If you live in a rural setting, in the United States, you understand harvest season, it is September, and pumpkin spice is in the air. People have transitioned their summer decor, now fall colors and themes fill the houses. Harvest season gives off different meanings for various people. As a hunter September means grouse and other bird hunting has started to begin, for bow hunters deer and elk season has begun. And the farmer is tending to their fields.

If you have spent time in a field around harvest you see the colors change, and certain characteristics start to begin, for instance; Corn, is changing from a beautiful green and yellow tops, to the dried and ready to harvest silage and or feed corn, some other crops show ready, sugar beets, onions, etc. each are ready or close to ready for harvest.

I am struck this morning by the story of the woman at the well, and more specifically the occurrence that takes place immediately following her returning to her home to tell the townspeople of the man she had met by the well that day. This story happens in John 4:34 – 38

34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 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. 36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, One sows and another reaps. 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

This comes as no surprise to some of you, but this is one of my favorite stories in scripture, Jesus who had waited by Jacob’s Well in Samaria, seeing a woman coming to well at an odd hour of the day, engaged in conversation with someone unclean (by jewish standards). A good Jew should or would not be caught dead talking to a Samaritan, because these Samaritans were unclean according to custom. However Jesus having his message rejected in Israel, traveled north into Samaria and found a captive audience.

His disciples having gone into the town to buy food come back and offer Jesus some, to which Jesus responded what I referenced… As he was speaking to his disciples, the woman had already begun testifying to what had happened, and throngs of samaritans came from the town to where Jesus was seated, now Samaritans would often wear a white turban, so when Jesus points to the disciples, “Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.” it very well may have been because the group of people coming from the town wearing these white turbans, walking through the fields may have looked like cotton plants ready for harvest or some other manner of crop ready to be harvested.

Jesus then points to the fact that the disciples had done nothing to prepare for this harvest, that it was the work of God that Jesus had come. And yet they would too be partakers in the harvest of these Samaritans that day. This points to the Holy Spirits work in the harvest of people today, remember these men had went from vocations to becoming harvesters of men, fishers of men… hence now they are about to partake in a harvest of samaritans coming into the Kingdom of God.

As followers of Christ, we need to be ready for a said harvest, we must continue to sow seeds as Jesus teaches, we aren’t the one who convicts, that job belongs to the Holy Spirit. Often Christians become over-encumbered by trying to debate people in faith, often a point that some struggle with, you may use all the tactics of debate and argumentation, and yet fail in creating a convert to Christianity, because you have to remember that it isn’t you who does the convicting, but that the Holy Spirit may convict others of their sin, so that a person may make the action of following Jesus Christ as their Lord and King!

The beauty, it IS our job to share this message, and then leave the results of the Good News and how that person will take that information, or what they do with that information to God and him alone, never abandoning them, but continuing in prayer and conversation. trusting God with the results! This very simple and intrinsic fact should be the most freeing fact for the evangelist! It isn’t about you, your argumentation, your prowess as a speaker or a debater! But it is about your trust in Christ and Christ alone!

God who desires that no one should perish and be eternally separated from the Maker!

Our great joy is being apart of the harvest of these souls who are new comers to the Kingdom of God! So this HARVEST, trust the holy work of God and the Holy Spirit, as you move out, as you share the Good News with those in your family, those in your neighborhood, or your work place! Trust and remember that you are not tasked with convincing or convicting, only that you would be faithful in spreading the Good News! That Jesus Christ came and died for our sins, that he would be the propitiation of our sins!

“for God, so loved the World, that he gave his only Son, that whoever would believe in Him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

My prayer for you this harvest is that you would place your trust in the Holy Spirit, that you would entrust your work as an evangelist to the Holy Spirit, that you would be bold, and filled with courage to spread His Holy Word to a lost and dying world!