Lenten Devotional - Fourth Sunday in Lent

Scripture: John 4:36-38

“The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, 'One sows and another reaps.' I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor." (John 4:36-38)

  When we, as Christ’s church, set out to address the AOD problems in our communities, we will experience the joy of seeing a harvest through our efforts. While, on other days, we will struggle when all we can hope to accomplish is to sow. In our sowing, we may never see the resulting harvest within a single, individual life where we have placed a great deal of our effort. Sadly, our sowing may not produce any harvest because addiction is deadly and the end of the story is tragic and heartbreaking.

  When a person first enters treatment, their initial treatment experience may not produce a lasting journey toward recovery, but as an addictions counselor my responsibility was to sow a seed. Positive recovery outcomes may only bear fruit much later and the harvest may not be witnessed by us, but only by others weeks, months, or years later. As an addictions counselor, I know this happened frequently, I never clearly discovered what eventually happened to many of these individuals. What I did come to recognize is that God did. In turn, God allowed me the opportunity to meet some of these people months or years later.

  The ability to learn what eventually happened to these individuals, who were now recovering, was truly a gift of God’s grace toward me. I discovered that what I did, the actions I took and the efforts that I put forth did produce positive results at some future moment. They may not have borne fruit in the fashion that I imagined or the ways that I had hoped, but God did produce a harvest. I was privileged that God gave me the chance to truly see what my early efforts had achieved.

  As leaders within the church, we need to approach those who are lost and living in the darkness of addiction with prayer, discernment and trust in the Holy Spirit. We need to trust that God is indeed at work within the lives of these individuals. If we can trust where God is leading, and trust that God is hearing us, and trust that God stands beside us as we struggle each day to address the problems of AOD, God will bring an abundant harvest. As the church, we are called upon to sow and sometimes God will call upon us to reap. In whatever, circumstances we may find ourselves surrounded by God’s grace, God is calling us to be faithful and steadfast in our faith. And by doing so we will discover that we will indeed reap where we have not sowed, but our labors will never have been in vain.

  As a church, we are first sent out to sow and be faithful in the sowing, then God will not forget us, God will allow us to see an abundant harvest.

Lee McDermott, Contributor

Remember in Prayer: Churches able to see the harvest which lies all around them and how God’s Spirit will lead them to the right place.

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