Monday, June 6, 2011

Meditating on God's word and His ways

1 Corinthians 3:11 "For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ."




“Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” (Joshua 1: 8)

"Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matthew 28: 18-20)


‘The Message’ puts verses 19a and 20a: "God authorized and commanded me to commission you: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life,”

Training others is a very important practice for every Christian farmer, and we believe this practice is not optional; every farmer should also be a trainer. The Lord has given us a very important foundational entrance point of how to express the Gospel as life in Christ Jesus and we want to be the best and most unselfish farmers we can possibly be, for His glory. We also want to obey and apply the lovely scripture above and train everyone we meet in this Jesus’ way of life; for us this is in the speciality that God has given us, which is Farming.

Everything in Foundations for Farming is based on God’s Word and as such has been inspired by the Holy Spirit. Every plan, decision, instruction, action, operation should conform to His Word. I don’t want to be legalistic about this and God is very gracious with us as we learn, but this is where we must all set our hearts and minds.

Sharing knowledge from God, practically applied, stops others from perishing (stops the rot). Hosea 4: 6 says, “my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.’ The Lord has given us some of His knowledge and vision of how to remove the yoke of poverty for ourselves and we are to unselfishly share it with others for to help stop their perishing.

The Salvation Gospel has gone out vigorously into Africa for hundreds of years, yet the great majority of those converted are the poorest people on earth, getting poorer. Have we really obeyed the last words and instruction that Jesus gave us before He rose back to the Father? Head knowledge alone is of no use; we have to actually do it and apply that knowledge to life!

The Lord wants us to make disciples. This means we have to be living and obedient models to those we want to teach. This itself is enough incentive for us to farm with humble and unselfish excellence, but there is another wonderful blessing that we receive by teaching and training others: (Training is an even greater privilege than teaching, because training involves the doing too!)

By training others we also train ourselves into a greater understanding of God’s principles and by applying them as models ourselves, we become better and better farmers. It is Luke 6: 38 again, that as we measure it to others, so it shall be measured back to us, pressed down and running over, and so the application is continually multiplied and the Kingdom of God advances.

This is where Joshua 1: 8 is so precious. If we, as farmers, want to come out of poverty ourselves and teach others the same, it means we have to cease from failing and getting poorer. In Joshua 1: 8 we have the Lord’s wonderful promise of how to succeed and prosper.

If we want to apply God’s Word to life, we must know this Word in our hearts, and in the greatest fullness we can manage to receive. God says that we should meditate on it day and night. This means that we should study, meditate and ruminate on it in the early morning or in the evening, and when we wake up in the middle of the night so that we receive it into our minds, hearts and spirit. We need to really believe what we read in a way that will enable us to do it. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. We should pray for wisdom to understand it and faith to do it!

Then, very excitingly, this process is fulfilled by meditating on God’s Word during the day while we are working, and by applying it to our work. This is the ‘doing’ part of God’s Word that results in prosperity and success, and as such composes one of our chief Mandates and Foundations for Farming, which is to break the yoke of the oppression of poverty, hunger, and nakedness (the True Fast).


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