

In other words, there is a dynamic something in that seed out of all proportion to its size. It will produce a harvest. Little tiny seed. I remember going to the Holy Land and being given a little tiny glass thing with a mustard seed in it. It is one of the smallest seeds of all seeds. And the mustard tree is one of the biggest trees of all trees.

I've lost it, unfortunately. But it's just a little tiny thing with this little tiny mustard seed in it. I was searching frantically all around the house, of course, if you could see my house, how could I find a mustard seed in it? If it had been planted, then it would have been easy to find the mustard tree, but it wasn't.

But when you look at that little tiny thing and you look at a mustard tree in the Holy Land, or you look at any tree—you look at an oak tree and you look at the size of an acorn—out of all proportion to its size, the seed has this dynamic something in it, this principle of life in it. And if you are a Christian farmer, you have got to start there. If you do not believe in the seed, you will not bother farming the fields.

If you do not believe that within the Word of God, within the seed, then you will never bother scattering it anywhere. And I see this as one of the biggest problems in the church today, because I think we have lost, in a sense, our confidence in the Bible, in the truth, in the Word of God. And I think truth is under attack today as it never has been before in America. And of course, all truth has its focus in the Bible.

So the kingdom of heaven is like a seed, says Jesus. Sprouts and grows. What is life in the end? You can put what it does under a microscope, but you can't make it. You've got to have life to make life. Even to clone it, something's got to be living. And God says, "Well, of course that's me. I am life."

In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him. Without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shined in the darkness, and the darkness didn't comprehend it. John 1. That's what the gospel begins with.

And so in him was life, and that life principle is in the seed. Every farmer knows the dynamic life principle in the seed. He doesn't know how, but he doesn't need to. You just scatter it and you'll see what it does. We're supposed to hold out the word of life. We're supposed to hold it out and give people a chance to find that life for themselves.

Now people who do not have a high view of scripture, as I said before, do not usually share their faith. And I want to ask you something very straight. What do you believe about the Bible? What do you believe about this book? About this precious book? There's a verse in the scriptures that says, "He that goes out weeping, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless, doubtless come again rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."

What sort of faith do you have in the written Word of God that speaks of the living Word of God? Let me say that again. What sort of faith do you have in the written Word of God that speaks of the living Word of God, Jesus, who came to say, "I am the truth, the living truth, and my Word is truth"? Do you really believe it? Do you believe this is the truth or a truth? That will determine whether you will share your faith.

And if you don't believe it, it's not worth sharing. Do you believe the effect of sowing the Word of God will have an impact out of all proportion to its size? In the parable of the sower, the man who receives the word and brings forth fruit produces a crop yielding a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown. That little seed has the power to do what you could never do by all your arguments, what you could never do in any other way. The seed can do.

Hebrews 4:12: "The Word of God is living and active." 1 Thessalonians 2:13: "The Word of God is not of man but of God." This is no ordinary book. "Holy men of old spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit." 2 Peter 1. It's God-breathed. 2 Timothy 3:16. God breathed into the minds and hearts of holy men of old and even though they were not aware sometimes of what they were writing in prophecy and history written in advance, they wrote it down. God-breathed. "He chose to give us birth through the word of truth."

So as we share our living faith with perseverance with others by scattering the seeds of truth, some people will come to life. So what do you think of the seed? There's a little tiny churchyard near where I used to live in England. It's a typical beautiful little tiny churchyard, still with the pews. It's 1800 or something like that, even maybe older.

The pews are family pews and the name of the family is on the end and only the family—you'd pay your money to the church and that meant that you had a pew in the church, the family would have a pew and nobody else was allowed to sit in your pew. It's just the most beautiful little church. Many people visit it and take pictures and everything.

The thing that interests me about that little churchyard, however, is if you go around the back, a little cobbled walk around the back of that little English country church, you will find the most amazing sight. It's all full of crooked old gravestones. They're not kept anymore. Probably all the families have died off. So they're overgrown and it's all a bit of a tangle.

But there is one great big gravestone. I think it must have been a family grave with a great big headstone. And the reason it's so interesting is it is split open. And out of the middle of it has grown an oak tree right through the stone. The dynamic life in a little seed buried somewhere under that body before the body was ever put in the grave has come right through everything, including the gravestone, and split it in two. Isn't that incredible?

And I think again of my daughter's friend. The power of God through what he believed. That's what has happened to death for this man. He's living, more alive than he's ever been, more healthy than he's ever been, more searingly aware of everything that's true and real than he's ever been.

And for him, the seed buried in his life brought forth a harvest of righteousness. And when his time came, God just burst through the grave for him. "Death, where is thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory?" Now, I believe with all my heart that the scriptures are the inspired Word of God.

I heard a little joke the other day. Often when we go to pastors and leaders meetings, you get the latest jokes. And pastors and evangelists particularly—evangelists are the best for sharing jokes. But I heard one of a pastor that wasn't too sure of what he believed and at the end of preaching a great sermon, he would always say, "But then what do I know?" It took the impact away.

I want you to know something about me: that when I open this book and I teach the Bible, I know and I believe with all my heart and soul that this is the inspired Word of God. I was interested to see in our statement of faith: Scripture. We believe the scriptures, both Old and New Testament, to be the inspired Word of God without error in the original writings, the complete revelation of his will for the salvation of man, and the divine and final authority for all Christian faith and life. Yes, we really do.

And because I believe that, I have absolutely no alternative but to go out as the sower did and sow. So after all of that, if you would turn to Matthew's Gospel, chapter 13, let me just remind you of the parable of the sower. Jesus went out of the house, sat by the lake, and large crowds gathered around him. Got into a boat and he sat in it while all the people stood on the shore.

He must have been a wonderful teacher, by the way. Quite a few years ago, I had to sit to teach a lot. It is the hardest thing to do, to sit to teach a crowd of people. It is the most energetic thing that you do. You have to be a wonderful teacher to be able to keep a crowd of people who were standing—they weren't sitting, they were standing—just this mob of people with kids and people doing business and all of this. Jesus sat and taught them out of the boat.

Wouldn't you give your right arm to have been there? And this is what he said. He told them many things in parables, and this is one of them. "A farmer went out to sow his seed. And he was scattering the seed and some fell along the path and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places where it didn't have much soil and it sprang up quickly because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched and they withered because they had no root."

"Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil where it produced a crop, a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears, let him hear." The disciples come and he explains why he teaches in parables, and then he explains it to them.

Verse 18: "Listen then to what the parable of the sower means. When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The one who received the seed that fell on rocky places is the man who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since he has no root, he lasts only a short time."

"When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, he quickly falls away. The one who received the seed that fell among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful. But the one who received the seed that fell on good soil is the man who hears the word and understands it. He produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty, or thirty times what was sown."

There's just one little verse that's been going through my mind since I read this a few weeks ago. The sower went out. The farmer went out. The farmer went out. And it's a very simple thought. But I would like to suggest the church has never been too keen on going out. And I am guessing that if persecution had not arisen in the early church, the church would never have gone out. They would have stayed a little cozy Christian club in Jerusalem and you and I would not be here today.

And what God had to do was allow the devil to try and put the fire out. When you throw a bucket of water on fire, what happens? It spreads it. And the devil threw a bucket of persecution over the fire of the early church and spread it all over the world.

And God allowed the early Christians, just ordinary people, to be scattered. Acts 8:4 says, "Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went," or gossiped the gospel, another translation has it. The people who were scattered, scattered the seed. And sometimes God has to scatter us. He has to pick you up and he has to transfer you and put you somewhere else.

He has to allow you perhaps to lose your job so he can scatter you in another place where there's a very barren field that nobody's ever even dropped one little seed into. Because perhaps that's the only way he's going to get us to go out. To go out. Circumstances not our own making can enable us to take and use the opportunity to sow the seed.

And that's not always easy. Sometimes life circumstances force us to some strange or foreign land. Paul said, "The things that have happened to me have fallen out to the furtherance of the gospel." He was chained to two men, Roman soldiers. So what did he do? Even though he was chained, he started chucking seed all over them and they couldn't get away. And it began to sprout despite those soldiers' efforts to shut their ears. He wouldn't shut up and they couldn't make him and they came to faith.

And soon most of the people in Caesar's household had heard the gospel. How? Because there was a prisoner chained to two soldiers somewhere. And Paul was able to say, "The things that happened to me fell out to the furtherance of the gospel in this place." Marvelous. The circumstances of our lives.

Nothing happens to us that doesn't come through the nail-pierced hands of God. And if he allows us to be transferred, to be moved, it could well be because there's a field that needs sowing nearby. I was thinking of that widow and I was thinking, whatever we feel like, however dark our days, whether family is falling apart, whether our wife is dying or husband has just died, maybe our children are giving us fits, job is tenuous, health is failing, we're losing all our money or our house burns down.

There's a very wonderful verse in the scriptures—listen to it: "He that regardeth the clouds will not plant" or "whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap." I don't know if you've ever noticed that verse. It's Ecclesiastes 11:4. And so often when clouds come into our lives, we just quit until we're better or it's changed or life gets around the corner.

But I have found in the small things, the bad things, the clouds that God has allowed in my life, that you just have to keep on sowing. You just have to keep on because it could be that very situation that has come into your life will take you to a place in life or to people in your life that you'd never have a chance of seeing again.

And so you've got to sow come wind or weather. "He that goes out weeping, bearing precious seed," remember? He that goes out weeping. When you're down, when you're up, when you're in the middle, when you're depressed. Somebody said to me the other day, "Jill, I am just depressed. When I stop being depressed, then I'll start and sow the seed. What can I do about feeling so down?" I said, "Well, just enjoy another mood and go on sowing the seed. Why do you have to wait until you're up?"

"I have to wait until I'm happy." Why? Sow when you're down, sow when you're up, just sow. That's what farmers do. Farmers don't say, "Well, I'm feeling depressed today. I won't go out and sow." Remember, it's the most natural thing in the world. So sow come wind or weather.

Sow generously. I see this man scattering the seed. He scattered it so wide. Some fell on the pathway. He didn't just take one little bit of seed and plonk it in a little flowerpot and say, "Well, that's me done for life." He just sowed generously. And you know what the scriptures say: "Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly; whoever sows generously will reap generously."

Have you told everyone you know about Jesus yet? Well, how long have you known him? If you sow sparingly, you're going to reap sparingly. But if you tell every single person you know, give them a chance to respond, you're going to reap generously. You're going to come into heaven with sheaves with you.

"Sow your seed in the morning and in the evening let not your hands be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that or whether both will do equally well." Try everything! Try a book, try a phone call, try a letter. You don't know whether this or that will succeed. Do it in the morning, do it in the evening. You are on duty 25 hours a day if you're a Christian farmer. That's what sharing your faith is meant to be.

And so he went out. Now, we have got an enemy. The birds! There are birds in this parable. And Jesus, instead of using birds in a good sense, which he often does in other parables, he uses them in an evil sense. He uses the birds to depict the devil. He says, "Now the problem is you're going out and you're scattering seed left, right and center. And the devil comes along just like the birds do and snatch the seed out of the ground."

So the devil comes and snatches the seed out of the mind. And I see this in church. I sit there and I listen to an incredible sermon, and this stupid distraction comes along and everybody's distracted. And I see the birds fluttering all over the sanctuary. And I think, "There they are again. There's those birds. Snatching it away, distracting people." People are so easily distracted.

And that's the devil's business. So people will be rootless. They won't get chance to get the roots down. And if that happens, or persecution comes and the sun comes up and things get tough and there's no root, then that seed is not going to work. No root, no fruit. Those that receive the word at once receive it with joy but since they've no root, they last only a short time, because when trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. No root, no fruit.

I remember at Homerton at my college, I brought a girl to the Lord Jesus. Her name was Fiona. She was a wonderful girl. And she just grew up, but she didn't have too much chance before the birds were all over her. She went home—in fact, she came to the Lord about a week before semester break. I tried to keep in touch with her during the interim, and I was sensing something bad was happening at home.

When she came back, she said, "Sorry Jill, I can't even be your friend anymore. I can't go on with this Christianity. I would have to leave home. My parents are so aghast at what I'm trying to share." And she said, "I'm sorry, but my relationship with them means more than my relationship with God or with you." And I saw the birds snatch away before she'd had a chance to get her roots down. It was a very sad thing. I've often thought about her many, many, many times.

So you can be rootless or you can be fruitless. Thorns and thistles—worries, pleasures, riches—can crowd out the seed or of course, it can fall on good ground. I want to finish by telling you a story. It's a very wonderful story, and I've told it probably in different forms many, many times. But I couldn't think of a better one to finish with.

When I lived at Capenwray in the English Lake District, I was a young mother. Stuart was on the road for the mission that we worked with, and so I had evenings when the children were in bed and I could get a babysitter to go out and do some sowing of the seed. My friend Angie, another farmer, faith farmer, she worked at the mission, said, "Well, let's just go downtown to our little village." It was a little village out in the English country and see who's there.

So we went and found a whole lot of kids just hanging around. We looked around. We found an old cinema that was just an old cinema there that cranked out movies and so we hired the cinema. And we had a Billy Graham film, Time to Run. It was a very early film. Those of you that have got gray hair will remember that Billy Graham film years and years ago.

And we put it on in the cinema and we just handed out leaflets and all these kids, hordes of kids just hanging around bored, doing nothing. And we got the place full for this film. And then at the end, we just got up on the platform and said, "Now opposite we've hired a room in this building. It was just an empty room. And on Tuesday, three days from now, we want to see you there and we'll tell you more about what you've seen on this film."

Eight kids showed up. Eight kids. So what did we do? We took our basket of seed, we went where nobody had ever sown before, I assure you. And we chucked it over them in a cinema. And eight little potential sheaves turned up. And we began to work with these sheaves and we just chucked it over them week after week after week and then we watered it with prayer. Did all the things you're meant to do.

We tried to stop the birds coming and snatching it away. And the birds came, snatched it away from a couple of them, but some of them took. And eventually we got 30 after a few months. And the 30 became 100. And then we told them what I've told you. I said, "You're faith farmers. There's your bucket of seed, this is it. Just take what you're learning and go and share it with your friends. And if you need help, we'll come with you."

And they said, "We need help," and so we went with them. And we began. And the 30 became 100 and the 100 they were into soccer and they started soccer leagues and they started throwing seed over everybody that came to play soccer with them. And soon all these soccer kids had come to Christ. On the way to school, I chucked some seed out the window on a farmer's wife and she came to Christ and she led her husband to the Lord and he gave us a big barn, which was very appropriate for sheaves.

And we started gathering all these little sheaves into the barn, all safely gathered in. And then we began to instruct them how to do it. And it ended up Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, seven days a week in the barn, in this grain warehouse. Kids coming out of our ears. They walked four miles there through the fields in the dark to get there and they walked four miles back. We didn't have any transport. And God began to bring in the harvest.

Eventually we started a nursery school in that grain warehouse and started with one child. And ended up 10 years later with 400 kids in that nursery school. And that was a fertile field with parents and we could do little Christmas deals at Christmas and introduce the parents, started art classes, started coffee shops, started outreach.

We trained the kids to go out with their buckets of seed and we went out to the fairground and we chucked the seed over everybody at the fairground. And we went down at the beach and all these hordes of kids would just be walking up and down the beach at this local seaside place and we'd just buy hordes of sausages and we'd have a sausage sizzle.

And we did it all wrong because we never checked on the tide and the tide came in and took us all away one night. We just didn't do very well. And then my little band I got together out of all these sheaves that played the guitar. We went down to the front one night, I always remember, and I thought, "Well, where can we plug in?" They said, "Where are we going to plug in, Jill? We need it for our electric guitars."

And I said, "Oh dear, I'd forgotten about that," because we were on this promenade. And then I noticed the ladies' room. I thought, "Well, there's bound to be something in there." And so I went in the ladies' room with this miles and miles and miles of stuff and plugged in and I put all the lights out all the way along the promenade. Blew the fuse and said, "Oh dear, never mind."

So we were not experts. We didn't know what we were doing, but I tell you, we chucked around an awful lot of seed. And I want to tell you something: that was years and years and years ago we began to sow the seeds around Capenwray Hall where we lived. And when I went back, that whole work has developed into a schools' work.

And now groups of churches in a town take on a schools' worker. And that schools' worker goes in and takes assemblies and starts camps and offsite Bible studies. And there are 100,000 children in those clubs. 100,000 children. Where did it start? It started with eight kids. Well, actually it didn't. It started with an event where Angie and I just took a basket of seed, a Billy Graham film, and God began to sow the truth.

And I tell you something, it doesn't happen unless you go out. And the problem with us is we have so many great programs in. We don't need to go out. But I want to tell you something: we do need to go out. And I would just encourage you to really take this heart to heart. It all comes down, remember, however, to what you believe about this.

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you that the sower went out. Thank you somebody went out and scattered me with seed so I had a chance to receive the dynamic life hidden within the Word of God, the truth of God. And I thank you that you brought a harvest into my life. I thank you for that faithful farmer, that woman who cared enough to give me a chance. Just a barren bit of wayside nothingness. And yet that one little seed found some good soil.

Lord, we think of our subdivision, we think of our neighbors, we think of our friends. And Lord, I would like to tell you that there's a few people I've been thinking about while I've been telling everybody else to think about people. And I want to ask you to forgive me because they don't know yet. I have not scattered their particular fields with seed. Forgive me.

Lord, I pray specifically for this bunch of people, for they indeed work among barren fields. And they have such a golden opportunity to scatter the seed. I pray that we may come to terms with what we believe about the inspired scriptures. And because we commit ourselves to what you asked us to, to take the seed and scatter it, I pray that there may be a great harvest to your glory, to your honor. For it is in Jesus' name I pray. Amen.