Labourers and Harvesters

Text: I Cor . 3: 6-8
MORE  LESSONS: John 4: 37-38
Bible Reading in one Year: 2Chronicles 7-9

A young missionary came from Europe to Africa and after investing all his lifetime in a community he had only one young convert. He lost his wife and child to malaria in the land and after all the years, he went back to his country, an old man, thinking he had wasted the bulk of his life. He would have died a bitter man, if not that close to the time of his death he met someone from the same field who gave him a report: the one convert he had for all his labour had grown to become a great evangelist and church planter in that country, with thousands of people saved and many churches planted in nations through him.

The gospel is waxing stronger and stronger in that land. The old missionary repented of thinking that he wasted his labour and praised the Lord for the harvest that others were reaping from his labour. Then he passed on to glory.

When you look at life, you realise that everything you enjoy today is a result of the labour of people who have gone ahead of you. In everyday life, technologies like cars, phones, computers and others that make life easy for us today are the results of the efforts and labour of some people in the past. Some of the labourers of the past didn’t even get the chance of benefitting from the results of their labours; it was after their lifetime that their efforts began yielding results for other people.

This is true in the spiritual also; all your labour in the spirit like your prayer, fasting, giving and diligent service to God are harvests for the future. Even if you leave this world, other people, including your children, will benefit from them. Many of us are reaping the good of the spiritual labours of our parents. This is the reason why every person should be very diligent in all the things of God because such is laying up harvest for his seed and the future generation.

The converse is also true, laziness in the things of God and all the evil that men might do today are also to be paid for by future generations, including the children of the perpetrators of evil. Many countries are suffering and struggling today because of the lack of vision, corruption, embezzlement and evil of the past leaders. Of a truth, ...one soweth and another reapeth. . . other men laboureth, and ye are entered into their labours: John 4: 37-38.

Today, I charge you to start laying up spiritual and physical labours that others will reap from even when you are gone. This is the path to making everlasting impact.

Prayer/Action
* Pray that your labour in life will never be a waste.
* Pray for a life of impact beyond your generation.
* Ask for a life filled with results.
* Pray for divine speed and fulfilment in life.