It's Harvest TimeBy Tammy Turner

In the bible, Jesus, often spoke in parables to describe something of the Kingdom or to get a point across to his disciples or the people he would minister to along his journey. At times he would use natural everyday events or common things to allow his listeners to be able to understand the spiritual revelation of his words or sermons. Often times our Father ministers to us through everyday ordinary things, it may be a statement that someone made, a funny act our child may have done, a reminder of how we are toward him when we find ourselves fussing at our children for not listening to us or not completing a task the way we asked them to do it or when we asked them to do it, the intimate time we may seek from our husband or wife and we are reminded of how God wants us to spend that intimate quality time with him in prayer or worship. It is so many different ways in which we can take these things to get a message or revelation from the Lord. That brings me to the remembrance of a trip I took with my son to a farm with his daycare. It was a huge farm and the owners had made a part of the farm into a tourist or amusement type place for schools, day cares, organizations and families to enjoy. It was many activities that were there to be utilized but the one that stood out the most was the corn maze. It was rows and rows of corn stalks that covered about eighty percent of the farm. It was more than ripe the corn had almost dried completely up and had changed in color. The tour guide, whom was the farm owner’s daughter, said that the corn was used as feed corn instead of corn that would be sold in the grocery store or a fresh farmer’s market, which we know as “corn on the cob”. The maze was only a small section of the corn field. The group walked through the maze and as we were walking, I began to look at all that corn and I started thinking to myself who is going to pick all of this corn and how for that matter is it going to get done? The thought came to mind of how Jesus said, “....The harvest is great, but the laborers are few…” The one thing that comes to mind when we think of a harvest, is the actual physical produce of fruits, vegetables, grains, livestock, etc, but here in this scripture Jesus was again using something common and ordinary to relate to a message he was trying to get the followers to understand. The harvest is great, first let’s look at what the word harvest means: it is the act or process of gathering crops, the crop thus gathered, the amount or measure of the crop thus gathered, the time or season of such a gathering, to gather ( a crop), or to gather from ( a field or orchard, for example). Here the harvest is the people in the world who had not yet heard of him or they may have heard of him but may not have accepted him yet. Jesus sent the disciples out by two to go out into far lands and places before him to spread the gospel to get the people ready before His coming. The amount he said was great that means that it was an enormous significant number of people that was lost. Today there are people that are out in the world that are hurting and they are looking for something or someone to fill their void, heal their pain, numb the hurt, remove the bad memories, cheer up their sadness, lift up their hung down heads, and to give them hope. The people are ready to be gathered, to be ministered to, to be redeemed, to be saved from this cruel evil world. The one problem though that

Jesus saw was that yes the harvest was plenteous and it was ready for the picking, gathering, assembling, collecting, etc, but He said, “… the laborers are few”, with all of this harvest that is just sitting and waiting and waiting ready, there is nobody but a few faithful ones that are willing to go out and do the work. There are so many people out here today just as it was in the biblical days that are ready to receive but there are so few people who are going out and doing the work of an evangelist, seeking the lost and spreading the good news. Now that the economy is in a crisis and the world is in a recession it is the perfect time to go out and gather in the harvest. There is a certain time that is right for the harvest and this is when the season comes around where that the crop is ripe and is ready to be gathered. This season is the third season of the year and it is in autumn or another name for this season is fall. It is odd that the harvest time is the third season and we know that the number three is the number for unity and strength, which shows that the gathering of the harvest will give unity and strength to the kingdom of heaven, to the body of Christ. Fall is the time of moving from one condition to another or a time to be born. It is considered right now as a bad time in this world right now but this is the perfect time for the saints of God to go out into the highways and the byways to go to the streets to go to the church without walls and gather in the harvest. The people in this world that don’t know Jesus is looking for the easy way out as they may think is the easy way out by committing suicide, parents killing their children then themselves, husband and wives together agreeing to end their lives because they can’t deal with the change in their lifestyle because they were used to living in the upper class level of society but one may have lost their job or had to take a pay cut which caused them to have to lower their high maintenance living to low maintenance. Some people are so use to being on top that they don’t know how to function living any other way, they don’t know the beauty of having a Savior that they can get comfort from that it is all working for their good, that weeping may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning. The people are in a place right now where they are broken and they are ripe and ready to be picked, we as ministers of God, for we are all ministers of reconciliation, need to go out and use this time this season to tell them who Jesus is and to tell them how our Father is a way maker out of no way, he is Jehovah Jireh, our provider, he can supply all their needs according to his riches in glory which is in Christ Jesus. We need to let the lost know that there is hope for tomorrow, there is joy for their sorrow and they can have peace in the midst of their storm, they can go through the fire and not get burned, they can get thrown in the lion’s den and not get bitten, and they can take up serpents and won’t get not get harmed. The time is right for us too as, the body of believers to get what belong to us. It’s our harvest time to reap what we have sown it is the time to move from one condition to another, to go from lack to gain, to go from being sick to being healed, from being in the back to the front, from sadness to joy, from being the head and not the tail, the lender and not the borrower. This is the time where we as saints of God can go out and possess the land and take back what the devil stole from us. The Lord of the harvest is waiting for you and me to go out into his vineyards, fields, highways, byways, valleys, mountaintops, wherever the harvest is and labor for your labor will not be in vain and you will reap if you faint not, so pray that the Lord of the harvest send forth more laborers into his harvest.