The Harvest of You: Grow Past the Pain
As always, Chief Apostle H.C. Gunn has been on fire delivering the word of God with urgency and perfect simplicity. God has made it so we can grab hold to his word and run with it like never before. But it's up to us to receive it and not leave it on the ground.
One area that often keeps us from letting the word of God flourish in our lives is when we allow our growth to be stunted because of hurt or disappointment. Chief Apostle Gunn has often told us, "don't let hurt go too deep. Don't let it pierce your heart." He says that when we let hurt dwell it causes callousness and hardness and we can't grow in that kind of soil. In fact, it makes us indifferent and insensitive to the things, ways and people of God.
Every person that walks the face of this earth will experience hurt and disappointment. Even Jesus experienced it from his own family, his own disciples, his own people. Yet, he didn't give up. He didn't stop growing into what God had sent him to do. Imagine if Jesus let the pain he felt stop him from teaching, from preaching, from performing miracles and most of all from dying on the cross for us? Where would we be?
What if Jesus said to himself: The people I am dying for are going to turn their backs on me, ignore me, disregard me and fail to love me so I am just going to come down from the cross? Thank God he didn't. Because without salvation, we all deserve hell. The pain he went through will always be greater than anything we could face while on this earth, so if he didn't stop we can't stop.
As a pastor, apostle, spiritual father and a prophet, Chief Apostle Gunn is often hurt by the very people he prays for and ministers to. They reject him, don't support him, don't pray for him, disrespect him, don't sow unto his life or his family and the list goes on. But he still chooses to love and outreach to them because he has learned to grow past the hurt with knowing that there is a greater good and a greater cause, and that forgiveness and letting go are what draws us closer to God. As a true follower of Jesus, he has learned to not let disappointment keep him from doing the Father's business and so must we.
During a recent service, Chief Apostle H.C. Gunn said: "Take the pain and turn it into rain." The greater the hurt, the greater the disappointment, the greater the outpouring of the latter rain can be, if we choose to learn from what we experience and grow from it. When we choose to endure and be long-suffering, the seeds that God has already planted in us can be properly fertilized, nourished and spring up. Then "your life will grow, so God can get a harvest," Chief Apostle Gunn said.
Another way we can become the harvest God is looking for is to ensure that we are in a position of growth at all times. We can't just grow on Sundays during church or on Tuesday's during prayer or Bible study. As Chief Apostle Gunn said, "when you do what you're supposed to when nobody else is around," you continue to grow. Our growth in Christ happens by the lifestyle we live everyday and what we do with the things we face and encounter throughout the day. He said that it's not enough just to go to church, it's not even enough to pray. You have to read the word and take the teaching and apply it daily too. That is what anchors us so we are tossed away by the twists and turns and disappointments and pains of life. It stabilizes us and makes us constant.
Crops grow year around. They grow in the day and in the night. Crops can thrive in winter and in spring. And so must we.
Galatians 6:9, KJV: "And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."
