Northern Farmer

Kind of a non event Saturday around the farm. Cool outside, although a few weeks ago we’da considered this a major heat wave! Very little wind, just generally a nice day, although I’ll be happier when its at least thirty degrees warmer outside! But spring is counting down and pretty soon things will get serious around here and we’ll be hitting the fields and pastures getting things going. About all a feller can do is dream of this winter stuff coming to an end. So I added a couple more farm photos, one of us raking hay with a Johnny Popper and another of grazing steers in lush orchard grass.

I really don’t have anything on my mind tonight as far as writing, just wanted to get those couple links up and posted is all. Next week things might return to a more normal pace around here with no trips to Minneapolis as far as I know. But that was a good trip and I learned allot and it gave me an incredible amount of hope. Hope for humanity in a dying culture. We went down there to a small private Christian college and my view of the Lord’s young people has forever been changed! These are kids giving it all they got for the Lord. They had a regular worship service at 11AM and it lasted an hour. They do this every single day of the week and all the students attend every day. And oh Lord, was that a service! This old farmer doesn’t impress very easy, especially in the city, but this was different. 1200 kids on fire for the Lord, world changers is what they are in a world that desperately needs it! It is extremely humbling to know that this farm is producing world missionaries besides crops. I’da never dreamed that a few short years ago. God sure does work in mysterious ways.

So here we are on a farm, loving the Lord, doing what we do out in the countryside. Living simple, and happy with it all. There’s a calling on all our lives, just gotta follow it because heaven forbid, what a miserable life a person does have when not following the calling placed in them. I myself just do country work for the Lord, so big city stuff is a little foreign to me. But missions in the big city are no different than out here, because the eternal consequences are the same regardless. God doesn’t love someone out in the countryside farming any more than a street person in the big city and a feller got to remember that! We ain’t something special just cause we live out here. If we figure we are better, than we’re in trouble cause we figure our works are making us righteous. And that’s a sin in itself!

Now if we were to just mind our own business and stay quiet on the farm, never telling anyone about the Gospel, never leading anyone to the Lord, well I think we missed it. There’ll be an answering for that someday, maybe soon. I don’t want to play church either, that has no interest for me what so ever. I could care less about being good enough for church, putting on a show, always attending and then living like the world as soon as the service is over with. Everyone figures that your so good and have it all together. That’s a joke! The church ain’t nothing but a gathering of pardoned sinners who still sin like crazy and I’ll be the first to admit that. Cause there are none righteous, none.

But when a person realizes the gift of salvation is for everyone that calls on the name of the Lord, that puts a whole new slant on things. The joy of the Gospel becomes reality and I can’t help but tell the Good News either in person or when ever I write, there’s no way around that unbelievable gift from a God that loves us. Does being a church person mean a feller has to be a grump all the time?? No! Let’s rephrase that answer. In fact that is a sign that a feller really is a church person, I guess, and not a Christian. Cause there should be joy in the Lord, bigtime. I always wonder what God thinks when he sees a church full of people that sit there in absolute misery. No joy, no praising, just doing the service and that’s about it. That religion ain’t for me I tell you cause I like doing it the Bible way and praising God and praying for power from the Holy Ghost that will do some earth shaking. Now some could say, “Tom, your getting all modern!” But I say no, I’m getting Biblical. Those folks didn’t sit around moping and groaning, they worshiped! And the Holy Ghost always answered with Power!

I read about the oldtimers out in the countryside and the faith they had and how they’d shout to the Lord. Almost hard to find that nowadays, we’ve gotten sophisticated, dignified. Well to the Lord a man being high and mighty dignified is an abomination! You take a little kid that has that unadulterated faith and they get all happy when they worship God, and the Bible say we should too! But whatever, how’d I get going on that tonight when I didn’t think I even had anything to write about! No, just give me that old time faith, that Bible faith and joy in the Lord and the world and the religious can say what they want cause I ain’t letting nothing come between me and my God!

I seen it in the big city, 1200 kids, world changers, giving it all to God and I see it happening again in the countryside like it once did. Nothing will change in this society, absolutely nothing, until the heart changes. You can’t legislate and change people with hearts hardened to God, it never works or lasts. I guess this is the one thing that I have always stood my ground on, the hearts must be changed or else all is in vain.