Topic: Harvesting at God O’clock

Text: John 4:34

Jesus was intense and intentional about the harvest. It was passion and core focus of His ministry. You cannot read the gospel carefully and miss His heart and burden for the harvest. To Him, nothing really matters if it does not matter to God and His glory among all peoples. In every encounter with both Jews and Gentiles; in virtually all His miracles and through all His parables, the harvest was always in the front burner.

He came for the harvest. He lived and died for the harvest. He actually called harvesting His food, the sustenance, or the nourishment of His being. To ignore the harvest is to fail the litmus test of a true disciple. Harvest without a labourer is a tragedy. He establishes the church, as His labour force, for the harvest. To misunderstand or misinterpret the harvest and its season is disastrous! He once stunned on His followers:

Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor (John 4:35-38 ESV))

This jolted their fixed minds. A striking and consequential disruption of their calculation of times and seasons. Shifting attention from the burden in verse 34 to the timing and consequence of our harvest involvement:

• Jesus says, it is God o’clock! It is harvesting time. Take another look at what time and season you are in. It is time to bring in the sheaves. Don’t suspend your fruitfulness. If you read God’s time piece, harvest is right now upon us.
• Don’t postpone the harvest. Understand God’s seasons. Appropriate God’s season of the harvest and enter into the harvest. Don’t delay the celebration. Throne room will soon be filled with people from all tongues, language, peoples and nations.
• Sowing is ongoing, so is the harvest. The reapers and the planters are on duty together. You can’t be in and be left out, except by your own choosing. It is God O’clock.
• At God O’clock, the harvesters are being paid. If you enter into their harvest, you get something eternal for your labour. There is a lot more to harvest than your limited struggling efforts could grasp. The generation of starters are re-released into the generation of the finishers.

At God O’clock God is working ahead of you into your seasons. He is supplying the “seed to the Sower and bread for food. He will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest” (2 Cor 9:10 (ESV). Harvesting at God O’clock brings your labour to a tangible season of fruitfulness. It can eliminate dryness and frustration.

If your heart is right for the harvest, it won’t matter which season you are in. Since what you’re reaping today was another man’s sowing of yesterday; just as your sowing today prepares a stage for the harvest season of others tomorrow. God is rearranging the seasons as we understand them. This can rattle human calendar. “Behold, the days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when the plowman shall overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed; the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. (Amos 9:13 (ESV)) So, God is collapsing our known seasons while setting up multiple seasons of the harvests.

Prayers:

• May our time piece be set to synchronize with God O’clock.
• May the Lord connect our hearts with His timing for the harvest.
• May we not miss this revival birthing season of harvest of the nations in the horizon. May we read His piece in ways that help us stop postponing, delaying and denying the harvest.

Rev’d Canon Timothy Olonade, PhD
Pioneer Executive Secretary, NEMA & President, El-Rehoboth Global Missions (aka El-Rehoboth Global Leadership Foundation)