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Monday, May 9, 2016

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If I ever want to know anything about gardening, I ask the man in my world who is the master gardener-my friend, Mark. He doesn't ever need to shop in the produce department. No, he's got his own produce department in his backyard in this fabulous garden of his. He once told me about these incredible raspberries he saw growing in the woods near his home. But why have to go hunting for them in the woods, right? You could just transplant those raspberries and grow them in your garden, right?

Well, Mark was sorry he did that. In the woods, where God planted them, the berries had been big and many. But in Mark's garden, where he planted them, those same bushes produced berries that were small and few.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "Why You're Not Getting the Harvest You Hoped For."

My gardener friend was thinking about his puny raspberries when he said to me, "Things just do a lot better when they're grown God's way." That applies to a lot more than berries. In fact, it may explain why the outcome you've been getting isn't the outcome you've been hoping for.

God addresses the difference between His way and my way in our word for today from the Word of God in Isaiah 50:10-11. "Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the word of His servant? Let him who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on his God. But now, all you who light fires and provide themselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires, and of the torches you have set ablaze. This is what you shall receive from My hand: You will lie down in torment."

The picture here isn't about how to grow a great harvest, but how to handle the dark times, the confusing times, the tough times, but the principle is the same. One way is to relax and rely on God to make things happen. Remember, my friend said, "Things just do a lot better when they're grown God's way." The other choice is to start making your own sources of light-to try to make it happen yourself.

Now for us control freaks, that's one of the greatest dangers in our life, one of the greatest sources of pain and frustration and failure. We can't wait for God's timing. We can't trust God to get it done. He might need a little help from us. We have to fall back on our own intelligence and our persuasion and our planning, our schemes, our skill, our effort. God sternly reminds us of where trying to force it will leave us. "You will lie down in torment." He says you're going to pay a painful price for you trying to make it happen, force it to happen, doing it your way instead of His way; blowing right past what He wants because you're impatient and can't wait for Him.

The poet Whittier said, "Of all sad words of tongue or pen, 'tis the saddest of these, it might have been." I wonder if that's going to be the epitaph over your life as you review it with Jesus in heaven. "What might have been" - if only you had let go of the wheel, if only you had relinquished control, if only you had waited for God to do it His way. But all you got instead was what you could do instead of the much bigger, better thing that God could have done.

Remember those raspberries. When you try to make things grow your way in your place, the harvest is small. But when you let God grow it His way in His place in His time, you're going to be amazed with the size of the harvest!

Friday, April 29, 2016

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Okay, it's Wild Kingdom trivia quiz time. What is an emu? If you guessed a big old Australian bird that can't fly, you're right. They can't fly, but they can produce oil. Yeah! Boy, my wife, she was glad they do. She had been having some severe pain in her back and arm. We decided to go ahead with our plans to spend a few days away with our family. The place we were staying at had bottles of emu oil for sale, of all things, at the cash register. I'd never heard of emu oil. And I wasn't jumping up and down to buy some, actually. But the owners said it might help give my wife a little relief. So, "Hello, emu oil." Now it wasn't a miracle cure, but we do think it helped. I would just put a blob of it on her back and gently rub it into her back and arm. Actually, that blob of emu oil wouldn't have done much good just sitting on her back. You had to rub it in for it to really help.

Friday, April 22, 2016

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It was always nice when we got to spend a little time at the little country place we inherited from my wife's grandparents. It's a pretty big treat for a city boy like me, and a real education. Now we don't have any cows ourselves, but that place is surrounded by cows on all sides. It made me feel all peaceful when I could sit on the porch and see the cows inside the fence across the road, just quietly grazing or sitting in the shade. It didn't make me feel peaceful when I got up one morning and saw one of our neighbor's cows in our front yard grazing and leaving like souvenirs of her visit.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

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I got this wonderful and unusual invitation. Gail, one of our ministry's most dedicated volunteers, invited us to attend her baptism. Now Gail has known and served Jesus for many years, but somehow she had never followed her Lord in His example of being baptized. Part of that might be because she always felt very self-conscious of being in front of a group of people. But when she felt her Lord's urging to take this step, she went for it.

Friday, April 15, 2016

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You remember the first day of school when you were little? New crayons, new pencils with sharp points, a new notebook with nothing written in it, maybe even some clothes you'd never worn before. Then as you got older, that first day of school meant there were no grades in the teacher's book yet, no absences, no tardies. It's a nice feeling. You know what? You have a lifetime of those first days!

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

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When we lived in New Jersey, twelve straight days of rain was pretty unusual. But I remember this time when we got to take our turn at almost two weeks without sunshine. For most of us, it was just a soggy nuisance. But for some people across town, it meant trading in their car for a rowboat. I turned on the news one night as they were talking about a roof that had caved in on a store in our town. It was the pharmacy I went to all the time. Apparently, water had collected until it just broke through the ceiling, and it literally washed one customer out the door like a raging river! I was in the pharmacy prior to the roof caving in and I noticed that they had put out a couple of buckets on the floor, catching drips from some leaks in the ceiling. First, some little leaks – then suddenly the roof caved in!

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

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There's one kind of nice trait that seems to have infected every member of our family. It's how much we enjoy trying to just get the right gift for each other. So over the years you'd often hear the question, "What would you like for your birthday, or your anniversary, or for graduation, or Christmas?" And the least appreciated answer goes something like this, "I don't know. Anything is fine." That's usually what I would say. Great! I was hoping for something a little more specific. I need some guidance.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

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For several years, we had a Latin American outreach base in Mexico where our Latin American version of a youth broadcast was recorded. My limited Spanish didn't get me very far in Mexico. I mean, how much meaningful communication can you have when all you know are words like grande and mucho? "You look grande today." Well, the Director of our Latin American Ministry at the time was a wonderful translator and he was my best hope of communicating while I was there. Needless to say, I always lit up when someone was fluent in English there. I could converse unassisted!

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

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I don't know how long Presidential candidates have had campaign songs, but I'll bet George Washington even had one! Now, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's was pretty famous, as it represented the Great Depression "Happy Days Are Here Again." Bill Clinton had a song for his 1992 campaign. In fact, he reached back to 1977 for his song "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow." They used it so much people wanted to sing, "Please Stop Singing About Tomorrow." Now I don't know how you felt about the candidate, and I don't even know if you liked the song...but it's not a bad theme for your campaign!

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

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When our daughter came into our family, she had Mom and Dad all to herself. It was a wonderful life! Life was a little more complicated for our next child. He got to do what every second-born gets to do. He competed with the first born for Mom's and Dad's attention! He also had someone to measure everything by. Obviously, at every age our daughter could have a few more privileges, a little more money, a little more freedom. So when our son wanted a little different response from us on something, we would often hear sentences that began with the same few words "How come she gets to...?" - sound familiar? When in doubt, compare yourself with a brother or sister.

                

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Hutchcraft Ministries
P.O. Box 400
Harrison, AR 72602-0400

(870) 741-3300
(877) 741-1200 (toll-free)
(870) 741-3400 (fax)

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