Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. He told us to pray to the Lord of the Harvest to send workers to the field. He didn't say send them to the church, He said the field. The church is not the field, it is only the tool shed. It is where we are equipped to do the work in the field. If you only hang out in the shed and never see the field, you are not a worker. And not all of the workers in the field have been sent by the Lord of the harvest. Years ago, I was working on a job near a state capital building. The job site was so big, there were people whose only job was to walk around and pick up garbage. They had a hard hat, orange vest, work gloves, and bags for the trash that was everywhere. It was an open area. Anyone could walk through it. If you had a hard hat, orange vest, work gloves, and garbage bags, you could spend every day helping them to pick up trash. But only the workers that the boss sent out there would be getting paid for their efforts. If the Lord isn't calling you to do a certain task, you will be wrong twice if you say that He is. Once wrong because you won't be in position to do what He is calling you to do, and twice wrong because the work that you are doing won't be storing up a heavenly paycheck. If you hear from God, do what He asks you to do. And once you put your hand to the plow, don't look back. Workers are few out here.

It feels like I have plenty of time left on the earth to do the things that I want to do. I am 47 years old, so I am most likely more than half way done with my life. But I should have decades left to leave an impression and prepare my children for life without me. Decades left to serve God and prepare for His return. Or not. I could die tomorrow. Or tonight. We don't know how much time we have left, despite how we might feel about it. I know that there is a time for me because the bible tells me that there is appointed to us a time to die. We just can't see when it will be. But God can. God knows when we are going to die. He is rooting for us to choose life. Once we become Christians, we have the rest of our lives (as long as that will be) to serve Him and lead others to Him. Then we will be with Him forever. Are we ready for that? I am not asking if we are ready to be with the Lord. I am asking if we are happy with the way we have lived out our lives for Christ. If you knew you were going to die today, would God be satisfied with what you have done with the talents He gave you? Would you hear Him say, "Well done, My good and faithful servant"? Or would your last moments be thoughts of all the things you hadn't gotten around to yet? The family and friends that you had not yet shared the gospel with? I am not suggesting that you try to live as if you will die at any second. But if you are a believer, maybe you have started feeling a sense of urgency. God can see how much time is left to us even if we can't. Pray about how He might want you to live in light of the fact that you aren't guaranteed tomorrow. You know the time is coming. Play out the rest of this life like you just heard the 2 minute warning, but can't see the scoreboard. Run out your race until He blows the whistle and calls you home.

I do. I want to say that I do. I desire for Christ to return and finish the work that He started in me. But I also desire to watch my children grow up. I desire to hold my grandchildren in my arms. I desire to retire so that I can spend more time doing Kingdom work. The problem is that the desire for Christ to return isn't always the strongest desire that I feel. 2 Peter 3:11-12 tells me that because the world and everything around us will one day be destroyed in fire, I should live a holy and godly life, looking forward to the day of God and hurrying it along. When I am looking towards the future things of this world, I am not trying to usher in the day of the Lord. I am actually thinking about the postponement of His return. If in my mind, my children have their own families, it is because Jesus didn't come back sooner. If He comes back 3 days from now, the things that I want to see happen won't. Things much better than I can imagine will happen, though. Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. Tears, pain, sorrow, death, and sin will be destroyed - forever. We will spend eternity with God. That is my problem. I can hardly type these things, much less imagine what they would be like to see. But from the limited, corruptible flesh that I currently live in, I can kind of imagine what having adult children and grandchildren would feel like. I can picture retiring and spending more time in ministry. That is a shame. My shame. I want to want Him more. I fight my old nature daily that I might seek Him more today than yesterday. Someday He will finish the work He started in me. Until then, the battle is long and tiresome. I get caught up in the world I live in and often take my eyes off of the world that will come with His return. It can be hard to think of a world without suffering and pain when we are in one right now. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And I want to be saved. So, I endure. When I stumble, I look to Him, and He helps me back up. I don't always fix my eyes on Him, but I am getting better. I don't always long for His return, but I long to long for His return. I am a work in progress, one that He will never forsake. So are all who call on His name.

I meant to stay on top of this blog. No more than a week or two between posts. Then life happened, and it has been a month already. I am afraid that if I wait for something profound to hit me, I might be waiting longer than a month. I haven't dropped off the map. I am attending church. I gather with believers throughout the week and find opportunities to serve where I can. I am enjoying my children even as I watch them continue to grow into adults. I am seeking God and wrestling with my flesh daily. I am tired. I'm blessed. I have everything I need to live a holy life. I have all my needs met by God and am able to help others with their needs. I have my health and my kids are thriving in a world where many aren't. But I am tired. I am tired because I thought that if I took a break that I would feel better. I few days turned into a week, and then a month. And I realized something. I can't stop, because it doesn't help. I just need to change my pace. In the military, we would change our pace when we ran instead of stopping. We would slow down and take really long strides, then speed back up and take short choppy steps. It would naturally change the way we breathed until we got another wind. It is amazing how durable God made us. If the distance was long enough, we could even outrun a horse. So, even though I am tired, I need to keep moving. I might change my pace a bit, even with this blog. But I will keep going. I know that God is directing people all over the world to read the words that I am typing. It isn't a very big number, but it doesn't have to be. As long as the people that He wants to see it can read it, I will be happy. Godspeed.

There are churches that are being blessed right now. They seem to have every need met. They aren't really gaining new members, but the ones they have seem to be walking out their faith and growing in the Lord. Prayers are being answered, and people are being healed and prospered. It looks like the Lord is shepherding His flock. But what if He is just maintaining them? It reminds me of the Israelites in the wilderness. They had all the manna and quail they could eat. They had fresh water, and their clothes and shoes didn't wear out. God's supernatural provision was over them for decades. But He wasn't blessing them. He was keeping them comfortable as He waited for them to die. They weren't doing what He wanted them to. They were just wandering around. Killing time, so to speak. When all of the people who rebelled against God's will in their hearts were dead, then He took those who remained into the promised land. This isn't every church, but it is some of them. Look around your church. Are people being blessed who just attend service but never serve in any way? Are there people that the enemy never comes against? It could be that they are doing exactly what he wants them to do - nothing. Check your heart to see if you fall into that camp. If you do, now is the time to get on your face before the Lord and repent. Seek His face and find out what He is calling you to do, and then start doing it. You can encourage others around you to do the same but start with you. On an airplane, you get your emergency mask on so that you have the ability to help others. Ensure that you are destined for the promised land, then help direct your brothers and sisters to the same goal.

Football is a game of action. You get your marching orders in the huddle, then form up and run the play that was called. Players that aren't playing don't even go to the huddle. They sit on the sidelines or in the locker room. It should be the same way in the church, but it isn't. Some huddle up every Sunday morning for service, then go right back to the bench and wait for the next huddle. They don't run plays. They don't practice on their own. Just huddle to bench to huddle to bench. They call themselves players and they have the team logo on everything they own. They can tell you how they came to the team and how long they have been playing for. They know every aspect of running a huddle, but almost nothing of playing the game. As far as they are concerned, that is the coach's job. They are content to huddle up briefly each week, then go back to that comfortable bench. When we huddle up, we need to be prepared. We should have our pads and helmet on. We should be rested and alert, ready to do what we are called to. When the huddle breaks, we need to form up and run the route that we have been called to run. Only when we are fulfilling our role on the team should we consider ourselves to be players.

Revival is a term that I have been hearing lately that I think is misunderstood. It is being portrayed as a gathering of believers that are filled with the Spirit of God so much so that His Spirit is spilling out of them and into the community of unbelievers. That would be like a group of doctors getting together so that the practice of medicine can spill out of them and flow into the sick in the area and heal them. No, those doctors need to take the practice of medicine to where the sick are. Then healing can take place. Likewise, revival is believers taking the new life that is inside of them to where the unbelievers are, that the Spirit of God in them might lead the unbelievers to salvation. To be revived is to be brought back to life from death. Revival is the spiritually dead receiving new life in Jesus Christ. Having new life in Christ is the first step to being a Christian. Christians are disciples of Jesus, and those disciples make more disciples. That is more than leading others to Christ, it is also showing them how to lead others to Him and discipling them in making disciples. When we combine these two things, we get something amazing. With revival, the new life that is in us creates new life in others. When we disciple those that received that new life, they in turn spread revival with the life that is in them, and disciple those new Christians. You get this wave, this battle front of light that spreads out into the dark world that we live in and banishes the darkness. It is the advancement of the Kingdom of Heaven. Kind of like a zombie movie in reverse. A dead world comes alive.

My name is Carl. As a Christian, I have been walking with the Lord for over 20 years. For many of those years I have been quite a handful for Him. I haven't always been obedient. I have been slow to listen, slow to act, and slow to grow. Not only has He not given up on me, but He has also been putting things on my heart and in my mind that I believe can benefit other Christians. I am not a tech-savvy blogger or experienced content creator. I am a 47-year-old divorced father of four. I have made more than my share of mistakes in life, and God has been gracious in allowing me to learn from them and use them to help others going through similar things. The goal of this blog is to share with you the things He has shared with me. If you feel that a post does not line up with His Biblical truth, please let me know! As iron sharpens iron, I am looking forward to this blog sharpening me as much as it sharpens you.