Faith and Farming a 5-Day Youversion by Caitlin HendersonSýnishorn

Keep on Plowing

As part of a custom harvest crew, our family harvests six months out of the year. We take our combine and other equipment on the road to harvest other farmers’ crops. We start in Texas in May and slowly make our way north every few weeks, all the way to Canada, as the wheat ripens. Along with the joy and thankfulness of harvest come eighteen-hour days, high tension, and expensive machin­ery breakdowns. It’s exhaustion, loneliness, and going nonstop until the crop is in. 

Nothing God calls us to will come without its struggles, no matter what it may be or how good it may seem. When we come to a bump in the road, we have to decide whether we are going to press on or turn around and give up. In those moments, I always look to the apostle Paul as an example. 

After Paul came to know Christ, he devoted his entire life to sharing the good news. He faced hunger, health issues, multiple imprison­ments, stoning, beatings, and death threats. Can you imagine if he had given up when he came upon road­blocks? Yet he kept going. It was a measure of his faith that in spite of these things he kept marching on in what he had been called to do. He actually rejoiced in his trials. 

Paul understood that the power of Christ keeps us pressing through our hardships. It allows us to lean on His strength and boast in His power instead of our own. Paul knew that when we are beaten down and worn, it is the perfect opportunity for a display of divine power. We can give it our all yet rest in the knowledge that we aren’t in it alone. 

We have to press on, friends. We have to keep going when things get hard and messy and we want to quit. When we think we’ve reached our breaking point and we are pushed even further, we have to persevere. 

Our trials aren’t for nothing. They stretch us and test us, but they allow God to use us for His holy purpose. 

Paul wrote, “For Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” How can you come to see your struggles as opportunities for God to show strength through you?