Growing Tomatoes
During the past few years, our ministry has gone through a number of changes. For a short time it seemed like we were treading water as far as the specific direction was concerned. Previously, the ministry, through my wife’s leadership, operated as a church, school, and daycare. Once this operation came to a close, a defined new operation has been pending. Our focus has been to seek that new purpose and prepare for that operation to manifest.
I have now retired from corporate life and have been led to a desire to serve in full-time ministry alongside my wife. I’m able to spend much of my day working on our website, developing it as a teaching tool which we know will become an important part of the forthcoming ministry calling and operations. A major part of our calling is to help those less fortunate than ourselves, focusing on situations such as helping with food. This sparked many thoughts, one of them being starting our small garden and planting some basic vegetables, as a trial, and using grow bags which eliminated having to dig up the soil. Spade and rake work can be very arduous and I was not keen on this kind of labour. So, grow bags seemed to be the best idea. But God had a different plan!
Over the past two years, we have planted peppers, zucchini, squash, and many other things, including tomatoes. However, we have not had a particularly successful result. In the first year, we had a tremendous amount of summer heat with little rain. The following year the rain was too much. Our soil is mainly clay-based and, even with using high-quality organic soil in our grow bags, we still had very little success. This year, being our third year of trying, we have yet to have any significant crops. Even though the weather has changed from being very hot with little rain to having some pretty heavy downpours, there has still been little success. We even called the University of Tennessee agricultural extension department, and one of the conclusions they came to was that, because we are using well water, which is very alkaline, the plants did not like it so this would be conducive to a very negligible crop.
Very disappointing to say the least. So we look to find and researched many teachings from professional gardeners online and editorials for many magazines. We decided that we had a few major barriers that we would need to overcome before we were going to be more successful.
I remember hearing one minister say that when something is difficult to achieve, or if there’s been great resistance, it could be one of two things: the first being that the devil is just totally against your success, or you’re not meant to be undertaking this task in the first place! This reminded me of a comment made by a very prominent minister who was having was identical problems growing her tomatoes. Little success in doing so as well. So she went to the Lord and asked him why she was having such resistance and little or no results. The Lord told her, “I did not call you to grow tomatoes!”
There was my answer! The Holy Spirit was telling me the same thing. I admitted that I had still been seeking what my new role is in our ministry. For certain, I now knew that, at this time, it was not growing tomatoes!
But, of course, I had to have my say, didn’t I ?….. The Lord tells us to ask, so I did. “But I enjoy gardening, Lord”, I felt him say, “It’s okay to have a hobby and to have the pleasure of growing and producing for your own table. But it is not your responsibility to grow or supply for others. That’s God’s work. Attend to the plants that you already have, but don’t buy or plant any more right now. I didn’t call you to grow tomatoes either! “
I realised that in His gentle, loving way, I was being told to focus and refocus on the work that I had been doing and continue doing that until He tells me otherwise.
Every Christian has a calling on their life. From the Ministry of Helps to the Office of the Prophet. No matter what the calling is, we are instructed to carry out things in the Lord’s way by subjecting ourselves to His ways and applying the skills that we have been given to achieve it. But to follow instructions, not design your own ways of doing things. It’s like being at a fork in the road and choosing the wrong way. Allow yourself to be guided and not make your own choices and fail.
Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6)
and
Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and He shall bring it to pass. (Psalm 37:5)
Please check out two of our ministry operations being set up by clicking on the links below. They can give you an idea of how a calling may be revealed to you.