“Grab a Hoe, Pick a Row”

When I was 14, my father enlisted me to work with a peanut farmer, hoeing peanuts in a hot Oklahoma summer.  There were a dozen or so of us working in those fields, with a huge and intimidating foreman keeping us at it.  I had never hoed peanuts.  I’d never worked in any fields.  I had no idea what to do.

I thought maybe that big foreman might show me what to do.  So, when I arrived, I asked him, “How do you do this?”

He just looked at me without expression for moment, pointed to the big pile of wooden-handled hoes next to him, then to the field behind us, and said,  “Grab a hoe, pick a row.  It’s that simple.”

And I did.  For weeks. It was the hottest and sometimes the least enjoyable work I’ve ever done. You have stay at it to get those weeds out of there so the peanut crops can grow.

Today, I’m a pastor.  When someone asks me how we reach people who’ve never heard the Gospel, I like to use that old line.  “Grab a hoe, pick a row – it’s that simple.”

“Grab a hoe.” By that, I mean find the best possible method to share the Gospel that you can find.  Teach your people how to do it. Equip them.

“Pick a row.”  Where do you send them?  What’s the greatest need in your community where they can begin to share?  Pick that spot, then go!

“It’s that simple.”  Actually, sharing the Gospel is not complicated.  It’s just hard work.  It takes us out of our comfort zone.   But it’s SO IMPORTANT.

If every Christ-follower, and if every church leader would just decide to be a Gospel-sharing follower, we can see the tide turn in our nation toward the God of the Gospel. But we must get into the fields.