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Break Up The Fallow Ground (4th In The Sowing Series)
Author : Sylvia Huffnagle
Jer: 1:1-6: If thou wilt return, O Israel, saith the LORD, return unto me: and if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my sight, then shalt thou not remove. 2: And thou shalt swear, The LORD liveth, in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness; and the nations shall bless themselves in him, and in him shall they glory. 3: For thus saith the LORD to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns. 4: Circumcise yourselves to the LORD, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem: lest my fury come forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings. 5: Declare ye in Judah, and publish in Jerusalem; and say, Blow ye the trumpet in the land: cry, gather together, and say, Assemble yourselves, and let us go into the defenced cities. 6: Set up the standard toward Zion: retire, stay not: for I will bring evil from the north, and a great destruction.
I believe the largest mistake that the church is making is how they are handling the call to salvation. In fact today, it appears that most of those who evangelized are trying to make God’s plan even simpler--telling the hearer that all they have to do is believe that Jesus is the Savior and confess it with their mouth.
Some will say--well isn’t that what Rom: 10: 9-10 says? No, not exactly. It says if you confess Jesus as Lord and believe God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. The key word there is Lord. If you do Romans 10:9-10--that is: confess His Lordship in your life and walk it out, you will be saved. But too many are just agreeing with their mouth that Jesus is the Savior and are therefore hoping to go to heaven without having to repented of their ways and turning to His.
As I was saying, if the call were handled correctly, I think at least three fourth of the church’s problems would be solved. Let me show you what I mean.
Though this should have been the first article in my sowing and reaping series, since it deals with preparing the ground, the inspiration came now, so it will have to be the fourth in the series.
In the above passage of scripture God calls the people to repent. He wants them to assemble and humbly repent and confess Him as Lord. He has Jeremiah refer to this as breaking up the fallow ground. That is what is not being done in the modern call to salvation.
Before the call to salvation is made, the hearers should be thoroughly convinced of their own inability to save themselves, and of their own inability to walk in agape love without God’s indwelling, and with their own inability to handle their own affairs the way God calls successfully, and they should be convinced that Jesus is the only way to God and the only way to eternal life.
This is breaking up the fallow ground. Now that the hearer is convinced that they can only have eternal life and live successfully by receiving Jesus as their Lord and savior, they are probably ready even eager to receive Jesus, but they still need to see just how destructive selfishness and rebellion are. This is done by reading scriptures that show agape love in practice.
All of God’s commandments and mandates are agape love in practice, but the hearer must understand that the carnal nature or self serving nature is at enmity with God and will not and can not please Him i/e they cannot walk in agape love without a complete makeover.
Next the hearers must be shown God’s remedy for all of this. This is found in Romans 6-8. God arranged for the carnal nature to be crucified with Christ and then He made it possible for the receiver to be resurrected with new life—a life in Christ and Christ in them.
Then they should be called up front to be lead in a sinner’s prayer—make it severe and thorough. There is a great advantage to a person to being broken-hearted over their sin. (Jas: 4:8-10: Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded.9: Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. 10: Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.)
They should be made to understand their upcoming baptism. The evangelist needs to explain that when they are immersed they are acting out their crucifixion and when they come up out of the water, they will be testifying to their resurrection from the dead into new life in Christ.
They should be made to understand the covenant that they are entering. They are covenanting to receive God as their Father and God, promising to trust and obey Him. (This is not something that was meant to take a lifetime to learn. At the time of salvation, a person should is to repent of disobedience and rebellion and should receive God’s authority in their life.) God is covenanting to be the person’s Father in every sense of the word. He will take care of them, shelter them, teach them, provide for them, help them, heal them, and feed and clothe them.
Think about what kind of congregation a church would have if this was how the call was handled. This is the true way.
(c) Sylvia Huffnagle
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