“An amateur is a person who does a thing until he gets it right; a professional is one who does it until he can’t get it wrong.”
So from the previous comment, did any guess who said that? If not, the answer is, Louis Armstrong.
OKAY, as we come now to this third installment in The Complete Green Letters, Principles of Spiritual Growth, titled Cultivation. I’ll come to my observation I’ve been hinting at from the beginning. But first notice how the author ended last week, saying, we are not saved to serve, we are matured to serve. Only to the extent that cultivation reveals self for what it is are we in the position to assist others in their cultivation.
NOTICE, “We are not saved to serve, ….” I recall early on in my Christian life hearing just the opposite. In fact, the words that we are “saved to serve” are still heard in many circles either directly or by implication. Now in a way this is true, but what is also true is the fact that believers are pressed into service when they are not ready, too soon, without proper preparation. I could speak at length to this, but now here comes my observation.
THE title of this chapter is Cultivation, and it is placed as the 17th chapter near the end this section on The Complete Green Letters titled Principles of Spiritual Growth. Being a person who appreciates the garden and the processes demonstrated there, should this chapter not have come sooner, possibly at the very beginning? Most are aware that for planting ground to be good, made ready to receive the seed, there is a good and necessary amount of cultivation required before hand, not later. So…. has our author erred at placing cultivation at the end of his treatise, and what are we to make of this?
WELL, I don’t think the author has erred. I think he is a realist and does understand the process. And yes, he did speak of preparation way back in Chapter 5! But the seed of the gospel will take root where it will. Sometimes a fair amount of cultivation may occur before hand (see the parable of the Sower); but other times it may not. But what must also be understood is that after a plant has taken root, having been established, cultivation must continue. Weeds can encroach, the ground can get hard needing aeration, the soil needs feeding to reach the roots, and the branch and foliage require constant, watchful care, pruning, etc., etc., etc. The process never stops. NEVER, if that life is to be maintained, grow, and propagate, the process must continue! And that is precisely what our author is describing in today’s consideration. “We must be cultivated to be cultivators”. It is an ongoing process. Regardless of how we may have started out, we can be confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ (Phil 1:6).
SO, the principle and process of cultivation is key to growing in grace and knowledge at every point along our path. This is the lesson for today.
In the inexorable riches of Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10, Isa 30:15, Jas. 1:2
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Chapter 17—Cultivation …continued
We are not saved to serve, we are matured to serve. Only to the extent that cultivation reveals self for what it is are we in the position to assist others in their cultivation. We find out everyone else by first finding ourselves out. “As in water face answers to face, so the heart of man to man” (Prov. 27:19). To counterbalance knowledge of self, our Father enables us to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (II Pet. 3:18).
This is true not only concerning general service but also in the matter of our ministry of intercession. More than anything else the service of prayer for others necessitates a triune understanding—that of our Father, of ourselves and of others. “Praying for others can only flow from a heart at rest about itself, and knowing the value of the desires which it expresses for another. I could not be true or happy in praying otherwise” (Stoney). Paul wrote that he would “pray with my spirit—by the Holy Spirit that is within me; but I will also pray intelligently—with my mind and understanding” (I Cor. 14:15, Amplified).
So many of us, after having entered into some of the deeper realities of our Lord, seek to immediately pull or push others into this wonderful advancement; and then we wonder why they are so slow to learn and seemingly apathetic in their understanding and concern. We so easily forget the many years it took, and by what wandering wilderness ways our Lord had to traverse with us in order to bring us over Jordan and into Canaan.
Moses had all the wisdom of the Egyptians, yet his idea of delivering Israel was to slay an Egyptian! He had to be trained in God’s ways, having forty years in Midian, and when he was sent back to Egypt, God said for him not to trouble about Israel but to go directly to Pharaoh, the cause of their chains! God didn’t train Israel at the first but a leader to lead Israel. God seeks to get leaders trained in the knowledge of His ways.
To the extent that we learn how our Father has had to handle us through the years will we understand how He would have us share with others. We must be cultivated to be cultivators. ….to be continued
