The Harvest Is Hard

Amen, amen. I'd like to bring some energy in this place. I saw my- that's my wife- who who sang that song. She was jumping and I was like I don't know that thing shaking up and down.

We might need to test that.

I don't know if it me fire code. Hannah OSHA's going to get me later. I'm kidding, it's stable. It's stable about as stable and no, it's way.

I was looking up at that thing.

That's stable too. The thing above your heads is perfectly stable. I swear, perfectly stable. Guys, we've been in a series.

We've been calling it harvest season.

The idea of it is that we're going to reap a spiritual Harvest. I'm believing it. I've seen it in my own life and many of you. You've been praying and fasting for 21 days, 7 Days, 14 days, whatever number.

My Hope was that it was a conversation between you and God, that, you would forget something that has taken up a lot of time or mental bandwidth in your life, so that you can take that time or energy and give it to God.

Our belief here as a church is that when you give God your everything, he produces something in you that you've never SE or experienced, and so I hope you've had a good time if you participated in that or not. Like, have you had a good time doing it, guys? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you're tired. Some of y'all have been fasting from food for a couple days.

You ain't got no energy.

I was in the middle of the other day and I went and worked out and I was like it was in front of my wife for the first time in a long time and, I couldn't lift what I was lifting. I was like this is not normal, sweetie. I was anyways. Y'all didn't need to know that-, but this Series has been really, really helpful for me.

My word that we believe in God for in 2025, that will probably be heard in this room a million times this year- is momentum, and I'm believing that this year, for me, will be a year where I continually focus my energies on him and doing what he's called me to do, without complaining, trusting, without doubt, that he's going to multiply what I bring to him, and so that's, what this series is been about, this prayer time has been about for me is really giving it all to God and reaping a spiritual Harvest, so I hope it's been helpful.

Tonight we're capping it off and, I don't know, I remember the words of David- I'll become even more undignified than this. Tonight it's going to be a fun time of worship. You, you might say it's going to be unhinged in a good way. I don't know if that anyone, anyone in my small group.

They see me on Sunday nights.

Nobody in here. Yeah, it's different than here, right, it's not bad, though it's still authentic and true. But it's Sunday night. After preaching two sermons, it's going to be fun, it's going to be authentic, it's going to get real tonight.

So my hope is that you guys will come join us for our first ever night of worship.

You can expect just a bunch of worship together in this room. A very relaxed Vibe. So don't come in your suits unless God leads you to. We're going to have fun, guys, we're going to have fun and, those of us who stick around and, maybe tear it out afterwards we might go break some fast together.

Anyone like Waffle House in this place?

Yes, say Amen if you like Waffle House house. Amen, say Amen if You' never been to Waffle House. She, she's in the Waffle House too. My mom, when I was really young used to work at Waffle House so I would have Allstar special every other day for free.

It was dope.

Y'all don't know about all that, but now I'm living in the fields that anyways, all right. John, chapter 4: Everybody. John, chapter 4: if you have your Bibles or your phone Bibles, you got any translation you want. I'm going to be in the NIV and we've been going through this passage where Jesus goes to Samaria, which is a place that, a guy like Jesus would not typically go to.

But he brings his disciples, has a conversation with a woman at a well, after this conversation, this woman is deeply moved and she goes back to a town called sukar, which is about probably 0. 5 to 1 and a half miles from this well, and she starts telling people about her conversation with Jesus.

He says: come, experien her. Behold a man who told me everything that ever did. Could this be the Messiah? And right after this moment, Jesus's disciples come to him to bring him food and he tells them a super spiritual statement.

He says: I have food you don't know about.

We talked about that last week. You can go back and watch that if you want to, but we're going to be in verse 35 today, and I will read through verse 38, verse 35: don't you have a saying? It is still four months until Harvest. I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields.

They are ripe for Harvest even now.

The one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sewer and the reaper, the one that plants and the one that harvests, may be glad together. Thus the saying one SWS and another reaps is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.

If you've been following along on the videos I've been sending for prayer and fasting, it's been amazing to wake up in the morning and see how, by 6:30-, like dozens of you have already watched those videos and participated in the prayer time it's.

It's been really impressive to see what God has done in several of your lives. But in one of my videos I talked about an experience I had in Tanzania. So when it was 2023, it was summertime and I had an opportunity to go for free to the country of Tanzania. We were in a city called moza, right on the south edge of Lake Victoria in an orphanage, and the goal there was to spend time with the kids at the orphanage, and I was doing a lot of construction projects with some other people, but while we were there, it was their rice Harvest, and I've never experienced, harvest in an aarian Society.

I've seen Harvest here.

It goes way different there than it does here, and so I was like geeking out about this rice Harvest, because it's very similar in some ways to the grain Harvest that you see in ancient Israel, and so I got to experience firsthand what a har Harvest looked like in a in a village. And so what happened is they were all prepping for it. They told us about it like 3 days ahead of time. Hey, by the way, three days from now it's going to be rice Harvest.

All the villages are getting together.

We're going to go out there together. It's probably going to be 90 degrees. We're going to get out there when the Sun rises. We're going to be out there till the sun sets and we're going to do Rice Harvest.

You want to do it with them?

I'm like, well, we're here, so let's do it. And so we went out there that day and they gave us when we walked up. Just a little sickle now, or side. If you don't know what that is, picture the grim reapers thing that he holds, except picture it like this small and it's got a handle.

And then it has that little angled knife that curves and, they give it to you.

And so I walked out and I just kind of mimicked what other people were doing. They were way better at this than me and I'd never done it before. But what you have to do is there's a lot of stalks of rice and it's all in wet, like it's super soaked. That's how rice kind of Grows, Right.

So we go out there, we're ankled Deep in water, you grab the of the stock and then you start doing this for the whole field, like all the villages were out there doing this.

I got a. I got like an hour in and I was. I was being a wimpy American and the guys were looking at me. I think they were making fun of me, but I didn't want to pay attention to it, I didn't care, I was tired.

It was like 90 degrees outside, the bugs were getting at me and it was.

It was miserable. Now, I did that for a while and then I went to The Next Step, cuz that looked easier. So what they were doing was they' take the stalks after you cut them and they would drop them onto a tarp, and what they would do is they take some instrument- I don't know what it's called and I couldn't find a picture of it- and they would just hammer down on it and what would happen is the rice would break apart from the stock and it would go to the bottom of that pile into the tarp, and afterwards they' pull up all the stocks, take the rice and then put it into a bucket or whatever they were going to do to take it back to wherever they would distribute that Rice. The whole village took part in it and it was.

It was much different than I expected and it had to be done quick.

Because, like I said, there were bugs, it was Tanzania there, animals who were going to go in there, and then there are people who don't necessarily own that property who are going to come in and grab it if they don't get to it quickly. That was a moment for me. Were I genuinely understood some of the illustrations in the Bible about the Harvest a lot of us in our world. We think about the sewing season.

You know where you're planting seeds so that eventually you can Harvest.

You might think about the waiting season and think about how frustrating it is to be waiting and not knowing when the Harvest in your life is going to happen. But rarely do we think about what is required in the season of harvest. We just think it's the season where we receive all the benefits we've been planting and waiting for over the years. But I got to tell you- and this is my sermon title- I've learned the Harvest is hard.

The Harvest is hard and when I look at this passage, I just kept thinking about it.

I kept thinking about how we all want to receive blessing from God, but rarely do we care to experience the difficulty of that season. It's hard. It was hard. Rice came, that was good.

People got to eat- isn't that good?

That's awesome. But the process whereby I had to get the rice from stock to the table is not something I want to participate in a again, and I want to help you reframe today your view of your future Harvest. It might be a promotion at your workplace. It might be, the spouse you've been searching for.

It might be your kids getting to the spot where they don't back talk you anymore.

It could be any number of things that you're looking for, that you're sewing seed into, that you're praying to God, for that you're waiting on. I talked to somebody in the last service. It's been 12 years since they came to church and the reason they came today is because because they got to the point where they were just frustrated and they were going to give God a try, but they were frustrating with sewing, sewing, sewing and now waiting and nothing being produced. And so they're trying this and we're all in that spot in some form or fashion and there is a harvest.

But I want to help you reframe your view of the harvest season in your life to recognize that, well, it's going to be full of blessing and joy and peace and the results that you've been looking for.

In some ways, there's also a difficulty to it that, unless you're willing to embrace, you're going to miss the full extent of what God has for you, because the harvest is hard and if you look at what God invites us into, he doesn't invite us into easy. It's hard but it's so beneficial, and so I want to give you a couple quick points about the Harvest that I think you can glean from and apply in your own spiritual walk this week, like you could start this today. First off, the Harvest is time sensitive. The Harvest is time sensitive in the ancient world.

When the Harvest is ready, they got one to three weeks.

Now I did a lot of research on this. It's typically one to three weeks. It can be shorter and it can be longer, but typically the harvest season is 1 to 3 weeks. And if you could picture just a field right here- I mean, just look right here on the side of this school, they were harvesting cotton on Christmas Eve.

If they had asked me, I'd say, can you wait a couple days?

But they were harvesting cotton on Christmas Eve and it took a big Vehicle hours to get through. Picture in an agrarian society, in a field like that. You got one to three weeks to reap a harvest of whatever crop it is. That's, that's stressful, but it's the Harvest you been looking for, but it's, but it's harder than I anticipated.

That time sensitivity is quite interesting, but I have learned that, while there is an eternal Harvest that we can have when we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, right, like when we trust in Jesus, we can.

We can have salvation in a moment and spend eternity with God. There are a lot of other blessings that are extremely times sensitive. I mean I guess even that one is time sensitive if you think about the fact that none of us can promise ourselves tomorrow. These blessings of God in some ways are time sensitive.

I think I think about it like an open door, that it's some point there's going to be a window or an expiration date where that blessing doesn't work.

You know like there were some things I had an opportunity to do when I was younger and when I look back on them, on them, I don't look with regret- no regrets up here, guys- but I look back on them and I think I think God put that opportunity there and because of procrastination or laziness or insecurity and a lack of confidence in certain areas of my life, I didn't indulge on the blessing that God had in front of me. And I look back and I say, well, that window's closed. I can still experience blessing from God every day, but I can't experience that blessing. Y'all get what I'm saying, just say yeah.

Yeah, I mean you can think of many situations in your life- and because we didn't want to embrace some sort of difficulty- and that difficulty might have been as simple as I can easily do this, this if I can get in the mental head space to do it- but because I was unwilling to embrace the difficulty of the season in the right time, I missed out on that blessing many of us.

We have this. I will win mentality. And if you're going to be honest in this place- which I encourage everyone to be honest- if you're not honest in this place, you're probably not going to fit in long term. But we should be honest.

Right, like, if you're honest, how many of you kind of sometimes struggle with that?

I will do this, win mentality. All right, good, I love the honesty in this place. We say I will go to church when I'm less busy. I will open my Bible when I finish this Netflix B- I'm on currently.

I will spend some time in prayer when my kids get a little bit older and they stop bugging me at 6:30 every single morning.

Right, I'm not trying to call you out. If I did, it's the Lord, not me. Hopefully you know it's. It could be just indigestion for me that offended you.

But if you got offended, read the Bible and see what it says.

I might apply to you. But that's us. I say I'll do this when I'm like. I'll get in shape when it matters.

And now I'm married.

My wife loves me. She does love any of you guys as much as she loves me. So guess what? I don't have to do?

I don't have to get in shape.

I want to. I'm trying, but I'm not as motivated I thought. When I get older I'll get in shape because I'm busy. Right now I'm working 70 hours a week or whatever I will, when it didn't get me where I wanted to get.

And when we have that mentality in our spiritual walk is very likely that we're going to miss out on that door that God has opened for us.

We're going to miss the window of opportunity because the harvest season is time sensitive. I wrote this. I said the Harvest of this season is for this season and so, rather than I will win because you don't know when that window of opportunity expires for that blessing. Again to be clear, you're still going to be blessed.

If you came here and you've missed some windows of blessing.

That's okay. God is going to bless you tomorrow if you seize that window of opportunity. What does the word say? It says his mercies are new every morning.

He gives you new mercies every morning and he expects or hopes or Wills that you would take him on those mercies every single morning, that you would reap that spiritual Harvest every morning because his mercies are new every morning.

So, instead of I will win because that window of opportunity might expire, we need to have what I would call a Mana mentality. Yall know what Mana is. No, that's okay. If you don't, you can raise your hand, say yeah, amen, you can talk in this place like we like feedback and conversation.

Feel free, y'all see me up here.

I sit right here on purpose to mainly stress out Stacy right here, but also to stand in the front. So anyone who feels led to raise their hands sees me-, really weird dancing or something up front. You feel completely comfortable with whatever you feel led to do. I'm trying to lead the way up here, but this Mana.

So talk to me if you feel led to.

But this Mana is something that God provided for the Israelite people group when they came out of Egypt, but before they went into Israel they were sitting in the wilderness and every day God would provide Mana as food directly from heaven. Now, if you know the story, you know where I'm going with this. Mana was a blessing from God of sustenance for the people of Israel for 3 days, two days. One day.

He gave them man every day, except for the day before the Sabbath, where he provided them enough portion that they could get for two days because they were supposed to rest on the Sabbath.

And I think we need to have that Mana mentality that when we wake up in the morning we recognize his mercies are new, his mercies are fresh. I don't have to fret about yesterday or stress about tomorrow, because God has provided me today mercy and blessing and a harvest to reap. You can, you can experience him daily and if you have that Mana mentality, you're G to go grab it every day. It's like the Israelite people, like I got to get it today because if, because, if I don't get it today, I'm going to miss out on it, I won't be able to eat, and if I get too much today then it's going to rot the next day.

So I've got to get the Mana for today, because the Harvest of this season is for this season.

And when I look at John, chapter 4, what Jesus says is super helpful U if y'all can toss up verse 35. He says: don't you have a saying? It's still 4 months until Harvest. I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields.

They are ripe for Harvest now.

I did a lot of research on this saying it's still four months until Harvest and Scholars don't really agree on what this means. When I read it, I think it's a saying that says, hey, the Harvest isn't here yet. We've still got time. But what Jesus is saying, hey, look, and what he's saying to look at is: this woman went back to town, told these people all about Jesus and a group of Samaritans are coming out from town to meet Jesus where he is at that.

Well, and when Jesus says, look, the fields are ripe, or some translations say white for Harvest, he's saying, look, these people are coming.

The time is right now. You have a saying that this can happen later, but right now is the time to reap this Harvest. Jesus is saying: tomorrow is not something for you to worry about or wait on messing with. Today is the time where you need to experience it and all of you, right now, like literally- I'm not talking about 10 minutes, AG- like right now, you have an opportunity to reap a spiritual Harvest through God's word, through talking to him right now, through this worship service, through maybe someone sitting next to you smiled at you and you haven't been smiled at in a minute.

There are things to be grateful for, and these are the things that we can reap currently, and God wants to reveal himself to you and you can do it now.

So don't put it off. Oh gosh, we're so good at procrastinating, but let's have that Mana mentality. Point number two: if the first point was: it is time sensitive and that's something to keep in mind, Point number two is: it's, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work.

I, I know we promis you, like, tons and tons of great benefits and we say: it's easy to anticipate.

Jesus says: come to me all who are weary and I will give you rest. Now. He's talking about rest for your souls, clearly, because when Jesus came, he invited his disciples into a lot of work. What does he call all of his people to do?

At the end of Matthew, he says: go, therefore, unto all nations, making disciples, baptizing them in the name of the father, Son and the Holy Spirit.

Our whole job of followers of Jesus is to be Reapers- people who are going out and reaping a harvest, and we know- and they knew better than us CU, they probably participated in plenty of those. It's a lot of work. There's tons of physical labor, like when you're doing a harvest. You get the whole Village together and you would go from dawn to dusk every single day in order to reap that Harvest.

Why?

Because when you think about the time sensitivities of it, there are things that you got to keep in mind. Number one: there are bugs and animals that would steal from that Harvest. Number two: if you wait too long, that Harvest could rot, . Number three: , there are people who might come in and take a portion of that crop.

Now, the Old Testament prescribed what they would call gleaning.

What that means is, when you harvest your crop, you're meant to leave some on the outside for people who are maybe on the poverty level or impoverished in that area. They could go and they could grab stuff from your crops. This is how God called them to be generous. Or at least one way where he called them to be generous, but if you didn't reap the Harvest, people would be going all through your crops and reaping them for themselves.

So, like it is hard to get it done.

I was sweaty, I was struggling and I'd love to say I did it as much as they did, but I and took breaks, a lot of breaks. I wasn't in shape back then. I was four. I lost 20 lbs, proud of myself, I didn't have to say that.

But I'm on stage and I can.

So what's up? But we don't like labor. Now, I'm not saying you're lazy, I'm saying we as a culture tend to like the easy way versus the hard way. Am, am I?

Am I being honest?

Is that true? Like yeah, yeah, okay, cool. For example, I look at people when I'm watching the Olympics and I see the hard work that they put in. And then at while the Olympics is on Commercial, I see that commercial for OIC and I'm like OIC, Olympics, OIC, easier, and I hear it works.

I don't use OIC, but I hear it works.

We prefer the OIC rather than really training hard in order to get our bodies the way we want them to. We prefer over meal prep, fast food. Right, it's so much easier. I don't have to meal.

I have to cook six chicken bread on a Sunday and then need to dry one later.

That's too hard for me. I'm going to go to McDonald's and spend five bucks on that little $5 Mill with four chicken nuggets and fries. See, I take the easy route, rather than a labor intensive way of sitting down and learning, getting some financial literacy and learning how to do my own budget and working with people to help me get where I want to be, so that I can move from getting out of debt to stewarding my resources as well, to actually expanding- expanding my resources and then actually developing wealth and maybe generating a passive income over time. That's hard, but you know what that commercial I saw about that AI company that will publish books and write them for you.

That will then make you passive income of about $1,000 a month, at the end of which, if you pay $6,000 for that service, that one sounds much more appealing to me, except for the $6,000 part.

My wife was looking at me when I was, we were watching that and, she was like, oh my gosh, this would be so easy, Matt, and at the end of it, $66,000 for AI to write your books and I'm like I'm not g to pay that, but we all love the ponai schemes, don't we? We all love the schemes. They're going to get us rich quick. I've seen plenty of people in this room and outside of this room invest into things that would get them rich quick, but there is a difficulty to reaping a harvest.

Many of us want to feel peace, but we don't want to war against our flesh.

You want a peace that surpasses all understanding, but you don't want to develop your understanding to revolve everything around Jesus. Paul says it this way. He says: in order to obtain and experience more of God's Holy Spirit, you've got to crucify the flesh with its desires. I don't want to Crucify My Flesh in its desires.

I was, I was struggling.

We've been in the 21 days of prayer and fasting. Right, I know someone had an argument in their household while they were trying to fast from something. Hey, yeah, it's true, it's true, that was me. I was, I was fasting from food at one point and my mom cooked-, cooked something, but she cooked it with sesame oil and from upstairs.

I'm like I smelled that sesame oil and everything in me wanted to go downstairs and eat that fried rice she was cooking, .

But I was telling myself I was like: crucify your flesh and its desires. But I didn't want to and I actually planed to cut my fast early because I knew I was going to be getting a free meal from this group on the other side of town and I didn't want to walk up to the table and see all those appetizers do and have to sit it out. So I stopped my fast. I plan to stop my fast a little bit early.

I'm just being honest with you.

Don't judge me for it, but I don't want to Crucify My Flesh and its desires. But I, but I, I want to experience more of God's Holy Spirit. But it's hard and it's also worth it. And I wrote this down- and I don't rhyme stuff too often.

I think it's corny sometimes, but it's also memorable.

So on one side, don't think I'm corny. On the other side, you should write this down and remember it. It'll really help you in life, but I wrote this. I said: don't let the hard catch you off guard.

Don't let the hard catch you off guard.

Many people come into their relationship with God and then, all of a sudden, what we what we call Satan or the enemy- starts attacking you and you're like this is way more difficult than I thought and I want to tell you: don't let the hard catch you off guard, because if you're going to reap a harvest, you've got to recognize it's not going to be a walk in the park. It's going to be one of the hardest things you experience, but some of the hardest things you experience get you to the best blessings you've ever experienced, and so I want to encourage you: don't let the hard things catch you off guard, because the hard things actually draw you deeper and deeper into this harvest season that you're looking for, like when we, when we came here- we came here in February of 2023 to start this church and it was, it was pretty easy. This sewing season. It pretty easy if you think about it.

Like sewing, one guy or five guys can walk around and just you just drop the seeds.

And they're lazy about it. Right, just read one of The Parables from Jesus. He's like: they dropped it on hard soil. They dropped it on thorny soil, they dropped it on good soil, they just dropped it everywhere, which probably not very efficient use of seeds, but that's what they did back in the day.

It was easy to plant and sew seeds.

They just toss it and you do it in a couple of days. But even if you did it in a couple of weeks or a couple of months, no big deal. It's not going to produce until later. Anyways, you got time.

The waiting period is frustrating, but it's.

Let's be real. It's not easy here, but it's easy when it comes to the labor and sens of part of it. It is the Harvest that is extremely difficult, and so when we came out here, it was easy to chat with people and start building a team, . But as that team started growing, we had to start developing Frameworks so that we could do church at scale right, like if there's 10 people in a room, it's just me and them.

We're chatting, figuring stuff out, then it goes to 100.

You got to elevate and scale up in order to meet the needs of the Harvest that is bringing you. And then when we launched this last year, we had a team of about 100, maybe 80 adults, consistent, and then when we launched, we had 500 people come to our launch. That 80 to 100 people I've been investing into are now meant to reap that Harvest and I'm going to be honest, like I don't think I understood, at the level that I do now the times, sensitive nature of a harvest or the arduous nature of a harvest, and I, like, I'm Not Looking Back In regret, but I look back and I do lament the fact that we had 500, and every week after that we'd have tons and tons of first-time guests who come in and while I think we did a great job in some ways, I think me personally, I, I was all about reaping the Harvest, but I didn't know or didn't want it to be as hard as it was, and so we missed a lot of the opportunity. Now I'll be honest, some people left because it wasn't their preference.

Some people left for various reasons.

Not everybody left because I wasn't ready or we weren't ready, but I'm going to be honest, I had not equipped our team to be ready for the Harvest that God would bring, and I'm not going to do that again. Like what, you know what keeps me up at night? What keeps me up at night is knowing that God brought a harvest of people and I can remember names, I, I can see the people's faces who came in and because maybe I didn't reach out to them in the time I needed to, or because our team wasn't large enough to sustain 150 calls that week, or whatever. Like we, we missed an opportunity because we failed to embrace the heart of the Harvest, and so that made me start shifting my own personal culture, and so it was this last year that God gave me a couple different things.

Number one, I would encourage you: if you want to reap a harvest in your life, embrace the difficulty of it.

Don't try to avoid it. Embrace it. It like if you look above your heads. That's called trust.

Those four things are called moving headlights and, if anyone's been here longer than about five weeks, you would remember when those lights were over there on top of those, whatever they call them, I don't know- like crank stands, that's it crank stands, and someone donated about several hundred feet worth of trussing and we're super grateful for them, and we brought about 60 foot of trussing in right here.

And Carz, our worship leader, he was on stage today, he was in the back today and I- and I think David was there- we were standing right in here kind of experimenting, trying to figure out how we were going to navigate this because, because we knew we needed to move the lights here to get a better situation, because- I don't know if you knew this, but close to 100 people watch online every single week and, we want to continue to reach those who are in the community that can't drive to church, those who are Maybe distant or traveling, and all those. What we always say is, our live stream is for outreach, not just for convenience, and so we're reaching those people, but also in here, we want to continue to increase our Excellence so that when people come in droves, we are able to sustain that. And so this one little decision to put up trusting. We started putting it together and we looked at it and then cares looked at me and I looked at him and we were like this is more than we thought it was going to be.

This is a lot of work, and you know what your gut tells you.

When you have access to what God wants you to do, but it's harder than you thought it was going to be, what your gut tells you is: oh, maybe there's more efficient way to do this, and maybe there is, and you got to explore that, but then your gut says it's not really worth it, it's not going to add the value that I anticipated it would add. And it was in that moment I started to think like that. I said we're going to have to add two to three more volunteers to get this up every week. It's going to take this much more time, so we're not going to be able to move our call time later like we want to.

It's going to be hard.

And the Lord convicted both me and Carz- and that's where we came up with this kind of cultural point, for our church said: no, let's Embrace that, because the Harvest is going to be hard and if we can Embrace these little moments of heart, then we're going to be ready, we're not going to miss it again. So that's number one: embrace the heart of the Harvest. Number two: , we want to build a team. We want to build a team for the Harvest.

Now for you guys, if you want to reap a harvest, you need an encouraging group of people around you anyway.

So it's important for you to assemble people in your life that are going to help you reap what you want to reap in your life. But I want to talk specifically about our church, because I'm believing. Like Jesus said to his disciples: look, the fields are ripe for Harvest. If you've been anywhere around here in the West Valley, you know the fields are white for Harvest.

Like people are ready and anticipating and looking and searching for what God could do in their life, even if they're not placing it.

Currently, something is happening out here in the West Valley and if we don't build the team to get it to the place where we can actually receive and help and develop and Make Disciples of the people who show up here or the people that you run into on the street, then we're going to miss opportunities that God puts right in front of us and I don't want to do that. So I want us to build our team, and last week we pushed volunteering pretty heavily. But I just want to encourage you, consider what your place is when it comes to reaping the Harvest here in the West Valley, and I'd love you to consider specifically what it looks like to serve on a Sunday team and to join a small group. In fact, on your seats you have a small group list.

We're doing a big small groups launch next week, but I wanted to give you that sheet so you could peruse what groups we have available and, as you do that, you might make a decision this week.

You can always go online to sign up- I think there's a QR code right on that sheet- or come in next week and you'll be able to meet some of those group leaders and decide for yourself what group might be a good fit for you. But if you want to reap the Harvest of community that you came here for, you need to jump in. If you want to reap the Harvest of purpose that you're looking for, you might need to jump in by maybe serving on a team. I think it'll provide you some of the things that the Lord wants you to have, that you feel are missing in your life.

And here's the thing I'm asking you to step into: stuff, right, like it feels like we're going from season to season.

Right, we had a giving Series in the fall. We just did 21 days of prayer and fasting. Now I'm pushing, volunteering. It can feel taxing.

I want to be very clear.

I'm not inviting you to do anything just because we have needs. I'm inviting you to do this because I genuinely believe in my third point, that if we can embrace the hard part of the Harvest, then we're going to experience to the fullest extent we can the benefits that he offers. My third point is: the Harvest is full of benefits, it's full of blessing. I don't know if they're going to put there it goes this up there.

Oh, that's great, good job.

It's full of blessing. But in order to experience some of these things, we've just got to embrace the difficulty of it, like Jesus calls us into a cruciform lifestyle, and I mean by that that we are to take up our cross and follow him. If you look at his disciples, who he saying this to at the time, he's telling them: look, fields are white or ripe for the Harvest, and by the time Jesus dies on the cross, he's resurrected three days later. He spends several days, many days, talking to his disciples and teaching them some more.

Then he ascends to the father and he leaves them to reap the Harvest and they're waiting in an upper room.

But then the day of Pentecost comes, where 3,000 people who were visiting Jerusalem at the time come to hear Peter preach a message and they were saved. That was hard. And after that they keep preaching all through the known world and, according to tradition, all of them died for their faith. It's hard, but it's.

It's full of benefits.

It's full of benefits. I just finished that Marathon a couple weeks ago and I'm telling you this: that was hard and there's like almost no benefits. Y' y'all think it for real. I ran a race and I can say that.

And in order to feel more benefits, I have to say it twice in 3 weeks.

You know what I'm saying: like no benefits. I just I ran it. I feel good about myself, but this is hard, but constant Revelation from God, constant new experience, like some of the benefits that I listed here. You get a greater connection to God.

You get more biblical Community.

You get more peace than you had. You get a deeper Clarity with your purpose. Some of you are going to gain new skills. Like, if you look in the back, you got a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old they're running cameras, they're hitting buttons.

That's one of the drops.

They're hitting buttons, they're messing with switchers. They're coming up here one of- I'm bringing this up- and like they're learning skills and my vision for them would be that when they graduate high school, they can go to college or they can go to a church and work in production at a church, or both. Right, I'm not negating College- college is important, you know, whatever- but, like I, want you to develop new skills, like one of the things you'll get to see is people come to Jesus in a relationship with him up close. Some of you.

If you are willing right now to make the choice and recognize the time sensitivity of the blessing, you might make a decision right now to step through that door and choose to follow Jesus, whatever that means for you.

It's going to be hard, but it's going to be full of rewards and benefits, and so what I want to do right now is I want to encourage everyone in this room to take the step that they're ready to te. But I want to take this solemn moment right now to give you an opportunity to trust in Jesus if you've never done so. So if everybody would bow their heads and close their eyes, I've got the best invitation available. It's hard but beneficial.

The Bible says: if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved.

So I want to invite you to step into that relationship now. So the way we do that here is: , we pray that prayer together that we're about to pray out loud for the benefit of those who are praying it for the first time. So if you could repeat after me: say God, I believe, I that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, Jesus Christ is, I believe he died on the cross and Rose from the grave, forgive me of my sin, make me new, help me embrace the difficult and I will follow you for the rest of my life s. In Jesus name that I pray, amen, heads bowed, eyes closed.

If you prayed that prayer today for the first time and you trusted in Jesus for the first time, I want to invite you to raise your hand at the count of three.

No one's looking at you, but I just want to be able to identify so I can reach out to you at some point in the next week. So at the count of three, we're going to celebrate. You just go and shoot your hand up if that was you. One, two, three, amen, amen, amen.

Hey, can we celebrate those who just trusted in Jesus?