Steven Furtick - Think Like a Reaper
Just put in the chat right now, if you're joining us on our eFam one thing that you thank God for today. And while you're at it, tell your neighbor here at Ballantyne one thing you thank God for. University City, one thing you thank God for. And if you need a little prompt tell them, "I thank God for you. You are the greatest person I sat next to in church all week. I thank God for you".
Well Elevation Nights is coming soon, everybody. I haven't been announcing this like I should. I keep forgetting. It's weird, because I get up here so excited to preach I don't even look at the announcements. September 24 through October 3, God willing, we will be in Seattle, Washington; Vancouver; Sacramento; Los Angeles; Anaheim; Boise, Idaho; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Denver, Colorado. Go to elevationnights.com for more information. We want to meet with you. We want to praise God with you. I want to preach to you. We want to celebrate the awesome things God has done and believe with you for all of the things he is going to do. It's going to be an amazing time.
Speaking of an amazing time, many of our eGroup leaders are expecting you to come over to their house this week. This is eGroup Connect Weekend. They're getting ready. We should actually have a criterion for eGroups. If they have only healthy food, there should be a disclaimer at that eGroup. I don't look at that as a benefit; I look at that like a hazard. But I'm sure you can find an eGroup that will speak to your stage of life, and I would love for you to do that.
That way, when you finish hearing the sermon this week, you can take it and really apply it to your life and have help doing that. You need some help sometimes. Sometimes the Enemy comes to snatch the Word of God, and you need somebody else to help you keep it planted and to stay stable. We have people to help you. Let's thank God for all of our eGroup leaders. If you're leading a group, Holly and I want to thank you. Thank you for your partnership in the gospel. I hope you will avail yourself to that.
Now it's time to preach the Word of God. I'm excited to be sharing with you today from John 4:27-39. Please give your attention to this Scripture. It's very powerful. The Bible says, "Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, 'What do you want?' or 'Why are you talking with her?' Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 'Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?' They came out of the town and made their way toward him. Meanwhile his disciples urged him, 'Rabbi, eat something.' But he said to them, 'I have food to eat that you know nothing about.'"
There's a fine line sometimes in the Scripture. I can't tell whether Jesus is training his disciples or trolling his disciples, because that's kind of on the nose. "Would you like to eat? We brought some food". He said, "I have food to eat that you know nothing about". But listen to what he says next. This is a lesson all in itself. "'My food,' said Jesus, 'is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.'" So, the question becomes…What's your fuel? What fuels you to do what God has called you to do? Is your fuel comparison? That's bad fuel. Is your fuel validation from others? That's bad fuel. Is your fuel feelings? That's unreliable fuel.
Jesus said, "My food, my fuel…" See, most of us eat food for fuel. Jesus was fueled, and that was his food, but he was fueled by an agenda that was set by his Father. Are you? Am I? "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work". Now pay attention. We're getting close to our main point for today.
"'Don't you have a saying, "It's still four months until harvest"? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying "One sows and another reaps" is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.' Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, 'He told me everything I ever did.'"
Your testimony is a tool. You have to put it back in God's hand. Don't let the Devil have your past. Your testimony is a tool God wants to use in your future. That's where your ministry is going to come from: your misery. That's where your ability to help put other people back together again is going to come from: the broken pieces you feel inside of you. So, today I want to give you an important lesson, one of the things God is teaching me. I think this can be so powerful if you will think with me.
Now, I want you to feel the presence of God today, but today I want you to think with me as well about this story, about your life, and about what God is saying. Think with me, and I want you to think a very specific way. This is the title of the message. I want you to Think Like a Reaper. In this season of your life, it is important that you mature to the point that you think like a reaper. Not just an eater. Not just "Where's my next meal"? Not just "Is it convenient right now"? It's time to think like a reaper. Not the Grim Reaper. I want to clarify. You might be getting spooked. It's not October. Think like a reaper.
Father, I praise you for what you said to me. Help me to say it so clearly it can't be missed, and give us the courage to obey. Speak, Lord. We're listening. In Jesus' name, amen.
I'd like you to write this down somewhere: feelings come. I like to start somewhere nobody can argue with. If I start my sermon saying, "Jesus is the only true way to God. He is the Son of God, and he died for your sins and rose again," you may or may not believe that. I believe that, but you may not believe that. So let me build a little bridge. This is what John 4 is about, that Jesus is the Messiah, but let me start with something we all can agree with. Feelings come.
One of the things that happens in worship a lot of times, when we come to church, is we will come to church not even wanting to come, and then when we get into the atmosphere of God's presence, we are glad we came. We're so glad we didn't obey the way we felt and let it keep us from what we were supposed to receive. I feel this way every time I do a physical workout, like a weight lifting thing or something like that. I never work out because of how I want to feel in that workout. I meet psychopaths who do CrossFit. I'm not wired like that. They say they enjoy the actual workout. I am getting more to that point, but what actually puts me in a workout is the way I want to feel after the workout.
That became a powerful journaling exercise for me. I call it reverse journaling. After your day you usually go, "Well, I did this, and I shouldn't have. I ate this, and I shouldn't have. I went there, and I shouldn't have. I said that, and I shouldn't have". I do plenty of that. Trust me. But if you can reverse journal sometimes, it's a really good spiritual practice. It's like asking the question, "How do I want to feel when this day is finished"? You ask it in the morning, and then you try to work toward that with your actions.
If you just wake up and let the feelings come, they'll come. Sometimes the feelings come, and they catch you before you've even had your coffee. What I'm trying to say is feelings come, but they don't come first. That might be one of the most powerful things I've ever learned, and I'd like to break it down with you a little while today. Feelings come, but they don't come first. The feeling of being tempted is never a sin. It is when the temptation takes the throne in your life and leads you to a place you have no business being that the sin is committed.
Feelings of sadness do not negate the joy of the Lord, but it's when I allow the feeling of sadness to become the primary soil in which my life is grown that it becomes a problem. Feelings come, but they don't come first. What I mean by that is, first of all, sometimes you have to do the thing and the feeling follows. Sometimes you have to lift your hands, and the burden is lifted as your hands are. If you wait for the burden to lift for your hands to follow, you may keep them in your pockets, and you may never feel the freedom you could have felt, because feelings come, but they don't come first.
All I'm trying to get you to see today is that God is very aware of the hard places in your life. The very clear thing I heard God saying to me today to preach to you was he will help you in the hard place. Encourage your neighbor. They need to hear it. "God will help you in the hard place". See, when you say that to her, you don't know what her hard place is, but you can be sure she has a hard place. "No, she doesn't. She has plenty of money". Well, then she has plenty of taxes. God will help you in the hard place.
"Well, they have kids. They're not struggling with infertility". Fertility has its own set of problems. You never hear anybody say that, though. "I'm struggling with fertility". The truth of the matter is whether you're struggling with something you can't have or something you do have, the pressure is real for all of us. The assuring word of the Lord is that God will help you in your hard place. I'm not sure if the section of the text I read got the point across that Jesus and his disciples were traveling through a hard place. We know that because verse 39 says, "Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony".
There are two things in this text I want to give you before we really get practical here. Samaria was a place that was very hostile to the Jews, and the woman had lived a very hard life and had been through several men. In fact, she had been through five men, and she was currently in a situation with number six. Into the complexity of this situation there comes the presence of purity, the presence of purpose, the presence of potential in the dirt of a place they didn't want to be. Samaria was a place that was racially tense. Samaria was a place that was religiously polytheistic. Not that they didn't each think they were right. They just worshiped in different places in different ways.
So, everything is against the disciples and Jesus in this text. I think that's worth its own sermon, because some of the things God teaches us that go the deepest happen in the places we did not choose to be in. You don't really get to sign up for a class to learn the things Christ wants to teach you. I'll prove it to you right from the text. Look at verse 27. The disciples were surprised to see Jesus talking to a woman. That lets me know, if they were surprised, they did not get a syllabus. I have a son going back to college this week. Some of the stuff that gets taught is not on the syllabus. When we read "discipleship," we think class, because that is our modern, Western interpretation of learning, but God's version of learning usually looks like this: "I am going to show you how strategic I was after you survive the surprise".
So, what happens is life catches you off guard. "Oh, whoa! Hey, I didn't even see that coming. Oh! I didn't even see them coming. I definitely would have ducked. I definitely wouldn't have answered if I knew that's what they wanted to talk to me about". You know people who bait you with a text, like, "Hey…" and that's all it says? I never respond to that. I'm going to need more information. That is inconclusive data to give me. Surprise! He's talking to a woman. Surprise! He's sitting down having a chat. Surprise! She's somebody you don't like. She's a Samaritan. Surprise!
See, they thought, "We went through Samaria because it was shorter geographically". The Bible says Jesus took them through Samaria. Well, most Jews walked around Samaria so they didn't have to deal with those people. Now Jesus is talking to one of those people. And not even one of those people…a woman, which was not very good PR strategy for a rabbi. Yet I have learned in my life… You can get this lesson at age 13, you can get it at age 31, or you can die not getting this lesson, but you'll find out one day that God is often most strategic when you are most surprised. That means God will allow things to come into my life, even my day, or even my feelings that I did not expect.
What I have to learn how to do in those moments is what Galatians 6:9 says. "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time…" One version says, "…in due season". At the proper time. "…we will reap a harvest if we do not give up". But if your feelings come first, you give up while it's growing. If you cannot separate the feeling, you will never experience your due season. But this is the tricky thing. How do you do in a season what is due in another season when the feelings don't come to support you?
You say to me, "This has nothing to do with Jesus and the Samaritan". It has everything to do with Jesus and the Samaritan. It has everything to do with you and your kid. It has everything to do with the fear you feel about your business. I think this passage speaks to every one of our fears and every one of our frustrations. And it speaks to something else we should talk аbout: the fatigue we feel while we do what we do and what is due doesn't come. What do you do when what is due doesn't come? The Lord might have sent me to preach this message for myself. If that's the case, I invite you to listen in. Too many times in my life, I have thought only about what I am sowing in this moment, and I lose consciousness of the harvest that awaits me if I don't give up. It looks like this.
Galatians 6:8: "Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction…" That's another way of saying just doing what you feel, sowing to the flesh. "…whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life". That's how we're trying to think now. We're trying to think about the lasting thing. We're trying to think about the eternal thing. We're trying to think about the long-term thing. We don't want to be so into our feelings that we only sow into what we feel like. It looks like this. I may want to eat the ice cream at 10:00 p.m. I don't want to feel the ice cream at 3:00 a.m. I don't want to see the ice cream… If I sow into what I feel, then my feelings come first.
Rather than thinking like a reaper and thinking, "Well, if I eat the ice cream just tonight, that's fine, but if I eat the ice cream every night (I mean every night), and then I go back for a fourth scoop because I had a very stressful day (don't judge me about it)…" I won't like what I see, but I will like what I feel. I need you to start growing into a place in God where when you go to speak an unkind word, you can think like this: "If I sow this unkind word, what will I reap in this relationship later"? I'm going to tell you the truth. It's going to feel good to say it right now. It's going to feel good to go off right now.
As a matter of fact, when the woman in the text was talking with Jesus (the part I didn't read you), she was so in her feelings she went off on Jesus. Jesus said, "Give me a drink". She said, "You don't have a bucket. Why are you talking to me anyway? I'm a woman. You're a rabbi. I'm a Samaritan. You're a Jew. You don't have anything to do with me". "No, I have everything to do with you". What you do in this moment where you feel offended, what you do in this moment where you feel weary… What you do in this moment will determine whether your due season is going to be full of thorns and thistles or fruit and favor. I am not saying, by the way, that God's love is on the basis of our behavior. I am saying the consequences are built into the system of humanity.
To think like a reaper is to become conscious of the consequence. Pattern recognition. "Every time I go down this road, every time I respond out of what I feel, every time I continue to rehearse this thing that happened three weeks ago, every time I let myself go there in my mind, every time I indulge in it, I hate where it takes me". That's my conflict, because for some of the things in my life, I love what they bring me, but I hate where they take me. If you'll be honest with it, there are certain vices, certain things, certain actions, certain states, certain relationships… Oh, don't let me preach a relationship seminar. I'll preach about the certain things that make you feel a certain way but take you a place.
What do you do when you love how they make you feel but hate where they make you go? Jesus is going somewhere. He's going through Samaria. He's working on something. That's why the disciples were surprised. When they left him, he was sitting on a well alone. They went to get food, and Jesus started talking to a woman. We call her the woman at the well. She's much more than that, as I will show you in a moment. And so are you. Where she was was not indicative of who she was, and what she had done was not indicative of who she could become. When they left Jesus, he was sitting down.
The Bible actually says he was resting because he was tired. So, tired becomes the camouflage he uses to fulfill the purpose he came for. When they left to get food, a woman came to get water. When the woman came to get water, Jesus started working on her. He started asking her questions. "Can I get a drink"? She said, "You don't have a bucket, and I'm not a Jew, and I'm not a man". He said, "Well, if you knew who was talking to you, you'd ask and I'd give you the drink". She said, "Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us this well"? Jesus is thinking, "Actually, I really am. I made Jacob, but let's not get to that right now". And they started to argue. "We worship here. You worship there. You're like this, and I'm like that".
All of a sudden, Jesus cuts through all of that, because he was thinking like a reaper. Now, this is difficult for us, because as we go through life, we only see seeds, and the seed looks nothing like what it's going to be. What the disciples would have seen if they had been in this scene would have been the woman who had had five different husbands, the woman who was not worth Jesus' time, the woman who had made so many mistakes or had been through so many relationships, whether her fault or the other, that her broken heart would make a horrible place for a new beginning. But Jesus thinks like a reaper, and a reaper begins with the end in mind.
How many of you have had somebody in your life at some point who saw something in you you didn't see in yourself and you're grateful that they invested in you? How many people wish you could be that person the person who believed in you saw? I told a buddy the other day, "Sometimes I'm sad because I'm grieving the 'me' I thought I would be by now. I am grieving the absence of the patience I thought I would have by now. I am grieving the 'let it go' I thought I would be able to access in stressful situations".
This woman is not necessarily looking for an encounter with the living God, but she gets one, because Jesus sees what she can be. There was a man I met… You know, God brings different people along in our lives in different seasons. By the way, don't ever think that just because people were seasonal in your life it makes them insignificant. One of the reasons it's so hard for us to resolve relationships when they end or when they change is because we assumed the one who sowed into our lives would be there when the reaping came. It's not always like that. I'll tell you an example.
When I was 16… Of course, I had been in church… What did the old preacher say? "I had a drug problem. My mom drug me to church every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, and every Wednesday night". There was an older pastor. I've talked about him many times in this pulpit. (I call him older, but I guess at the time I met him he wasn't that much older than I am now, so it's kind of getting weird. He is old now, but old is just where I haven't been yet.) He saw something in me, and he let me be the FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) director and also his youth pastor. His name is Pastor Mickey White.
Mickey White ran an auto parts store in Moncks Corner, South Carolina. He would disciple me on Tuesdays. When I say he would disciple me, I'm not saying he was like Jesus, but he helped me through my hard places. One of the things about mentoring a 16- or 17-year-old, or whatever I was at the time, is he had to explain to me things I should just know. By hiring somebody who was 17 to be a youth pastor… I remember we were doing one FCA banquet. (This thought just came back to me for the first time in years while I was preparing.) He took me around to all of his friends who were businessmen in Moncks Corner. I was wanting to raise money so we could bring in really good speakers to preach the gospel at our FCA events.
So I would go around to his friends. The first guy I sat down with… I said, "I want to raise some money, and this is my vision," and he pulled out his checkbook and started writing the check while I was talking, because he was going to do it for Mickey anyway. He wasn't doing it for me. He was doing it for Mickey. So, he's writing the check, and I keep talking. I'm like, "And we could do this, and we could do that". I felt a hand on my leg kind of squeeze my thigh, and it was Pastor Mickey. So I just let him write the check, and I thanked him. I said, "Hey, why did you squeeze my leg"? He said, "When you've made the sale, shut up. He was writing the check. It can only get worse from there. He can only stop writing, so stop talking".
A good little thing. I always remember him saying that. Well, we were having our first one of those big nights that I'd raised the money for. Long story short, I didn't get the doors unlocked in time, so the event was a complete disaster. I had another thing and had asked somebody else to unlock the doors. So, at the end of the night he pulled me aside. He didn't grab my leg, but he was about to grab my throat. He goes, "What happened? What happened? You are the FCA president. What happened"?
I mentioned the name of the person who was supposed to unlock the door who didn't do it. He didn't even let me finish my sentence. When I said their name, he said, "Stop. You're the leader. The leader's job is to do it or get it done, and you didn't do either". I never forgot that. Up until that point in my life, I had just thought like a teenager. A teenager doesn't even do it if it's a task. He was trying to skip me all the way from teenager to leader, trying to tell me it is not only just do the task, just check it off, but it is actually making sure the outcome happens. He was trying to get me to think like a reaper. A leader thinks like a reaper.
See, if you just go through life and go, "Oh, I did that. I tried that. I said that. I did it," you're still only a sower. To grow up is to say, "Not only am I responsible for the task, but I am going to be responsible for the outcome". The good news is everywhere God sends you, he has already been there. Somebody needs to hear that, because you're going into a situation that's like a Samaria to you. You're going into a situation that's a hard place for you, that's a hazardous place for you, that might even be a hostile environment for you.
Notice when the disciples got back, Jesus was already talking to the woman. In fact, by the time they got back to Jesus, she was already on her way back to the town, and she didn't even get the water she came for. She left her jar and went to town. Now let's contrast the two. You have a woman whom Jesus wasn't even technically supposed to be talking to. You have a woman who has had a salacious past. You have a woman who is only known and identified by what she has been through. Then you have the disciples, the ones Jesus is using, his leaders who are going to take the church and move it forward, and all this wonderful stuff they're going to do as leaders.
The woman goes back to town and starts telling men about a man she met. The disciples come to the man she just met and say, "Hey, do you want to eat something"? This is what got me. While they were thinking about a meal, she was already thinking about a harvest. It didn't take long for her mentality to shift. All of a sudden, she saw herself differently. I imagine in that flash she thought, "Wait a minute. I'm talking to the Messiah. I am talking to possibly the one who can save me".
The first thing she thought about it was, "I've got to go back to town and get the men and bring them to this man". The disciples come back. The first thing they think is, "We've got to eat". It makes me wonder. Who's the real disciple in this passage? It makes me wonder. Did the ones who had been with him so much take him for granted, but the one who had just met him saw the potential of what he could do? It's amazing that they're just thinking about eating and she's thinking about reaping.
You say, "The Bible doesn't say she reaped". It implies it. When she came back from the town with the men, Jesus started preaching. He said, "Open your eyes and look. The fields are already white unto harvest". Then he goes into a saying. Now, this saying isn't something we say, but it's something they said. He said, "Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true". Like Pastor Mickey said, "It's a leader's job to do it or get it done". I've never forgotten that saying. There are certain things my family used to say when I was growing up. They terrified me once I understood what they meant. My dad used to always see somebody he thought was kind of snobby, and he would say, "I wish I could buy them for what they're worth and sell them for what they think they're worth".
As a little boy, I always heard him say that. One day, about when I hit puberty, I realized what he was saying. I was like, "Dang! That is crazy what he just said. 'I wish I could buy them for what they're worth and sell them for what they think they're worth.'" My dad was such a menace, and I didn't even know it at the time. Then some of the stuff is just cuter little sayings we get, little things we say, little things that work and weave their way into our vocabulary. Southerners have all kinds of sayings. Right? I met a guy one time. He was so Southern even I didn't know his sayings. That takes a lot, because I've heard a lot of Southern sayings through the years, and I feel like I'm a pretty good interpreter of my own language.
I remember this guy named Brian from Louisiana who I met one time. When we were getting ready to go somewhere, he used to say, "If you're waiting on me, you're backing up". I said, "Say that again". So, he would just say it slower, but even after he said it slower, I still didn't know what that meant. "It takes one to know one". It's just a saying. Right? This was a saying they had. This really got my attention. Jesus is talking to this woman. He's working in her heart. She has had a hard life, and this is a hard place. Jesus is trying to show his disciples something I believe he's trying to show us. "Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true". It was a saying they had, and Jesus said, "It's true".
Sometimes life isn't fair. Think about it. "One sows and another reaps". Sometimes you do all the work and they get all the credit. Sometimes you build it and don't even get to enjoy it. Sometimes you put all the love into the relationship, and then they end up with somebody else. Sometimes you put all the investment into making the thing good, and then you feel like when it finally starts hitting, you get shut out of it. "One sows and another reaps". Be honest. Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt like you put more in than you got out? Have you ever felt like you were the only one who seemed to care about it, because you're the only one who did it, but everybody else enjoyed the benefits of what you did?
Now, I'm not saying I've ever felt this way about y'all, but even as a preacher, do you see how easy it could be to have a resentment about "Oh my goodness! I worked so hard on this message, and I don't even know if they care"? What I could think about that is, "I guess I'm the only one who loves God's Word". The Enemy would love to say that to me. Just like if you were a volunteer… There will be eGroup leaders in this church who will sign up to lead an eGroup, and no one will come. It will be easy for them to think, "Well, I was willing. I was trying. I gave it all I had, and it didn't work".
There will be people in this room today who will give all of themselves to something only to find that the people they did it for don't even say, "Thank you". I wonder if God ever feels that way about us, by the way. I'm just asking. Jesus said, "You have a saying. 'One sows and another reaps.'" At this point, the disciples are probably feeling like, "Yeah, that's us. We're the sowers. We're the disciples. We're the ones working hard. We're the ones out here in Samaria following you, Jesus". But isn't the irony in the fact that the woman was the one reaping and they were just eating? Isn't the irony in the fact that the ones who should have been reaping were only focused on their next meal, and the one Jesus shouldn't have even been talking to was going back to the town to share her testimony?
Here's what I'm saying to you: you might be surprised who God uses. You might be surprised how he uses you. You might be surprised what he uses in your life. The fact of the matter is when God is using you, you don't always feel it. You don't. The feeling comes, but it doesn't come first. You have to obey Jesus when you see no evidence that your obedience is yielding anything. You have to instill in your kids certain values that you can only hope you're going to envision later in their life. But the disciples are the sowers. Right? No. This blew my mind. Jesus said, "The saying is true, 'One sows and another reaps.'"
That's how it works. Right? Jesus is like, "Yeah, that's how it works". Look at verse 38. He gives it a twist. "I sent you to reap what you haven't worked for". "Wait a minute. No, no, Jesus. We're the sowers; they're the reapers". Jesus says, "Not really". You always see yourself as a sower, but you never even realize how much you're already reaping. "I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor". That makes me think maybe you've been reaping and don't even realize it. Maybe you've been reaping, and the Enemy has you so focused on how hard it is to sow, how hard it is to show up, how hard it is to dig in, how hard it is to be you.
Wave at me if it's hard to be you. Yeah, it's hard to be you. How hard it is to be you. If the Enemy can only get you to focus on how hard it is… Or here's another one. If he can get you to focus on how hurt you are… I am sick and tired of people only talking about church hurt. It's a ridiculous distinction to call it church hurt. It's human hurt, people hurt. People hurt people. If you quit going to church, it wasn't because church hurt you; it's because you allowed the hurt to become greater than the harvest. This is what I want to preach. I've been preaching so many verses to get to this one.
Tell somebody next to you, "Oh, you've been reaping; you just haven't realized it yet. Oh, God has been good to you; you just haven't realized it yet". Now look at them and say, "Oh, you have help; you just haven't called for it yet". Now take about 13 seconds if you know Jesus is your help. I'm not letting this go. One might sit on me all day, but I'm not going down without a fight today, because God sent me on assignment to tell somebody that you have been so focused on how hard it is, so focused on how hurt you are, you have become blind to how much help you actually have.
That's why the Bible says, "Praise the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name". "Praise the Lord, O my soul…" Chris referenced it when he was leading worship, and I took it as a confirmation when he said it. "…and forget not all his benefits". Let me give you a list. "Who forgives all your sins". You didn't earn that; you reaped that. I couldn't earn forgiveness. The chasm was too wide. The gap was too great. My sin was too bleak. My shame was too great. But Jesus was greater. "Who heals all your diseases". Why is the only time we thank God for our health when we need to be healed? Why am I not thanking God for the stuff that feels good right now?
Look at that. Look at what I can do. That's a big deal. You say, "Pastor, did you have a shoulder surgery that you came through, and now you're really grateful you can…"? No. I'm praising him for the surgery I didn't have to have. The harvest is already here. So, the disciples are thinking about food, and they mean well, but they are missing the mission over a meal. Don't let what you didn't get keep you from praising God for what you have. Wherever he is sending you, please believe he has already been there, because he's the sower. I'm the reaper. He gave his life so I could live mine. He is the breath; I am the sails. He is the vine; I am the branch. I'm trying to get you to say out loud, "I'm reaping this. This life I have is a gift. This opportunity I have is a gift. This moment I have is a gift. This breath I have is a gift".
Breathe out his praise. If you were the Devil… I'm not saying you are. I'm sure you're an angel. But if you were the Devil, wouldn't you want to keep you from reaping? You've already cried. You've already shed tears over it. You've already been through the pain of it. Why would you cry over the seed and then not reap the harvest when it came? In Psalm 126, one of my favorite things the psalmist said was, "They that sow in tears will reap with songs of joy".
Are you so in your tears you cannot even reap what you cried for when it's here? The harvest is always here. I was talking to my mom about some things she went through in her past, and I was ministering this message to her, because she couldn't be here today. I can't do that for everybody, but I can do it for my mom. When she's not in church, I call her and give it to her personally. I told her, "I know it's hard," because of some of the things she has been through in her past. "I know it hurts and it didn't stop hurting, but God is with you in your hard place, and you have more help than you have hurt". She said, "Thank you for telling me that, because I get bitter sometimes. I start thinking, 'Well, where was my help when I went through the abuse? Where was my help when my husband was dying of ALS? Where was my help?'"
I realized the answer is always John 4:35. "Open your eyes and look. The harvest is here". "Open your eyes and look at the fields". "Wait a minute. The fields, Jesus? We're trying to get you to eat a meal. Eat, Jesus. Eat. The Samaritan woman… We'll deal with her". "No, no, no. I've already dealt with her. She's bringing me a harvest". Now watch this. This is mind blowing. I love the Bible, y'all. The tears in the passage belong to the woman who had been through so much, and the opportunity belongs to the disciples. Jesus said, "Open your eyes and look to the fields. They are ripe for harvest". "Yeah, Jesus, but we're not ready for the harvest".
Just because you're not ready doesn't mean it's not ripe. If you will open your eyes… That's the first tool you need: your eyes. The moment they opened their eyes… Let's pretend to be the disciples. They opened their eyes. Jesus is talking about a harvest, and coming their way are the Samaritans they hated. What do you do when your harvest comes looking like something you hate? This will be the test in this season of your life. Will you think like a reaper to say that even the regret…? We all have regrets. This woman had regrets. I'm sure she regretted every man she said yes to who had left her. But through the power of faith, you can reach into a regret and reap a lesson. So I'm harvesting this. It's hard for me right now, but I'm harvesting this, because those who sow with tears will reap with joy.
I came to call somebody today. The Devil has been reminding you of every reason you have to feel bad about yourself, every reason you have to feel resentful about your life, every reason you have to give up, throw in the towel, quit, duck, hide under the covers, not call anybody back until next Thursday, and delete your hope for the future. God said to remind you you have a reason to rejoice, because those who sow in tears will reap with joy. You, my friend, are one thought away from joy. Many in that town believed in Jesus because of what that woman went through. I wonder what God wants to do through what you went through. I'm going to blow your mind. God blew my mind. If he had sent the disciples into the town, the men wouldn't have come back with them. She had to have been with men in order to bring men.
I'm not telling you to go live a sinful life so you can build a bigger testimony, but I am saying nothing will be wasted. I'm reaping this. Nothing will be wasted. Not a breakup. Not a bad turn. Not a left turn. Not a bad day. Nothing you've been through! I'm thinking like a reaper now. I am seeing that God is transforming through my tears. Feelings don't come first; faith does.
So, we're going to do something that is going to absolutely confuse the Enemy. In just about 12 seconds, we are going to absolutely rejoice, because we're reapers, and reapers reap with joy. We have been crying with tears of anxiety, tears of regret, and tears of pain and unhealed trauma, but we are going to confuse the Enemy in just about three seconds, because we're going to start rejoicing because we're reaping. Give me my joy back! I'm a reaper. "When I think of all you've done…" I'm reaping where I didn't sow. I'm standing in what I didn't deserve. I'm breathing breath that's borrowed. I'm going to need every reaper to get your hands up like this. Come on. Let's receive, and then let's turn it to praise.