I Came To Run A Farm

A good farmer wrote this touching piece:

"I want to share a little story from my life with you.In faithfulness (imperfect at best) to His call and leading I have worked at three farms since 1990. No words that I have ever written have come from deeper depths of my soul than the following.

I Came To Run A Farm:

I came to run a farm, I tried to run three over the past 30 years, but.....Authority to make final decisions was never something He gave to me at any of the farms. So, I learned to farm without it. Money was never given to me sufficient to farm correctly, but I found it wasn't so important when good labor was at hand and I learned to farm without it, depending on good labor instead. Then good labor was taken away from me but I found it wasn't so important and I learned to farm with out it, depending on good equipment, management skills and networking carefully with others instead with modern communication.

Then good equipment, management and networking were taken away but I learned to farm without them, depending on my own work ethic and personal drive, and a highly inventive mind. Then poor leaders and deceitful worker were given to me to farm withbut I learned to farm around them by being an example and working harder than anyone else, and depending on the few high quality, healthy, personal relationships alone, (with wonderful staff I had personally prayed in), to get things done, and doing it the right way in spite of higher orders.

In spite of all the adversity, I learned to get things done anyway, I could dance around any difficulty that was thrown at me, there was always a way, I truly thought I had developed the ability to dance around any circumstance successfully, It was a glorious, victorious dance that overcame all odds abd all adversity. It was a strange dance, but it felt good,

Then He took the good relationships away and left me only with the bad, with my enemies who He says I have to love, and those who opposed themselves and always did the opposite of what they should have, who would never listen to my advice, and my farm started to die, all the animals began to suffer, and die, boy is the wages of sin death! So......He reduced me to nothing, and I completely let go of my farm, my beautiful farm, and gave it up to Him, it was like going through a divorce because I loved this farm, but He extracted my heart from it and it doesn't have my affections anymore.

I thought, "All I can do is sit here by you (the farm) and hold your hand while you die."And I found, you can't dance by yourself, without a partner, and no one wanted to dance. He left me with nothing to farm with, I could tell it was His own hand that did it. Everything I depended on to run and operate a farm was taken away, everything, even my affections for the farm itself, I couldn't understand why He took everything away, and people were still expecting me to run the farm, "It's impossible!" I thought.

But I forgot.........Jesus, He wanted to dance, Jesus, He was waiting for His turn to dance over the farm with me, waiting for me to get finished trying all the others, I found that Jesus wanted to be my partner first, He didn't want me dancing with anyone or anything before Himself. So finally, after all the struggles, I was ready to dance with Him alone, and we danced a while.....

Then, He reminded me of my wife and kids, they all wanted to dance, they were just waiting for me to show up and show 'em how, Jesus told me to get started dancing with them, they're really good too it turns out, we've started doing life together again.

So, we're dancing today, Jesus and me, and the wife and kids, all over this farm, it's unbelievable. Some of our good friends here are joining in too, didn't even ask 'em and they won't take any pay, say they just want to dance with Jesus here a while, I never knew the dance could be so wonderful, and He specializes in the impossible. Some of the old enemies might just want to start joining in when they see how much fun we're having,Which would be alright, sometime enemies can make real good friends after they repent, guess that's kind of how it was with me and Jesus anyway,first His enemy, then His friend, Have you ever known what it is like to run around with Someone all the time who can do the impossible any time He wants to?

Glory! Does it get any better than this? So, we're now running the farm, Jesus and me, and the wife and kids, and it's getting better every day, my only job is staying in step with Him, I just pray a lot now, all the time in fact, really that's all I have left to farm with prayer, and it's working out okay, I'm happier now, my family likes that, no worries anymore, He handles all the hard stuff and I just watch. He's teaching me all the new steps, like praying with authority in His name, He claims I'm actually sitting on His throne in heaven with Him as one, really truly!

We work the devil (and some of his helpers, human and otherwise) over pretty good every morning now, guess I've got the right to if I'm sitting on the throne in union with Jesus! This really is a beautiful way to farm, in fact, I wouldn't want it any other way. It really is the only way to run one without loosing your mind, or, your soul which is far worse. Guess I'm a slow learner and had to come to this the hard way. Take a lesson from me if you like, if you're gonna do life, or farmin', or anything else for that matter, start depending on Jesus from the beginning and it'll be a lot easier.

There's 30 years of pain in what I've written, hope someone can get the benefit of it, catch a ride on my learnin' curve. And we'll keep you posted on how the dance is comin' along. To paraphrase another's thought: Farmin' reduced to dancin' with Jesus makes the complicated simple.

Now there is true faith! I wonder if dad and grandpa ever felt that way? Dad just danced all the time so I think he was born with it. I wonder what he felt like when he made that last payment on that farm? He was near 80 years old and danced all his life on a piece of ground his dad rented when dad was 2 years old in 1918!

Now that is some fancy dancing!

Ed