Patience

One quality every gardener must possess is patience.

Plants do not grow or produce on anyone’s schedule other than their own. After planting seeds, time must pass before they spring up above the soil and develop into seedlings. Then they must develop further: they must grow and then flower. Waiting is an important part of the process, and even after fruit appears, one must wait yet longer for the fruit to ripen. The simple truth is that cucumbers are going to take fifty to seventy days until they are ready to be harvested. In most cases, tomatoes will take seventy to eighty days. Corn takes a minimum of sixty days.

Lettuce may be ready in as little as forty-five days, while peas take ten or more days longer. And that’s just how it is.

Eggplant won’t be ready to pick in thirty days, cabbages cannot be harvested in six weeks, and you can hope all you want that a pumpkin will be ready in two months or less, but they simply won’t. Some things can’t be hurried.

Evangelism is like that. Souls will be ready when they are ready, and they can’t be hurried or rushed. At least, not healthily or successfully.

Just as a plant needs time to absorb nutrients, a person needs time to absorb the Word of God. As some plants mature more quickly than others, some people come to a saving knowledge of Jesus more rapidly than others.

While radishes can be picked for eating just twenty-five days after seeds are sown, Brussels sprouts can take six months and garlic eight.

In the same way, some people come to faith quickly, while others take considerably longer. Just as garden plants cannot be forced to mature early, saved disciples of Jesus can grow only as fast as they can grow.

Patience is required to allow people to mature in faith according to God’s timetable.