Sow & Sleep

This Sunday after church, our Sunday school group is planning an evangelism blitzkrieg.  We will be knocking on doors in the surrounding neighborhood and in the dorms on campus.  We will be armed with tracts, flyers, and cookies.  Our goal is to meet people, share the gospel, invite them to church, pray with them, or simply give encouragement (with love and cookies). 

We have done this for several years with mixed results.  We have had many doors shut in our face, but there have also been a few people whom we have cultivated a relationship with.

Although this evangelism en masse event was my idea this year, I must admit that I am a little apprehensive.  Talking to people is not my strong suite.  God saw fit not to include that gift in my basket.  That doesn’t excuse me from my duty to share the gospel, though.  It just means I have toe (faithfully) try harder, and pray harder.

I tend to worry about what to say, or what technique to use.  I’m scared I’ll do something stupid and mess up the opportunity.  I am comforted in this by God’s sovereignty.

Mark 4:26-29

²⁶ And He said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, ²⁷ and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. ²⁸ For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. ²⁹ But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

Notice that the sower is only responsible for sowing the seed.  The sower cannot cause the seeds to germinate and grow.  He simply sows the seed and then goes to sleep.  The sower doesn’t know how the seed grows, he just watches it until harvest time.

In the same way, it is our responsibility to sow the word.  God changes a person’s heart to accept the gospel, not me.  God causes the growth, I only sow and sleep, He does the rest.

So in the end, what I say, or how clever or funny I am is not as important .  My job is to be faithful and obedient and simply go and do, trusting God to take care of the rest.

So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. – 1 Cor. 3:7