In Cultivate Well I talked about focusing on doing good, sowing something that would bear good fruit and give us something to share, and also about fighting the clutter in our own hearts so that we have space for the good works that God would have us do. This will, little by little, cultivate the earth and “rule over it and subdue it” as we were mandated to do in the beginning.

This might be a good place to pause and mention some of the ministries that have had an impact in my life without even knowing me. There is a verse which says, “I have planted, Apollos has watered, but God has caused the increase.” There is a faith aspect of cultivating well. We let go our anger and frustration with those who are destroyers, and we focus on the good we can do and the sphere we can control. We believe God’s promise to multiply the “harvest of our righteousness.” We don’t know how broadly He may carry our good efforts or how much He may do with what we entrust to Him, but He is faithful.

Before I was even walking with Christ I attended the Bill Gothard seminar. It gave me the knowledge of the gate, so that when God did get hold of me by the scruff of the neck, and said “Are you going through the gate or do you really want Me to let you go?” I knew where the gate was. It gave me a way in to obedience, a door out of rebellion.

Not too much later I fell into a Precept Bible study. Kay Arthur clung to the Word of God like her life depended on it. (And it does 🙂 ) She taught me to dig deep and stay till I was fed.

Years later a friend gave me Dick Eastman’s book The Hour that Changes the World. And it changed my life. It opened my mind to what prayer could be, to what a personal God we serve and how friendship with Him is a real opportunity.

I don’t mean to minimize the importance of people locally. I would not have found any of these resources without the efforts and prayers of many people who organized the events, invited me personally and prayed for me along the way. They are the “wind” that God uses to carry the seeds. I guess that is a reminder to be careful what you affirm! 🙂

Lord, I thank you for all the people whom You have placed and used and multiplied the fruit of in and around my life. I thank you for the path that you have set for me, and for Your faithfulness in the ups and downs along it.

Forgive me for the times I balked and pulled on the reins and didn’t want to go where You were leading or receive the people and the gifts You were giving.

My point in all this is to encourage you that God will do something with the good that you do. We may work locally in a myriad of small ways that we think are thankless and unseen, but He uses them and those good gifts live on and continue to do good long after we have forgotten about them.

All of this is just the bridge between Cultivate Well and what I actually sat down to write about today. But these posts are meant to be individual seeds, not whole bushel baskets, so I think I will pause for now, and come back tomorrow with more.