30th October 2022 Celebration Service - Dave Food - 7 keys to harvest

I also realized for those who were frustrated by the the glitching in the sound

files, actually it's part of the overload of what we're going through. I

know exactly what it is. I've been dabbling around in the background, and

it's basically the machine is overloaded. Anybody feel overloaded, And how do we

manage overload. One way is to just go and turn everything off. An

other ways to try and adjust your way through the course. And that's what

I've been trying to do, so I ud I what I did was just

got it wrong. I just asked too much of the computer, and so

it was going And I'm sure we can all feel like that too, you

know, sometimes we just want we're just you know, it's like we're trying

to carry carry seven things in our hands and we can only really carry six,

and then we drop one, and then we drop another one, and

so we're in the end. We're coming to the end of our season of

looking at harvesting. And I took the dog out in the garden this morning

and realized I'd missed some of the harvests. We have an apple tree in

our garden. It's an old apple tree. It's been around for a long

time. It's been in our garden all the time we've lived there, and

older. It's one of those trees that kind of starts to get a bit

nulled, and it's got lichen on it, and it kind of looks like

an old tree. And with the wind over the last few days and the

heavy rain, you know, the last of the apples has fallen. I

just I should have got them down before the wind time missed the harvest.

Now we'll use the fallers, but it's not the same as being able to

dry them, store them and keep them for a good time. So I'd

like to hopefully give us seven keys to harvesting. There's still things to be

learnt from harvesting as we press into a harvest. To let me pray,

Father God, I pray that Lord you'd help us to gather around your word.

Father, I pray that you'd help me to put aside the distractions,

Lord, of anything that is not of you, And Lord, I would

just share what is on your heart for us to talk about, to get

a hold of, to grasp, to be revealed, to be imparted in

your name. And so Father, I pray that Lord you'd help us all

to continue to get an eye on what you're doing in our streets, in

our families, in our workplaces, in the church, in our community.

Father, thank you that you are bringing need to our doors in so many

ways. And Father, help us to get our eyes on you, the

Lord. When our own harvesters run out, we can look to you and

who is the author of our harvest, and help us to feed, to

care, to nurture, to give, to care in Jesus' name for your

glory. Amen. So one of the reasons why certain things need to be

kept after a harvest is they are the seed for the next harvest, and

so actually seeds saying we're not probably not going to be planting seeds at this

time of the year, but there will be things like chili's that are coming

to the end. That we've got a chili plant out side, we're probably

just about to have to bring it in. It's covered in chili's. They've

all gone red, and some of those will eat fresh for some of those

will dry, and some of the ones we dry. If we dry them

well, then when we come to next spring, we'll be able to sow

some of those seeds and there'll be more fruit and more harvest. And so

actually now is a bit of time for work for you know, bringing in

the harvest, but also thinking about the next season's harvest. And I mentioned

I think last time I spoke about Kayleb and his dad Ben, who right

now are as. They've brought the harvest in and now they're preparing the fields

for next spring. They're already doing various things in the fields to prepare for

it. And I want to be clear that we've got to make sure that

we're sowing. And so in Galatians chapter six, verse seven, it says

this do not be received. God is not mocked. For whatever a man

sows, that he will reap. I'm not talking about what God sows it.

I'm talking about what man socks. Because anybody ever had to say to

a child, don't do that. I remember talking to some good friends of

ours and they've got some teenage children and they were getting really they were really

wrestling with the use of the mobile phone. And you know, they'd be

sitting in the living room together and their children will be on their mobile phones

and they'd say something and they wouldn't hear them, and then they get cross

because they well, why are you always looking at your mobile phone. And

I remember talking to them as a couple about this particular situation, and I

said, I've got to be honest. When I look at you, I

see exactly the same thing. And as I've been sitting and talking, as

I've been sitting and talking to this person, a couple of times in our

conversation, they checked their mobile phone. I said, what do you think

you're communicating to me when as we sit together, you'll keep on testing your

mobile phone or checking your mobile phone. And I said, oh, sorry,

and they put it away. I said, I'm sure you do that

at home with your children too, And I said, what you reap you?

So if you model you know that the phone is more important than that

the children in front of you, then they're probably going to do the same

thing. They're learning from what you're doing rather than what you're saying. And

they said, Dave, you're right. I said, here's a suggestion.

For example, I would like to make a suggestion that every time you sit

down for a meal, you have a bowl, maybe away from the table,

and you all put your mobile phones in the bowl, and then you

sit down and have a meal together. And so when you're because I'd remember

sitting with this particular gentleman and when his phone bleaked, we were having a

meal together. When his phone bleaked, he kind of surreptitiously he just checked

his phone. Where he thought he was being surreptitious, he wasn't at all.

And I've been told by research that one of the things that's really quite

interesting is even taking your phone out of your pocket. So imagine you're meeting

someone for lunch and because you're phone, you don't want to sit on your

phone, you take it out of your pocket and you put it on the

table. Even that's a red flag because you're saying, well, well,

I don't know what you're saying, but to the other person, they could

be Okay, I'm just putting it there just in case it rings, Ashley,

put it in your bag, put it away. And I'm preaching to

myself here as well, Guys, I haven't got it sorted either. I'm

sure like others, we have to wrestle with that time and attention and focus.

So what you reap you So sometimes when you reap something unexpected that's not

good, maybe worth just pausing, going where have I been sewing recently?

What have I been sewing into. I'll give you a different example at work.

So this would have been on a team scool about five or six weeks

ago. The discussion got quite heated. It can do on teams because you

know you miss so much. But the discussion got quite heated, and one

or two things got said, and then suddenly everybody wasn't getting on with everybody,

you know, not in the meeting, but after the meeting. And

I just dropped into an email and just said, I just think we probably

need to kind of learn some lessons out of that conversation and maybe be a

little bit more graceful or a bit more considerate. One or two people said

yes, and you know the bubble was burst. Well, yeah, let's

just least pay attention to if we're wanting to harvest the good thing, if

we want to have a good harvest around our lives, then let's make sure

we're reaping the good things. And Jesus said it looked six thirty eight that

if you give, you will receive. Your gift will return to you in

full, pressed down, shaken together, make more room running over and poured

into your lap. You know the amount of surplus that God has is overflowing.

It's so much more. It's so much more that He has for us.

And so I want to encourage you. If you've got a container,

then think that it's going to be full, Think that it's not just going

to be full, but fall to overflowing, and then think about you know

that if it's overflowing, it's messy. You've ever tried cooking with little children.

I used to be a primary school teacher, and you know, I

used to do some I can't call it cooking, but assembling ingredients in a

classroom. And it was messy. It was always messy. There were some

children who would very carefully pour water from one thing into another, and another

child would pick up the jug and it would just be all over the table

and everywhere. Now, as soon as you start to say to the children

who are less careful with things, oh, be careful, be careful,

be careful, suddenly they sit and they wait for you to do it because

they don't want to spill, they don't want to upset, they don't want

to get it wrong. And so I think sometimes it's really great to see

people and children making little mistakes, as long as they learn from those little

mistakes, and so for me, I remember that in that partic I had

somebody come and visit me in the classroom. I was teaching out in Coventry,

and I was teaching four and five year olds and there was a group

over here doing something. There was another group in a sand pit over here.

Somebody was standing by the side of me reading. There was a whole

bunch of other things going on in the classroom. The person came in ready

to do something, and they sat and they watched, they listened to someone

read, and they said to me, Dave, this is chaos. I

said, no, no, they're over there doing sand this person's reading there.

Over there, they're doing some maths. I said, it's not all

the same, but it's life, and life is messy. He said,

well, how do you keep in control? I said, well, sometimes

I don't. Sometimes I have to stand up and clap my hands and say

okay, everybody, let because I said, the alternative for me is if

we have such order that everything's in a row, we're talking about a graveyard.

If you want a place of order and quiet and peace, go to

a graveyard. And I want to go to a place of life, not

a place of death if I'm really honest with you. So you know,

let's reap what we say, but let's also reap what God wants us to

reap. Let's claim our harvest. Let's be bold about the harvest that we

can take. In Matthew eleven, verse twelve, it says this eleven verse

five, I think I got the wrong one. This I'm going to say,

Okay, let's ignore the one that's on screen at the moment. In

Matthew eleven, verse twelve, it'says and for the days of John the Baptist,

until the present time, the Kingdom of Heaven has endured violent assault,

and violent men seized it by force. As a precious prize, to share

in the heavenly kingdom is sought with most ardent zeal and intense exertion. I

don't know whether you've ever been in a place where there's a shorty. You

see videos of floods in Bangladesh, and then a truck would arrive with bags

of rice on the back, and there will be people just pushing and jostling,

pushing and justing saying can I have my cup of rice? Can I

have my cup of rice? And they just want their share, but they

want it now and they don't want to miss out. And there's something about

when we sense that God is saying there's a harvest, that we need to

jostle in our place and just say, yeah, I want my heart.

I want my part of the heart. I want the harvest that you're bringing.

I want to be part of that harvest, not just sitting back and

going, oh, well, let's see what happens with the harvest. Let's

see whether it comes in, because I honestly believe sometimes we will miss some

of the harvests because we haven't paid attention. And because we haven't paid attention,

then as a consequence, we missed the opportunity to bring in seed for

the feature. Galatians chapter six, verse nine, back in sequence. Good.

Okay, So let's not get tired of doing what is good at the

right time. We will reap the harvest of blessing if we don't give up.

There's a number of times in my life when I've been waiting for something,

I was sitting thinking about how could I could illustrate this. I remember

sitting waiting for someone in a meeting online. This was online. It was

quite an important meeting and I was all prepared, and I was sitting there

and sitting there, and after about seven minutes. I don't know how long

you'd have waited. After about seven minutes, I thought, okay, they're

not coming. I dropped off, and then I sent them an email,

and then I went to make a cap of coffee. And then when I

came back to my computer of five minutes later, the person who I was

meant to be meeting with had sent me an email reply saying, Dave,

where were you? I was a bit late, but and I never did

get hold of them. The whole meeting got delayed by probably a week or

so out of my impatience. I don't know what your time thresholds are,

how long you're willing to wait. Same thing happens with small groups sometimes online.

You know, I'll be there, There'll be somebody else there with some

shop. It's just the two of us. Shall we pause? And then

somebody else will turn up fifteen minutes later because they got stuck in a car

or something happened. We live it. We're so impatient. And so one

of the things I want to say is, don't give up on the seed.

When you plant seed and water it, and it's in good soil,

then it's going to do what it's been designed to do. And the first

thing it will be do is it will start to germinate. As it starts

to germinate, it'll start to put down roots, and those roots are to

draw water and to feed it and to help it germinate more. And then

over time, eventually it will start to put up some shoots. But those

shoots take a long time to come for some sea. Some things I believe

you plant now, and you won't see any evidence of anything happening till springtime,

even though you've planted them. Now you think, come on, where

are you? Yeah? And I want to say, let's believe in the

seed. Let's believe in the word now. The illustration that comes from the

sower, the illustration of the sower in the Gospel, it says, you

know, the seed gets sown, it gets sewn on the path, and

the birds take it away, and it gets overwhelmed by weeds. But it's

still going to Germany, and it's still going to bear some kind of fruit.

Okay. The consequences of what you do around it, you know,

if you if it's laid on the surface and the birds can then come and

eat the germinated seed and take it away. Maybe you need to plant it

a bit deeper. If it's planted amongst weeds, well, okay, you

need to pick out the weeds where you can. So let's believe in the

seed. Let's le's understand what the seed is all about. Let's lay hold

of that. And so I want to encourage people to be a bit more

intentional about certain things. If you sensed God wanted you to invest in somebody

else, Let's say they shared a particular project that they were going to do,

and you felt you were going to give them twenty pounds fifty pounds,

say I want to be part of this. I just want to sew into

it. I want to give to you. I want to encourage you to

rather other than just think about giving as in there's some money, think about

sowing that being much more intentional than just giving it, and say, I

want to be part of this. I want not that you necessary, I

want to be part of the fruit that you will come from this. And

so saying there there you go, that's my part. I'm playing my part.

I'm doing my bit. I'm doing the bit that I sense God wanted

me to do and sew it just say, maybe even say those words,

I'm sowing that seed. I'm sowing this seed into your plans, into your

purposes. Many years ago, when Cholo was part of church, he came

and spoke. Not that long ago, he shared that with the men that

he felt God was calling him to get involved in playing golf. I don't

know whether anybody remembers this, but he shared he was going to start if

he felt God wanted to't get onto the golf. Now, you might think,

well that's a nice that's a nice project to have. If anyway,

the men said we want to get behind you in this, so we bought

him a golf club. Not the whole set, but we said we're going

to buy you a golf club and shown us handicap. Went from here to

here in a faster time than you could ever believe. He had some very

interesting conversations on the golf course. I don't think he gets an opportunity to

play nearly as much as he'd like to now, but it was great to

be part of that. And here's the thing. If you're part of it,

then the person comes back and tells you stories because you've invested in them,

so you keeck you get to hear about the harvest. Yeah, sometimes

you people will ask us to pray, and they'll reach out to us and

say please pray, and then you don't hear anything, and so you're still

praying for this thing, whatever it is, somebody to be sick, a

job, a situation, and a financial breakthrough, and then maybe six eight

weeks later, you bump into them or you a conversation with a WhatsApp or

something like that, and so, oh yeah, that's all been sorted.

So sometimes I think if we're a bit more intense, maybe sowing seeds could

even include praying. You say, I'm going to stand with you in prayer.

So we're being intentional in building together and that builds community, that builds

conversation, that builds faith because people feedback say, I know you're praying,

so here's an update. So let's not give up on the seed. Let's

also make sure we're keeping the worms and the weeds out of the harvest.

In Genesis chapter two, verse fifteen, it says this, and the Lord

God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it

and to keep it. You know, Adam was given an intention to look

after the garden. That means to keep pests out. You know, where

weeds need to be pulled up, you know, make sure that there is

room for something to grow. And I want to encourage you, you know,

are there weeds in our own lives? Have people heard of the concept

of a life laundry? Have you heard of that concept? How many people

get too many emails? Okay? How many people would like to get less

emails? Okay? How many people have ever turned around to somebody and said,

can you stop sending me that email? Please? Yeah, some people

might do it, but we probably don't do it enough. And here's the

thing. The legal stuff has changed has nothing to do with the sermon.

But you know, if you ask someone to take you off a mailing list,

they should take you off a mailing list. You shouldn't keep on getting

junk from them. And just think about Okay, even if it's just one

second to read the headline of that email and you get fifty extra emails a

day, that's a minute or nearly a minute. Probably, you know,

by the time you've clicked on it, it's well more than a minute.

And I'm not suggesting I'm reading the contents of the email. You're just reading

the headline. Well, okay, if we can just get rid of some

of that waste, we keep the weeds of time out of our lives,

out of our world. And so I want to encourage you think about your

life as a garden. Think about what you do as a garden. Don't

just think about this as gardening, because I'm not the person who advise on

gardening at all, but I can advise about life, and what encourage you.

Think about a life laundry, think about maybe having a cleanup in a

certain area from time to time. Because we've got a dog, a dog

lying on a blanket, the blanket gets a bit doggy, and so the

blanket has to go into the washing machine and it takes a it takes Okay,

that blanket probably needs to go in the washing machine. We could do

the same. We can just pay attention to our lives and go. You

know, there's a lot of noise over here. Could I get rid of

some of that noise? So there's a lot of activity over here, how

much of that is necessary? Let's keep the weeds out of our harvest,

out of our lives where possible. In Psalm sixty seven, verses five and

six, it says this, let the people praise the old God. Let

all the people praise thee. Then let the earth yield her increase, and

God's even our God will bless us. So it starts with praise, and

then let whatever God has planned bring forth its increase. I will encourage us

to look after the harvest. I know scripture says so, and the Lord

will provide the sun and the rain. But also if I go back to

that previous scripture in Genesis two fifteen, the instructions to Adam was to dress

and to keep it, to look after it. And I think there are

places in our lives when we can focus on and think about how we can

bring a better growing environment. We can give the opportunity. So over the

summer, it was there were various periods over the summer where it was very

dry before we had the hostpipe bands and you were out with the host pipe

water in the plants that we planted, otherwise they were going to die and

there was going to be no harvest. There's one or two things that I

know I planted that there's no tomatoes on them. At all. You know,

the plant grew got very green, but it was too late in the

season. Even though I watered it, it was not going to bear fruit.

And in Mark chapter four, vers. Twenty nine, it says this,

but when the grain is ripe and permits immediately, he sends forth the

reapers and puts to the sickle. Because the harvest stands ready. There's time

and attention to pay to look and say, is the harvest ready? Am

I ready to get involved in it? Am I ready to bring forth that

for which God has sown in my life? And I want to encourage you,

each one of us, not just you us. I want to encourage

us to speak to the harvest, to speak to the harvest field, to

speak to others and say, Okay, there's a harvest coming. Even Nikki

gave us an example of that today. Okay, we as leaders prayed,

we fasted, we shared together, we encouraged, and there were things in

there that echoed that would have been a blessing to others be encouraged too.

And here's the thing. I am absolutely sure that when we start to see

and believe and know there's something coming, we'll start to say, yes,

it is so this is that which we prayed for. There's a number of

times in my life when I've said it, and other people have said it

to me. When somebody said, this is that which you prayed for,

Shoulder, and I had many years ago an opportunity to go to a city

in California. Name's gone out of my head. Apologies there, but we

went there and we went there to do a prophetic gathering, and we spoke

various things, and one of them was a new church building. And we

went back three years later to the same churches and we were taken on a

tour around the city. I said, Shoulder, this is what you prophesied.

That's what you prophesied, and that would And I'll tell you what.

By the time we got out of the car and got to the church,

because we were driven around the city on the way to the church, I

was pumped. I was full of faith because God had moved, God had

God had encouraged, God had spoken, and I want to encourage you.

Let's speak to the harvest. Let's encourage the Harvest's encourage one another to go

and take the harvest. In James chapter five, verse four, it says,

this hold which person God's up there. Let me read it from this

version. First of all, indeed, the wages of the laborers who mowed

your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the

cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of the Sabbath.

Okay, if you're not going to be good in terms of harvest time,

then we've got I think we've got to focus on where the harvest is coming

from. So cry out to the Lord of the harvest. Cry out to

the Lord of the harvest, and see what will come, because he will

bring harvesters because he wants to see the harvest happen. And it's it's sometimes

very easy to go, oh, I'm tired. Do I have to do

this? And I just sense the Father says yes. I have the privilege

of setting up every Sunday morning, and you know, I like putting the

chairs out, and I like putting out the chairs out because I literally pray

every chair I move, I pray, Lord, whoever sits in this chair,

would you bless them? I do that every Sunday morning. Now,

anybody else could come and do that. It doesn't have to be me.

You get the opportunity. But you know what, when somebody asks for prayer,

when somebody gives a testimony, when somebody encourages and said, something happened

for me in church this morning, I think, yes, I'm commanding the

blessing. I'm just saying, Lord, I'm in the right place. Because

God's a covenant God. God's a covenant God. He makes promises and he

fulfills them. His word is his word. He is reliable and sure.

And so let me pull this all together in the seven points that I've covered

here, I don't know whether you've got them all down. And see how

many you managed to pick out? Number one sow seed for the harvest.

So look after the seed, take care of it, but be ready for

the next season of harvests. Proclaim the harvest. The harvest is coming.

You know. Sometimes if you don't proclaim the harvest, then we'll miss it.

You've got to be looking for the tomatoes in the garden to be ready

to go and pick them. If you wait and then go out there,

that could it be bad by the time you get out there. So you

know, encourage people, proclaim the harvest. Don't give up on the seed.

The seed will do what it's it's and I'm not just talking about the

physical harvest there, the seed of the word, keep the weeds out of

the way, water the seed for a harvest, use the sickle when the

harvest is ready, and commands the harvest to come. These are things that

I think we can all learn, we can all apply, we can all

do something with. Now, I don't know which one's relevant to you.

I'm going to leave it up on the screen there, but I am going

to say if there's one point on there that you need to do something with,

whether it's to do some life laundry, whether it's to go back and

refresh the seed, whether it's you need to go and water something that's going

to be growing in the winter time. There are things that will grow in

the winter. I'm going to encourage you. If there's one point on the

screen that you need to do something with, I'm going to ask you to

stand. I'm not going to call you out or anything, but if it's

one part of the harvesting process, one key that you want to pick up

and do something with. And it might be in your own life, it

might be in the life of the church, it might be at work.

But you just heard something that you need to do something with. I'm just

ask you to thing because I want to pray. I want to pray because

I just sense that God wants to impart something. He wants to impart something,

because that's the way God's word works. God's word does not return to

him void. We hear that a number of times. It returns having achieved

what it was designed to achieve, to bring forth fruit, to water the

ground. Give people just thirty seconds more and then I'm going to pray,

and I'm leaving the results of this with you and God. Whatever it is

that you need to do, it's up to you. If you want to

share it with somebody, that's fine. But God, at this time of

the year, when it's so easy to think about harvest, Father, I

pray that Lord, you'd help us to get a fresh mindset on your harvest,

on your harvest field, the harvesters, the sowing, the reaping,

the growing, the caring, the weeding. And Father, I pray that

Lord, you give every one of us a word that we can plant in

someone else's life. Lord, whether it be a word of scripture, a

word of encouragement, a prophetic word, a word of wisdom, word of

knowledge. Father, I pray that Lord, you give us words to speak

into people's lives, and we speak them into people's lives. We don't just

say something, We sew it into them. And Lord, we see the

fruit of the harvest that you then create. And so, Father, help

us to be in faith and of faith. Help us to speak to one

another. Help us do encourage another. When we hear something that echoes with

what we know too, let's echo that. Let's agree, let's declare it

together. Do you know somebody is we had a picture, somebody gave a

test. Well, that's exactly my experience. I want to encourage you.

Let's bring multiplication back into what God is doing in our midst Multiplication of miracles,

multiplication of faith, multiplication of new believers in Christ, multiplication of new

gifts of the spirit. Because God is a god of multiplication. The parable

of the sower meant that seed that was sowed in good soil brought for thirty

sixty one hundredfold. That's one hundredfold, a hundred times, not one hundred

plus one hundred. God's a God of multiplication. And so Father, as

we stand before you now, Father, help us with the things that we

recognize we need to do something in help us in the areas where we need

to take steps. Lord, give us faith, give us encouragement, lead

us, and help us our God. But Lord, we want to do

it. And so Father, we will take steps of faith. And I

see for some people they've drawn a line in the sand or drawn a line

on the ground, and you're just stepping over something. And it's about leaving

some things behind, but it's also stepping forward embracing some new things as well.

And if that's you, I want to encourage you. Yes, step

over the line, but don't reach back over the line and start picking up

the things that you thought you'd left behind. Embrace the new, step in

with boldness and confidence. In Jesus' name. Amen.