Planting & Watering

Yes, I know it's December... and you're already counting down the days to rising temperatures and the disappearance of snow, even that which hasn't arrived at your door... yet.

Something got to thinking about a number of my friends in ministry yesterday afternoon... and the idea of planting.  Seeds & Churches: Curbing the burnout rate through new growth

A friend I went to high school with just held a ground breaking ceremony for the latest church God is using him to build.

Another friend of mine who owns a tattoo shop, rented the space next door, where he and his wife, launched a church. For a season, they left for another state, to start a second location before returning home.

A former pastor, is in the initial stages of starting a church, their third plant just in the past 8 years, that with God's help, they've built congregations from the ground up!

The church we attend now, a number of years ago, launched a couple and some other families as support, to start a church roughly an hour away from us, to meet a need in that community.

It's cyclical. Planted seeds need to be watered. Watered seeds need to room to grow and develop, so that when the time comes, the reproduction of more seeds will occur, ready to be planted and needing water.

It doesn't take much. A small band of believers, desiring to make an impact in their community to reach the lost and the hurting, the broken and dying. Planting seeds of life. Building a place where they can be tended. Allowing God to work the miraculous moving hurt people who hurt people to restored people ready to restore others. And with the news of every passing day; the world desperately needs people restored to completion, not broken to pieces.

Pray this #missionsFriday, for pastors and missionaries alike, whose God-given gifts including the planting and building of churches. Pray for success, as they step into communities and reach out to people groups with experiences you may wish you hadn't heard. Pray the spirit of discouragement would not detour and derail them, but like Nehemiah, focused on rebuilding his hometown, they would possess similar intensity in completing the "good work" they have begun. Pray for favor with community officials, in the logistical processes involved, that whatever challenges arise, would be easily resolved and overcome May finances, resources and people come into place to complete the work God has called them.

May planted seeds and churches receive the water necessary for sustenance. May the Sovereign hand of God change hearts and lives through the transforming work of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Let there be LIFE in dry places. Breath of God, breathe Life on us anew and afresh.

-PNC.

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