One really sweet thing that we got to do here this week is pray over a mans land where he would eventually plant seeds. The Lord had provided, through our host, a whole bunch of seeds of different crops which this certain man would be able to use to provide for his family.
We were told that we were going to his house to meet him and to pray over the seeds and the land where he would be planting the seeds. We were praying that the Lord would make the land fertile and use the crops to provide abundantly for his family; all requests that the Lord is overly capable of.
It was a sweet time. Yet, when we got to the plot of land where the man was planning on planting the seeds, something stuck out to me right away. The land was at an almost unwalkable angle! Walking down to the bottom of the plot of land we were stumbling and could barely keep our footing due to the steepness of the land.
It was a plot of land that in most parts of the US would be deemed as completely unusable for farming. In the US the plot of land would be overlooked instantly, no one would even give it a second thought.
In Honduras, in the middle of the mountains where all the land looks a little wonky, they see this same plot of land that would be overlooked in the US as fertile soil. What to me looked unusable, to them looked like a place worthy of planting seeds.
As we were discussing this reality, my friend; Hailey, pointed out the parallel between this situation and the way we can sometimes view people.
How many times do we look at a person, take in their appearance, their lifestyle, or maybe even their attitudes and consciously or unconsciously decide for ourselves whether or not they are “fertile soil” to receive salvation from Christ?
How many times do we look at a person and decide for ourselves the potential we think they have?
Maybe if we looked at people with the eyes of the Father we could see past their percieved face value and see them for the beautiful creations God intentionally placed them on the earth to be.
I saw the field the man would be planting his seeds in as a lost cause. I don’t live in the mountains of Honduras, I didn’t make the field, so what do I know? Only the Creator of that field can determine it’s potential and ultimately its value.
Thank God we don’t have the power to assign value to each other. Thank God no one but my Creator can assign value to me. Thank God no one but the Father of all things can assign value to you.
What we see as infertile, the Lord sees with more potential and love than we can imagine.
If I had met the person of Saul in the Bible, before he turned to Paul, I would have likely dismissed him as unusable for the Kingdom. If I’m being honest, he would have been overlooked in my book. He was the biggest anti-Christian there was. Not only did he oppose Christians, he was actively killing them.
“Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lords disciples. He went to the High Priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or woman, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.” -Acts 9:1-2
Not exactly the person I would invite over for a bible study brunch.
Oh how we put God in a box. Oh how I put God in a box.
Not only did the Lord save Saul on the road to Damascus and give him a completely new identity, He had a plan for the newly named Paul that no one saw coming. Paul went from killing Christians to regularly putting his own life on the line to proclaim the name of Jesus.
The same man who used to persecute Christians wrote letters from prison telling people of the love and joy of his God. He claimed in his letter to the Philippians that “to live is Christ and to die is gain.” He spoke of how he was actually grateful to be in prison because it advanced the Gospel:
“Now I want you to know brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.” -Philippians 1:12-14
People we may see as usable, the Lord has plans for. Maybe you see yourself as unusable; you aren’t. The Lord doesn’t call the qualified, He qualifies the called!
What if we entered into each day seeking people with the eyes of the Father? What if we regularly challenged our own patterns of thinking to be replaced by thoughts influenced by Christ? What if instead of going through life swinging gavels in our hands we started placing crowns on peoples heads?
