Planting and Watering

Astounding is the way to describe how God works. Last week was the perfect example of how one plants, another waters, and then God gives the increase.

My wife and I landed at the airport. The pastor and his wife met us. We headed to the baggage claim. We had two suitcases, two sets of golf clubs and two boxes of my books. This necessitated getting a sky cap which I seldom need.

While the sky cap was getting the luggage, as usual, I began sharing the Gospel with him. He said, "That's funny. An evangelist came through here three weeks ago and preached to me that I ought to get saved. Then a friend of mine has been telling me how I need to "change my way of living" for the past couple of weeks. On top of that my wife has really been after me to go to church. I don't know what's going on around here."

Praise the dear Lord! I knew what was going on and why we needed a sky cap that day. Isn't God amazing? Isn't He wonderful to put us in the right place at the right time?

Carefully I told him how God loved him and how Christ suffered and died for his sins and rose again. It became obvious that he believed the devil's lie that he had to "change his way of living" to get saved. He had works all mixed in with what Christ did as the way of salvation.

Over and over I pressed upon him that the Lord Jesus really did pay for all our sins and the whole issue of whether we go to heaven is if we trust God that Christ paid our debt in full. Than I made the comparison of receiving a woman to be your wife made you married and receiving the Lord Jesus made you a Christian. God opened his eyes and he saw it was not his works that saved, but that he must receive the Lord Jesus, be born again, and that would produce good works as a result of being saved.

When I asked if he was ready to receive the Lord as his personal Savior he enthusiastically said, "I sure am." He prayed out loud with me and invited the Lord Jesus into his heart to be his Lord and Savior. He looked up with a broad grin on his face and gave me a big hug.

By now the pastor had come with the car. I asked the sky cap to tell the pastor what he had just done. Without any hesitation he said, "I just accepted Christ as my Savior." All of our hearts were now filled with joy.

The evangelist will not know until he gets to Heaven how God used him to plant the seed, but his reward will be great. His friend will not know how God used him to water the seed. His wife will rejoice that she has a new husband. I am thrilled because I saw God do something that He alone can do and that is convict and convert a man into one of His children.

There is a lot of good soil out there still. We just need to do a lot of planting and watering and we will pick a lot more fruit. God is not willing that any should perish.  Are you?