Devotions with Pastor Jerry Schmid

Isaiah 55:9-11 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. “The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer and bread for the hungry. It is the same with my word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.

My fondest childhood memories growing up on the farm all surrounded my hopes and dreams of one day following in my family’s footsteps to farm the land. Even as an adult, (more or less, for we are all children at heart, we have only grown longer legs) my thoughts pull me back to those roots, longing and wishing that they would have came to fruition. But God’s word is true and just, for His Word and ways that He has set forth for our lives are something we can only follow by faith, not from our own understanding. It was not until during these troubling Pandemic times when we were all confined to our personal caves as it were, I once again focused on my dreams of farming, being out in the open spaces with no crowds of people, no mask, just God’s majestic creations. Yes, it was my own personal pity party, O Woe Is Me time, questioning God for keeping me from being the farmer I thought I should have been.

But then God allowed me to see the sign posts (or you might recall Burma Shave signs) that he had placed before me all those years directing my life, for which I never fully realized. “Just as you cannot understand the path of the wind or the mystery of a tiny baby growing in its mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the activity of God, who does all things. Plant your seed in the morning and keep busy all afternoon, for you don’t know if profit will come from one activity or another—or maybe both”. (Ecclesiastes 11:5-7)

He had allowed me to be the farmer, not as I envisioned but as He had envisioned and planned all along; “The farmer plants seed by taking God’s word to others”. (Mark 4:14)

Just as the farmer spreads seed over the entire field, the makeup of the soil content and structure is not the same in all areas. We find this to be true in God’s Word from the Parable of the Sower. There are those who hear the message about the Kingdom and don’t understand it, others hear the message and immediately receive it but lacking deep roots fall away and others hear the message but it is crowded out by the worries of this life and the lure of wealth.

For they look, but they don’t really see. They hear, but they don’t really listen or understand. (Matthew 13:14)

And yet, there are others who truly hear and understand God’s Word and produce a harvest of thirty, sixty, or a hundred times more than they had planted.

So, in conclusion, We, You and I; are the farmers who plant the seeds of the Word of God into the fields we call friends, neighbors and co-workers as Christ has directed each of us to “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. (Mark 16:15)

As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send… YOU… into his harvest.

May God richly Bless you as you by prayer and faith plant His seed, that He may receive a rich and bountiful harvest.

Yours in Christ,
Rev. Jerry Schmid (FARMER)