Parable of the Sower Remix

There once was a rich land owner who was going away on a business trip. He left his servant in charge of scattering seed and instructed him that if he was diligent in his duty to scatter seed they would definitely be received and fruitful. When i return i was pay you what is right for the work you do.

On the first day the servant woke up early and scattered seeds. He did this every morning for a week until he noticed that there were many birds in the area and they would eat all the seeds that were scattered. He also noticed that the soil was very hard and had not been prepared by anyone to recieve the seed. It was hard and dry. With this he decided to erect a scarecrow and and not scatter until he had worked the ground until it was ready to receive seed. For the next 3 months he toiled endlessly to work the field with his own strength all day long. From the rising until the the setting of the sun he worked. it seemed as if noone had ever worked the soil prior to him. He also found that there were no birds in the area and that the scarecrow had worked in that they were nowhere to be found.

Soon the ground was ready and the land owner returned. "My servant, have you scattered seed like i asked". He replied, "sir, you asked me to scatter seed but the seeds were not being recieved. The ground was not ready and the bird we feed on them. Therefore i made a scarecrow and worked day and night to prepare the soil! Soon the field will be ready to bare crops!

With a sigh the land owner looked at the servant. "Then you've not scattered like i asked?"

"Well no, but soon your field will be ready to bare fruit!"

"I did not ask you to labour in vain. I am not rich because i was foolish. My kingdom was created with wisdom and understanding. The trees are bare and that the birds are now God but didn't you know that they were my birds? Why couldn't you obey me?"

"But sir, why did you not tell me? I meant only to please you!"

With another sigh the land owner said, "yes, your intentions were good but what did that come to? nothing you did amount to anything. The things that matter to me were neglected while only the things you care about were taken care of. How can you call yourself my servant when you only serve yourself? I said that that if you scattered that would be fruitful but you have not done so. I said i would pay your what is right but not only will you receive nothing you have cost me my birds.

i see it

There is something i read and i don't totally agree. After thursday i would image i would cease to live by that assumption. "Faith never knows where it's going but always loves the One it's following". I agree with the second part but i see where i'm going and it's been beautifully revealed to me. I saw so clearly on thursday that God was moving and though not perfectly clearly i saw what was about to unfold.

My story starts at 2:30 because that's when God started to shift gears on me. This is usually my sign to prepare for something. I'm already prepared for my everyday life, now when something special comes along i gotta take extra caution. It's like driving. If i drive to church every sunday i'm ready. I already know the route and know how to drive. it's when i go other places i gotta be more alert and prepare my maps and stuff.

2:30 -> head off to my pre-op. As i enter to subway train tunnel i am held up by something that slows me for about 5 seconds and as i reach the train i has just pulled away. God wants me to meet someone. I miss a train so i can meet someone and i wonder to myself who it is. I get on the next one and nobody. I swap stations at bloor and yonge and get held up again. I can tell that I haven't met the person yet and i'm still early. As i get onto the bus at coxwell station to bus it over to the hospital i see a girl i haven't seen in years. She is the one. We talk. I'm not sure where this will lead exactly but i know i was looking for her.

3:10 -> I'm at the waiting room waiting for my pre-op. I wait. i wait some more. I'm the last person left in the room. I wait over an hour for everyone to be seen, those that came before and after me to be taken care of. why am i still waiting? am i early for something else?

4:30 -> i leave the hospital and the Spirit reminds me to call my mentor. "are we meeting tonight?" The answer is no but i had forgotten. I wanted to cancel because i missed the afternoon of work because i was waiting.

5:00 -> i'm finally back in the office and my co-workers wonder why i don't just go home. I feel like i should stay. I don't know why, i usually don't care but today i feel like ought to. I stay. I watch some youtube while i work but i'm goin' at a good pace. I get a chance to work on something i want to work on. i think i'm an analyst at heart.

7:10 -> I think i'll go to the bar near buy. I order the pad thai and have a beer. I bust out my Bible and I flip to where i had been reading last. It's been a bit of a wait for me to read from Nehemiah again. My food comes and i eat. From the adjacent table someone says, "the pad thai isn't that great, is it?" I look up and realize this slightly intoxicated lady is why i'm here. "no, i've had better from this place but today isn't my day." He asks what it is that i was reading. "the Bible". She says something in response but i can't hear. I ask to sit with her but she says she's goin' for a hair cut and will be back in 15 mins. Again there is more waiting and i'm tempted to go home but i don't. She comes back and i ask her to have a seat at my table. She is hesitant. "I'm intoxicated and i have a lot of respect for the Bible. I don't want to be like this when we talk" so she goes out for a smoke. As she is away i pray that God will speak and i will not. As we sit and talk she tells me she is good friends with the Bible and how used to read it a lot. She tells me she's very spiritual. Mini alarms sound but they don't bother me. So we talk about how she doesn't really read the Bible and how it seems that God is on the back-burner and yet in the foreground of her mind. We talk about the hypocracy we see all around us and i suggest that it's not what others do but where we are with God that matters. We talk about the large and small things. The tells me about how she loves God and he's her Father. She asks me, "why are you looking at me like that?" I hadn't noticed i was looking at her funny but i was just happy she knew that. During this night things all went back to the love of God and our relationship with him. I know that when i speak it has nothing to do with that since God is more my Lord i will naturally be expectant but when the Spirit speaks it has it's own agenda. She needed to know that God loved her and there was a reason for her to go back to solidify all the things she does. There is more than being spiritual, there is a relationship with the Living God. I realized it was getting late so she asked for my number and i got hers. Before i left i asked her if i could pray for her and she was so excited. "WOULD YOU? REALLY?!?!" And so we did and we went our separate ways. I'm not sure what happened to her after but i went home and sleep. It was around 11 by the time i got home and i couldn't get through to shirley so i slept. Who says you can't do the will of God at a bar? lol.

So that was my day of waiting. I saw that God was at work and had some pretty good guesses at what he was doing. It was cool to see it unfold for me though.

In the way of Worship

"So something to the effect of 'the shadows prove the sun', eh?" - a

"uh... not really" - e

"doesn't a just prove there is something in the way of the sun?" - d

"hey! you should write a worship song about that! you can call it, 'In the way of worship'!"

This was part of the conversation we had last night and i thought it was something to talk about. There are so many things that get in the way of worship. I don't mean sunday worship or singing songs i mean the entire act of worship where it's a lifestyle and not just an action. So i feel like there are the tired old things to say and yet i will try to make them relevant.

In the way of worship is our good intentions. We try not to hurt feelings but we are actuallyjust being defiant to God. Who cares how people will feel if we obey God? Will the Judge of all the earth not at least give justice in his commands? how silly of us to think God would ask us to hurt someone for the loss of someone! I think of our candidating process and there is so much garbage that isn't "What does God want?" and so much, "How can we be nice?". The act should be based on what God wants and yet we're saying things like, "If we don't hire him, who will?" or "we can work with him and grow him". Have we forgotten that if it's his calling to pastor a church that it might not be ours, and that God will bring him to the right place at the right time and ultimately, pastoring is not a job but a spiritual gift and as such he will do it regardless of if anyone hires him? Have we forgotten that it is God that works in him and that God will not do what we want but what he, himself, wants. If we are to labour in his absence then we are ... suffering loss. Let us not let our good intensions get in the way of worship.

In the way of worship is fear of being critical. There is a fear in people i've seen and it bothers me. When people don't want to be critical of things because it's "not their place" it actually offends me more than the alternative. It seems like people have gotten the condemnations and judgement confused. Every person that looks at a situation will judge based upon a set of criterion. Whether they judge it to be, "not my problem" (so they don't bother looking deeply into the situation) or on the otherside "i believe this action is wrong" (the overt judgement) i don't care, they just will. The hypocrites are the ones that say, "i don't judge" because first i dont' believe it can happen but even if it did, not caring is unchristan so we can't say "not my place" and not knowing right from wrong is unchristian, so why do any Christians say it ever? We ought to know what God thinks is right and wrong and we ought to speak the truth in love. There is this "by the scales you judge others, you too will be judged" understanding and so people believe they shouldn't say anything or do anything. The crazy part is Christianity isn't about lowering the number of negative effects (less judging of others = less judgment from God) but it's increasing the number of positive effects (raising our lives to that of God expectations and helping others reach it). Let not our fear of critism get in the way of worship.

There are too many things... too many to count that get in the way of the sun. All are meaningless and all are loss.