God Wants You

Farming has always had its challenges- in 1993 it was the floods, in 2001 it was the soybean aphids, in 1997, it was the corn borer. I was farming in Southwestern Minnesota in 1997. The crops were looking great. I took kernel counts in mid summer and began to formulate a very optimistic yield estimate. Then the corn borers came. They came worse than we had ever seen them. We should have sprayed, but did not. By the time we realized what was happening it was too late. They had tunneled through though the stock, cutting off the nutrient supply to the ear. They were so bad that they had even tunneled through the center of most ears. Later as we combined, the grain tank was literally littered with corn borer larva. One of the fields yielded only half of what I had estimated because the kernels stayed small and the test weight was terrible.
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As I was combining a particularly bad field, I began to punch numbers and do the math…based on yield, price crop insurance payments and expenses, will I be able to pay the bills? I determined that I would be alright. I was single at the time, so my living expenses were quite low. I just would not be able to afford the piece of machinery I had had my eye on. I began to think, “well maybe next year.”
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Then I began to think, “what if I have a bumper crop and great prices next year? Then what? What if I have many profitable years and even am able to get all new machinery? So what?” As a Christian, I knew that there was more to life than a new John Deere, so I began to pray as I drove the combine.
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I began to feel an emptiness. I thought that instead of buying a new tractor, I could give the money to the church. I knew that would be a good thing to do, but then it hit me, God didn’t want my money as much as He wanted me. I saw how easy it would be to get so focused in my work of farming that I did not give my time to God. I realized that if I earned less money, but served Him more, that God could easily get the money that I would have given from somewhere else. I remembered the truth of Psalm 50:10, “For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.”
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God did not want my money as much as he wanted me. I got to the end of the field and waited for my brother to come with a wagon. I bowed my head on the combine steering wheel and told the Lord that I was ready to do whatever he wanted even if it meant giving up farming. I was willing to stop farming if that was what was asked of me, but the Lord allowed me to continue to farm another six years, just on a smaller scale. Shortly after that prayer, the doors began to open up to volunteer at church. I had cut back on acres, so that gave me the time to walk through those open doors. Eventually I quit farming to prepare for the pastorate.
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I am not writing this to tell the readers that they should quit their jobs and become a pastor, but to remind all of us that there is something more important than ourselves. Matthew 16:26 says, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” We cannot buy off God - not with our money, not even with our service, yet He is worthy of both.
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What God really wants is us. Not just our time, not just our wallet, but our very hearts and souls. “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.” Matthew 22:37-38. If you do not give God your heart in this life, there is nothing you can give for your soul in the next.
To read past articles by Pastor Miller, please visit bancroftbaptist.blogspot.com