Time to Seek the Lord

I live in Florida, and it is known as God's waiting room, because of all the elderly people that reside here. I hear an ambulance siren just about every day on their way to pick up another one. I spent a good part of today walking through a local cemetery.

I didn't know a soul there. They were all strangers to me, but by the time I left, I felt I knew something about how they lived and how they died. You're probably thinking, Preacher, were you just out house hunting, or are you just plumb out of your mind? I won't argue with you on either one, friend.

Death comes to all men, some more unexpectedly than others. I remember Adrian Rogers, who was in good health at the time, telling me how he'd just been at the funeral of a friend of his who had died unexpectedly. And within a year's time, I was staring at Adrian Rogers as he lay in his coffin.

Yes, friends, death comes to each of us. I don't believe we have as much time as we think. And as I walked among those graves, I stood over each tombstone and read every word.

Some graves had a photo of a little child with a sentiment from the parents. Some had sentiments from children to their parents. One headstone had the word Daddy on it.

Some people had been in that grave for nearly a hundred years or so. And it was hard to read what time and the elements had worn away. One old worn gravestone said the occupant was a minister, and there were two quotes.

Love is all, and death is not. Some folks in that graveyard were cut down in war, others by sudden death. And some lived to be a ripe old age, outliving all their relations.

And as I walked among those silent stones, I pondered in my mind about the individuals beneath my feet, who had worked and loved and lived and died. I thought about the condition of their souls. A few of them were in Heaven, in the presence of their Savior.

But the many who took up a good part of that cemetery were groaning in hell at this hour. That's what my Bible says, that there are few who are saved, and those who are with great difficulty. I stood there, in that cemetery, facing eternity, as each family member had previously stood there in grief and sorrow, staring eternity squarely in the face for themselves.

I paid my respects to each person I walked over, and I must confess I shed a tear or two as I contemplated their lives and the brevity of life in general. I think it would be a good exercise for each of us to go and take a walk among the dead, to get a better sense of how we have lived and how we should live until it's our time to die, and then place our stiff form into a coffin and lower it down into the earth, for man is just dust anyhow, and his life is just a vapor that appears for a little while and then disappears. What breaks my heart more than any other thing is how little church folks love the Lord Jesus.

If you are in love with someone, then you want to spend time with them. Go check up on some young teenage lovers, and you'll find they can't wait to see one another and spend time with that other lovebird. But I reckon we don't love Jesus as we should because he occupies so little of our time.

We are the most Bible-starved generation in a hundred years. How little time we give to really mastering the Word of God. That's one reason so many struggle with sin and failure.

Dr. Stephen Oldford used to say, The Word of God cannot be mastered until we are mastered by the Word of God. But most folks would rather do just about any other thing than sit still long enough to study and digest the Word of God. Ball games and entertainment get most of our time.

We're shopping at the mall because we spend our free time on things we love and enjoy. So I guess we don't love our Bibles much as dust gathers on them. And I reckon we don't love our Savior too much for we surely do not choose to spend time with Him.

The old hymn which we no longer sing much anymore today says, I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses. And He walks with me and He talks with me. And I linger there to hear what He discloses.

But most of us would rather give Hollywood our choice time as we sacrifice to that one-eyed idol that has ruined and wrecked more marriages and homes. Yes, I believe it would do us good, friends, to go out tomorrow after church and instead of having a big lunch and an afternoon spent in sports and entertainment, that instead we should go visit a graveyard where we don't know a soul and go take a walk there in the solitude of our souls and break up the fallow ground of our hearts and shed a little tear over a soul that is in eternity. In the book of Hosea, in chapter 10 and verse 12, it states, Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord, till He come and reign righteousness upon you.

Let me ask you, friend, is your prayer life dry? Are your eyes dry when you pray? Is your Bible a closed book and you walk with God up and down? Perhaps it's time to seek the Lord. God gets serious with those who get serious with Him. Charles Finney wrote wisely on our text from Hosea, and it's sure brilliant, so pay attention as I read it to you.

Old Finney and I would part company on theology and methodology because we differ so, but I must pay homage to him here with what he says about breaking up our fallow ground. Listen to his words. The Jews were a nation of farmers.

Scripture, therefore, calmly draws illustrations from that line of work, and from scenes farmers and shepherds would know well. So when the prophet Hosea addresses Israel as a nation of backsliders, reproving their idolatry and threatening them with the judgments of God, he uses fallow ground as his illustration. Fallow ground is ground once farmed, which now lies waste.

It must be broken up again before it is ready to be planted. Now revival consists of two parts, revival within the church and revival among the ungodly. What does it mean to break up the fallow ground? To break up the fallow ground is to break up your hearts, to prepare your minds to bring forth fruit to God.

The Bible often compares the human mind to ground, and the word of God to seed sown in it. The fruit represents the actions and desires of those who receive it. To break up the fallow ground, then, is to bring the mind into a state where it is fitted to receive the word of God.

Sometimes your heart becomes matted down, hard and dry, and fallen to waste. It will bear no fruit until it is broken up, ready to receive the word of God. It is the softening of the heart making it feel the truth, which the prophet calls breaking up your fallow ground.

Well, that's self-examination, friends, and I believe if the church today took the time to earnestly seek the Lord in this fashion, that God just might come upon us once again in a mighty outpouring of his grace and revival. Our young people today are pagans. Even most of the ones who grew up in church but now have left it because there was no reality God there.

They don't know what it's like to see the power of God in a meeting. God's withdrawn presence has been the biggest judgment on the church in America and in Great Britain. Oh, how we could get those kids, those young people, swept into the kingdom of God through a mighty revival.

Yes, I believe some of us could get more life if we took the time to walk among the dead and break up the fallow ground of our heart-thick hearts and just weep a little over a soul facing eternity. Just maybe we'd become better soul winners for Christ that we would reach somebody with the gospel before they slipped into that eternity. And my, how it would change our prayer lives if we would just take the time to break up the fallow ground of our heart and to seek the Lord and God would get the glory.

Oh, let us pray.