It’s a Wednesday, 5 days before school starts and I’m back again at MSUM, sitting on the grass in front of Ballard hall watching a growing stream of freshmen and their parents flow through campus in search of purpose. A year ago I wrote a post titled A Year of Labor, cataloguing my thoughts and hopes after one year of ministry in the Fargo-Moorhead area. Now another twelve months have passed, and I am sitting in the same spot on nearly the same day, reflecting once again.
Much has changed since August 2011. Kelly and I were engaged and married, Threshingfloor has grown and solidified its form, we have learned much about the reality of Satan’s war against God’s people, and I have (somewhat sadly) given up my dreadlocks.
If the several people I have bumped into over the last few days have any say in the matter, I’m not the same person I was a year ago. Most of them didn’t recognize me for the first several seconds (probably due to the dreadlocks being gone). Much has changed, but my passion remains the same as it was two years ago when I first set out from Brainerd with my Oldsmobile Alero packed full of stuff and moved into the dorms that I now sit in front of. My purpose here is to spread the fame of Jesus’ name by making disciples of people like the ones I see before me now. They are bitter, angry, and indifferent to the God I serve. They delight in sexual indulgence, perversity, laziness, deceit, and love themselves more than anyone else. They are held captive by sin and Satan, blind to the fact that they walk in death and willfully reject true life. My heart breaks for these thousands of college students and young adults who are surrounded and lost in darkness.
Two years of countless hours of work, of financial sacrifice, of all night prayers warfare, of great meetings with leaders who are succeeding amazingly and painful meetings with leaders who are falling short, of acceptance and rejection, pain and peace, and so much more; all these things are a small price to pay to see the salvation of these souls.
Kelly and I have perhaps two more years in Fargo. We have both determined that there is nothing we’d give our time to than seeing the gospel do its transforming work in this city. We want this city to be noticeably changed when we depart, to the praise of Christ. The mission we are on is no easy one, but it’s rich with reward and the Lord is using it to build around us an amazing family of believers who love each other and love the lost deeply. It has done great good for us in our marriage thus far. It has given me reason to wake up and work day after day. I have had greater joy in this work than in any other that I’ve done thus far in life, and I am beginning to feel what Paul must have felt when he said that he counted everything else loss when compared with knowing Christ and sharing in his sufferings. I am confident it’s what every Christian has been called to do, in some shape or form.
Christian, I ask you, do you labor? Have you given yourself to the cause your King has commanded? Your life will be dry and empty until you do, no matter how many Bible studies you attend or books you read. We were born again, recreated, to be laborers in the harvest fields. Anything else is a revolt against the DNA that the Spirit has rooted in our bones.
Come with me. Let us go. Another year of labor lies before us. The fields are ripe for harvest, and the workers who are already laboring are in sore need of your strength. The reward is beyond comprehension, both in this life and in the next. This is what we were made for. Go!
I conclude with the same quote from Charles Spurgeon that I closed A Year of Labor with. It still resonates deeply with my soul.
O Zion, shake thyself from the dust! O Christian, raise thyself from thy slumbers! Warrior, put on thy armor! Soldier, grasp thy sword! The captain sounds the alarm of war. O sluggard! Why sleepest thou? O heir of heaven, has not Jesus done so much for thee that thou shouldst live to him? O beloved brethren, purchased with redeeming mercies, girt about with loving kindness and with tenderness, ‘now for a shout of sacred joy,’ and after that, to the battle! The little seed has grown to this: who knoweth what it shall be? Only let us together strive without variance. Let us labor for Jesus. Never did men have so fair an opportunity, for the last hundred years. ‘There is a tide that, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.’ Shall you take it at the flood? Over the bar, at the harbor’s mouth! O ship of heaven, let the sails be out; let not thy canvas be furled; and the wind will blow us across the seas of difficulty that lie before us. O! That the latter day might have its dawning even in this despised habitation! O my God! From this place cause the first wave to spring, which shall move another, and then another, till the last great wave shall sweep over the sands of time and dash against the rocks of eternity, echoing as it falls, ‘Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The Lord God Omnipotent reighneth!”
– Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s Sermons, sermon VII
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