“How is winter at your house now?..Have you had a break from the cold?”
-6 degrees (feels like -8 (windchill) and ‘crisp’!
I am so going to consider moving to a warmer place, say the British Virgin Islands comes to mind!!!
In the book Whats Gone Wrong With the Harvest? James Engel and Wilbert Norton illustrate on a graph how people often go through a series of preconversion stages before stepping over the line of faith and receiving Jesus as their Savior.
When we hear individuals share their conversion experience, we may conclude that faith happened all at once. But their salvation frequently carries an extended back-story of spiritual pilgrimage before they made that decision. They needed time to reflect on the gospel. For them, coming to the Savior was a process.
This is similar to the process of farming: Months of waiting come to an end and workers stream into the fields to help with the harvest. One of our Lords parables illustrates how faithlike a cropneeds time to develop. Responding to the gospel is like a seed that grows first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain, until finally, the harvest has come (Mark 4:28-29).
Because people may need time and multiple exposures to the gospel before they are ready to make a decision, we need to be sensitive to where they are in their faith-journey. In the meantime, we can cultivate spiritual interest, pray for them, and wait for the harvest!