Praying
is Plowing
“He shall
judge between the nations, and rebuke many people; they shall beat their swords
into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up
sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” Isaiah 2:4
Borrowing
from the Hebraic tradition of farming, we can consider the plowshare principle
as follows:
·
As we pray, we are plowing;
·
As God responds, He is planting; and,
·
As we proceed, the harvest is prepared.
A plowshare is what we call a hoe, used to till the ground in
preparation for the farming season. As
the people of Israel worked the land (see Genesis 3:17-19 for God’s promise of
men toiling in the land), a plowshare was a necessary tool of the trade. When we pray to Father, we are plowing to the
mark, which is the cross! Our prayers
dig a furrow for the planting of seeds.
It is truly a wondrous image of the work of prayer! Jesus explained to His disciples what happens
to seed planted on hard ground in Matthew 13:18-21: like scattered seed sown along the hardened
path, the word of God is snatched away by the enemy; like seed sown on rocky
ground, the word of God is received with great joy initially. Yet when
adversity comes, the joy is quickly gone – because no root could be formed in
the rocky soil. This person soon falls
away from faith.
So it is with the unprayed life: seeds of
faith can be both scattered and snatched away; or such seeds cannot grow, as
there is no root. Spiritual roots – this
is a critical precept for us to understand.
The word of God must be received for faith to come, for: “faith comes by
hearing, and hearing by the word of God,” according to Romans 10:17. The word of God must then be established in
our lives; that is, it must take root.
This is the way in which our faith in God grows. Our faith grows and the root is deepened
every time a prayer is answered. It is
the praying life that is ready to receive seed, holds seed, takes root, and
over time harvests fruit.
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