Planting in barren ground

Gen. 25:21 “because she was barren;”  

If you are looking to start a ministry or movement, begin first to find the barren ground.  God loves to move among the unreached, hardened, dry, and forsaken sectors of society.  When Isaac looked at Rebecca, there was not natural hope that she would conceive, but in this place of desperation and dryness, the Lord poured out an answer to prayer.

The church of Jesus Christ is called to the dry places of the earth.  “The gates of hell” are her target, which shall not prevail against the Gospel message covering the earth as the waters cover the sea. In order to birth and bring to pass what God plans in these last days, we must be willing to step into the most forgotten and forsaken places to see life come forth.

The history of the church has been to go to the unreached.  Paul said his aim was not to “build upon another man’s foundation” (Romans 15:20) but to “to preach the gospel in regions beyond you. (2 Cor. 10:15) Jesus was compelled to go from city to city to the lost sheep of Israel and ventured to find other places that had not yet heard the message.  “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but the sick.” (Matt. 9:12)

Martyrdom, persecution, and rejection have forever produced the most fertile soil for the Gospel, but we want to plant churches where life is rich, easy, and comfortable.  Perhaps the impotency and apathy of our modern church planting movement stems from our lack of desperation and realization of the barren state of affairs without God’s intervention.

A barren situation is the most fruitful scene for the supernatural to manifest.  We have seen in early works of God that our desperation turned into the manifestation of God’s power.  He opens and shuts the womb, I have said, but mainly opens.

If you desire to see harvest, do not find an already plowed field where a seed can easily sprout and grow.  That would be a natural pattern.  Instead, our faith and the faith of our Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob calls us to find the most unlikely, impoverished, hard, and barren land and begin tilling with hope that God will break up the fallow ground.  “For more are the children of the desolate and barren than the children of the married woman.”  (Isaiah 54:1)