I love spring time on the farm.  My hope is ignited when I see new life springing up all around.  The other day during a walk around the farm we live on, I was captivated by this image.  Two fields side by side; one still lifeless and waiting for the farmer’s care, the other springing up with new life.

My husband (along with his dad and brother) has been hard at work preparing the fields for planting season.  During this busy season of farming, they spend long evenings and full weekend days cultivating the dead and dormant fields.

Already anxious for more of my husband’s time, I asked him the other day, “Shouldn’t you be about done with cultivating by now?”

“Oh no,” he said, “We still have to disc again, plow, mulch, and drag.  You can’t rush the process.”

You can’t rush the process.  I’m not sure if you can tell in the photo, but the field on the left had only been disced once, and you can still see a lot of last year’s left over crop in the mix.  This is why it has to be disced not just once but twice.  Rushing through the process or skipping a step would prevent the new crop from growing and/or surviving.

This same principle can apply to our spiritual walk on so many levels.  God’s work in us, to make us more like Him and to bring us into our places of promise, is a process.  The photo of these two fields side by side is a perfect illustration of the now and the not yet, that we are walking between in our own spiritual journeys.  We all have an area of our lives in which we have dead, dormant land waiting to be transformed into a green and luscious field.

And the beautiful truth is that God desires to do that for us!

He wants to turn that soil of pain into land of healing.

He is working to transform the dead field of bitterness into forgiveness.

He’s looking to have faith spring up where fear once took root.

And that calling and dream He’s placed in your heart, he’s going to grow it right before our very eyes.

In Isaiah 43:19 God says, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” 

This verse is for all of us! In one area or another, God is about to do a new thing in us.  New life is about to spring up in us just like the field in the photo on the right.  If you are like me, you probably love that verse.  In a day in age where we have instant access to everything, we like verses and phrases like spring up that allude to an all of a sudden movement of God.

The problem is, as you’ve probably learned by now, God doesn’t operate on the same time zone as we do.  Sometimes it’s hard to perceive it that God is doing a new thing because we have become disillusioned by the process.  We can’t see how close we are to becoming the vibrantly alive field because, let’s face it, the cultivation process isn’t all that fun.  God has to prepare our hearts the same way the farmer prepares the land, but sometimes it’s uncomfortable or even painful, and it takes time.

But God has been calming my anxious heart with the same words as my wise husband: You can’t rush this process.

If we want the thing God is doing in us to really be successful, to grow, survive, and thrive, then we have to go through the process, and not rush it.  Then, when our Farmer has finished cultivating and our hearts are fully prepared, that new thing WILL. SPRING. UP.