Many preachers have touched so many lives by preaching strong heart-wrenching sermons from a pulpit. Others have touched lives by sharing the Gospel on the street corner, but others have touched lives forever with a simple kind word and a smile. You’ll never know the giant you resuscitated into life from brokenness to a tower of strength with the gift of just a hamburger and a coke, or the homeless man that went home to be restored to his family because of your simple gift of a hot cup of coffee on a cold morning. Are you planting the seeds of an oak tree? Are you even planting seeds?
You may look around you and see no one that looks like a good ground to plant seeds, but never look at the ground of their hearts as weed covered fields, just plant the seeds of an oak tree wherever you have a field. These may all appear not worthy of your seed, or your help, but it may in reality be a Garden of Eden waiting for a good seed. An unknown shoe salesman making lowly wages planted the seed of knowing God with the Gospel of Jesus Christ one day in a young rebel with an uncouth mouth. This was a weed-covered field to anyone else, but to that shoe salesman, he only saw good fertile ground to plant the seeds of an oak tree. But that one seed changed this rebel and he went on to become a giant known all over the whole world who preached the Gospel to millions. Who was this rebel? Billy Graham. That shoe salesman was only obedient to God and he planted the seeds that produced a mighty oak tree.
The word of God tells us not to be fooled and know that whatever kinds of seeds we plant as we go along in life, we will get back the fruit from those seeds. Want your business to bloom with success? Then go help someone start theirs. I dare you. You go plant your seeds in someone else’s business and your business will mushroom with success. Seedtime and harvest. Seedtime and harvest. God said it; “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest shall not cease. (Genesis 8:22)
This young man was lying on his deathbed in Korea, and he was of a different religion than the Christian faith, and he was dying from tuberculosis, and was in his last days. He made a prayer and as he looked up to heaven, asking that “if there is a God, I don’t ask you to show me yourself, I just ask you to show me how to die.” God answered his prayer, and he sent a young Christian woman into his neighborhood, and not knowing why, she was drawn by God to that young man’s house. She knocked on the door, and the boy’s mother answered. The young woman simply asked if there was anything she could pray with them for. The mother, with tears in her eyes, led the young woman back to the bedroom of her son where he laid dying. The young woman prayed for that young man, and that day, he accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. God miraculously healed him completely and he recovered. He wound up being the pastor of the largest church congregation on the earth with over 800,000 members and still growing. This man who almost died except for the seeds planted by a young woman was Dr. Yonggi Cho.
When I was a very young man I saw my dad live and demonstrate his words in a way I never forgot. My dad was a superintendent at his company, and was deeply respected by employees and corporate higher-ups as well. He was an honorable man who wouldn’t hesitate to get up out of his warm bed on a cold sleeting night and go help you pull your car out of the ditch. There was an employee there that for no reason except maybe from jealousy, began to speak lies and falsehoods about my dad. This he did every chance he got with anyone who gave him a moment of time. He would just begin spouting these things without cause to each person he met on and off the job. My older brothers who were as large as Goliaths would tell dad that that man better hope that they didn’t run into him because they were gonna put their fists half way down his throat.
Dad would say, “No, no, boy, just leave him alone. He’ll come around. Sooner or later he’ll come around.” My dad never bothered to confront the man. But one night he and mom had to go on some business into another city about 40 miles from our home, and I went with them to just tag along. I was a little boy of only 12 years old. It happened that the weather changed drastically toward evening, and went from a nice 68 degrees and fell to the single digits within an hour. Weather does that in Texas. We were on the way home and it was after dark about 9 o’clock at night. It had been sleeting and the road was getting treacherous as my dad carefully and slowly drove down the two-lane road. About half way between the other city and our home, a distance of about 20 miles either way, my dad saw a car on the side of the road which he recognized as that man’s car. Dad stopped alongside and looked inside and it was empty. We went on another 5-6 miles and saw a man walking slowly on the side of the road. It was him! Dad stopped and called the man to come get in the car! The man slowly got in and began to weep. He started confessing that he knew he was going to die on the road. He said his legs were having trouble walking, his lungs were hurting badly from breathing the cold frigid air, and he knew he was not going to make it. He began telling dad, “You saved my life! I ain’t never going to forget this! I knew I was not gonna make it and I knew I was going to freeze to death out here. You saved my life! I ain’t never going to forget this!”
My dad took him all the way to his front door. The next Monday morning that man began to tell everyone he met at work the truth. He told them that everything he ever said about my dad was all lies! He said he was wrong in what he did. He told them he lied about dad, but dad saved his life anyway, so dad was a hundred times the better man that he was. Every time that man happened to see my dad at the company, he wouldn’t just shake his hand, but he would just give him a big hug of gratefulness. I really believe that man would have died from exposure out there on the road. My dad was an oak tree, and somebody must have planted those seeds in him and I saw the strength of an oak tree that night.
Never look at a person and try to judge them and determine if they are worth your time. You never know if that person which appears to you as a struggling sapling or “the reed bending in the wind” is actually a mighty oak tree that needs your helping hand.
Many years ago when I lived in California, I was preaching at a church and seated at the front was this young lady with two little girls seated on either side of her. The Lord made me keep her in my mind throughout the whole time I was at the pulpit. After the service was over, the pastor brought me a check for my offering as the speaker, plus he handed me an envelope and said this is cash money, brother, to cover any needs you might have between now and the time you get home and cash the check. It held about $300, and I took the pastor by the arm and asked him if he knew that young lady. He said no, that she was a visitor. So I asked the pastor to give this envelope to that lady in the name of the Lord, because I believed that’s why God had him give this cash to me. That was back in the late 1980’s. Well about 5 years ago I was guest speaker at a church and I was now living here in Texas. A young woman came up and introduced herself to me. She shared how the Lord had given her a ministry of healings, and helping people in need and she had opened and now runs a large food distribution center. Then she shared how one night while she lived in California, she had visited a church, and she and her two daughters had not eaten anything for two days. She had pleaded with God that if he was real, could he help her feed her two little girls. She said God had answered her prayer that night and she said I was the one who the Lord used. God answered her prayer that night and that’s why he put her on my heart, and I gave her that cash. I didn’t know her desperate situation but the Lord did. That seed I planted in that young lady that night turned her from a starving woman with little hope left into a strong oak tree. Now her branches are providing help and protection for countless others.
You may go through life and never have a huge worldwide ministry like you see on TV. But if you are always obedient to the Lord when he impresses on your heart to do many little things for people, you may not know it until you get to heaven that a whole forest of mighty oak trees sprung up all over the country and the world because of your seeds.
What if the shoe salesman had not been obedient in sharing the gospel with that young man in his store? There would not have been a Billy Graham. What if that young woman had ignored the prompting of God to go and knock on that particular door that day? The young man would have died and there would not be a Dr. Cho. There would not be those many millions of people who have been saved and have had their eternal life assured. What if I had ignored that young woman with her little girls that night? There wouldn’t be a food distribution center feeding the homeless and the poor.
God has a very special plan for you, and he has put inside of you all the seeds you will ever need to accomplish his will. He will refill you with more seed every time you read his word. You see, the word of God, is a seed itself. All the words you find in the bible are all seeds intended to produce fruit in you, and other seeds are for your planting in others’ hearts. Not all the seeds that you plant will be oak trees of course, but some will be. Some seeds may only produce smaller trees, while some may be “evergreens” who are “instant in season, out of season.” You may even have a mustard seed, and you’ll know it by the strong pungent stink. These will be those people who are grouchy, mean, and always ready to yell and argue. But in their own cantankerous way they preach the word. But remember, the mustard tree doesn’t remain stinky, but grows up to be an herb of tree-sized proportions.
Start planting seeds. If you have been planting, then plant even more. Need more faith for your healing to be manifested? Then go pray for others to be healed, and your faith will increase. Are you in the hospital fighting a disease? If you are able to walk, then go ask other patients if you can pray for them. I promise you, if you’ll pray for others in whatever way they wish, your own faith will begin to rise up inside of you. Wish you had someone special that would love you? Then love others that are hard to love, and good right love will find its way to you. I promise it! God will make it sure to come at the right time. Do you want to be remembered after you’re gone? Leave a forest of tall mighty oak trees standing as a testament of your obedience to God.
Someday when you’re standing in heaven among the billions, there may be someone being recognized before all the saints as having been a mighty oak tree of enormous size and reach who will have swept millions into the Kingdom. But he will stop and before the Lord and all of the angels and the saints, he or she will point to you and call out your name and cry aloud, “There he is! This is the brother who planted the seed of the word in me!” And everything that he did for God and every soul he led into Christ, you will get the same credit added to your account, for being the one who planted the seeds of the kingdom in their heart. Every soul that they swept into God’s Kingdom will be counted to your account, the same as if you had led them in, and it’s because you planted seeds. Plant seeds. Plant a forest of seeds. Somewhere in that forest will undoubtedly be…a mighty Oak Tree.
The Genesis Oracles 
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