Pray for that God Would Prepare the Soil

A participant in Timothy Training shares his Action Plan (how he will use what he learned in his ministry).  The young woman at the left is Monica Petit-Homme, the coordinator for Timothy Training.

One of Jesus' most famous parables is the parable of the Sower, the story of how a gardener scatters seed on four different soils.  On the first three soils, the seed failed to germinate and was destroyed.  However, in the fourth soil, the good soil, the seed took root and gave a harvest of thirty, sixty and one-hundred times.  The parable of the Sower teaches us about the Gospel and the grace of God.  Only in the soils that God prepares will the seed of the Gospel germinate, take root, and produce a harvest.  When you are organizing training activities for Christian leaders, as we often are, this is a difficult lesson to accept.  Why?  Because we would like to think that if you are well enough prepared, the training ministry that you do will have dramatic results.  Of course, there is no excuse for poor preparation, but the reality is that some things are out of the hands of the trainer.  Most obviously, what the participants do with the training after the end of the week is out of our hands.  This is especially true for the Timothy Leadership Training (TLT) that we will do 7-9 May in Port-au-Prince.  TLT focuses on doing what you learn.  However, doing what we learn about the Gospel runs against human nature.  This means that the central characteristic of a successful training is the Holy Spirit working in advance to prepare the "soil" of the heart so that the seed of training will take root and yield a harvest.  Please pray during the week of the 7-9th of May that God will prepare the soil well so that the participants will do what they learn about ministry in our training.