How Does Your Garden Grow? – The Produce

This post is a continuation.  If you wish to read the first part “The Preparation,” click here.  If you wish to read the second part, “The Planting,” click here.

III.  The Produce

That brings us to the third step, “The Produce.”  I believe that if you were to ask any Christian the question, “Are you hungry for revival?” their answer would be “yes.”  God’s people will, by nature, be hungry for revival.  By revival, I’m not just talking about a series of nightly meetings where we invite an evangelist to come and preach every night.  The revival I’m talking about is a soul-stirring, life-changing, fruit-bearing revival.

I probably don’t have to tell you that the world needs us to have that kind of revival as much as or more than we need to have that kind of revival.  The longer we live without it, the more desperate the world is going to become.

The whole purpose of The Preparation, the breaking up of the fallow ground, and the whole reason why we have The Planting, those seeds of revival, is to experience The Produce.

One of the most exciting things I hear in the spring is when one of the wonderful ladies in our church starts talking about getting her garden ready.  She gives me a play-by-play of everything she is planting in that garden.  It has been my experience that after her preparation and her planting, that, in due time, I will get to experience the produce from her garden.

Spiritually, it has been my experience, that if we will be diligent in The Preparation, and if we will be careful in The Planting, God will allow us to experience The Produce in our lives. 

I don’t want to live in the past on memories of great revivals.  I don’t want our young people to have to rely on our testimonies of great revivals.  I want us to have revival in our day.  I want to experience it afresh and anew and I want our young people to experience it for themselves.

I firmly believe that God is looking for men and women, young and older alike, who are willing to get down to business with Him.  If the church of this day is going to change the world, we’re going to have to do it the same way the early church did it.

They prepared the ground.  The Bible says they were all with one accord in one place.  We need to understand that being in one accord doesn’t happen by accident.  They had to find a place of common purpose.  They had to reach a place of common passion.

Then they planted the seeds of revival.  I know there were other things that happened in the upper room while they were waiting on the Promise of the Father.  But I believe that much of the time they spent there was spent worshipping and magnifying the Lord and waiting…just waiting.

And when the conditions were just right, when the Day of Pentecost was fully come, the roots of that revival reached down to be established on God’s Truth.  Then that revival sprang up to produce fruit in the lives of those in the upper room.  The Bible says they turned the world upside down.

I heard Rev. Brent Gabbard preaching a camp meeting earlier this summer.  He told of his anguish and distress at how many people were sick in his church.  He was crying out to God asking for the reason why there are so many who are being prayed for and are not being healed.  He was reminding God of the promises in His Word, “…these signs shall follow them….”  He asked God the question, “Why aren’t there signs following us?”  He said God smote his heart with these words, “I said those signs would follow you.  The church isn’t going any more so how can signs follow.”

I’m convinced that if we’ll get hungry enough that we’re willing to put everything else on hold.  If we will determine to wait in His presence until… just like they did in the upper room.  If we will wait in His presence until we are endued with power, power to become witnesses, power to stand against the evil of this world, and power to become His ambassadors to this world, we will experience The Produce.  We will experience the fruit of revival in our lives, in the lives of our families, and in our community and beyond.

The question is simple.  How Does Your (Spiritual) Garden Grow?  Are you experiencing The Produce of revival in your life?  Does the world see the evidence of His power in your life?  Maybe I’m oversimplifying it, but I don’t think so.  If we will do The Preparation by breaking up the fallow ground of our hearts.  And if we will do The Planting by planting those seeds of revival in our lives, we will experience The Produce.  Revival will break out in our life, our family and our community.  What’s more important than that?  I’ll answer that for you – Nothing!!!!