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Why Does God Want us to Farm?

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There seems to be something about farming that is special. It is normally not the most lucrative occupation, and many times farmers today lose money farming. Most farmers work a ‘city’ job so they can continue to afford to farm. So why do they keep farming? Well, I believe the main reason is because they enjoy it.

I enjoy farming. I know that I would farm for free if my bills could still be met. There is something about being able to be outside, working in the dirt, watching things grow, feeding the animals, and harvesting the fruits of your labor that seems to fill an inward desire to steward the land.

When I rise early in the morning the waking dawn is just breathtaking. Doing the chores is satisfying as well as great exercise. Basically what I get to do is go around and make the animals happy. Give them feed, fill their water, move their shelters, etc., and when they are happy, my job is done. My daily work on the farm is never the same and changes with the seasons. There are somewhat hard jobs, like processing chickens, setting out thousands of transplants, or working in the heat of the summer. But they don’t last forever and I can finish and move on to something else. There is always something to look forward to. Looking forward to planting the first seeds in spring. Looking forward to harvesting the first crops of summer. Looking forward to the cooler weather of fall. Looking forward to the rest and projects of winter. And the majority of the time I am at home and get to eat every meal with my family, as well as work with them. Almost every day I find myself falling more in love with farming.

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But I have begun to realize that merely farming because I enjoy it isn’t necessarily a proper primary motive for me as a Christian. And it’s not a very reliable one either. Because at times there are definitely things I don’t enjoy about farming. Like doing the chores in the rain and mud. Or finding chickens that have been killed by predators . As a Christian, my life is not all about farming. It’s all about Christ. It’s about doing what pleases the Lord who created me, loves me, and saved me. This means that my farming needs to be motivated out of a love for God, not just a love for farming.

Though there are many aspects to God’s commands, we are told that they are all summed up by one thing. Love. Love for God, and love for your neighbor. If our farms are to bring glory to God they must be motivated first and foremost by a love for God and man.

Love is such a misunderstood term today that I probably need to take a moment to give a biblical definition of love. Love is not the mushy gushy, fickle, emotional feeling that American culture tells us. Rather, God is love. Through the ultimate display of love of all time, Jesus showed us that love is an act of the will, accompanied by emotion, that produces action on behalf of its object, even at great personal cost. “This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” It is this type of love that must motivate our farms.

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Most Born Again farmers would probably agree that love should be the motive for farming, but how many of us actually farm as if that were the case? How many Christians go into farming today because of a desire to love God and others? On other hand, how many Christians never go into farming because there are easier and better paying jobs? What does that say about our motives? Of course we all claim that it’s not about the money and that there is nothing wrong with work. But then we go and evaluate something like farming primarily based on how much money we could make rather than on how it enables us to be in a position to serve God and others. We need to repent of claiming to have God’s values, then turning around and applying the World’s values.

If farming is to be motivated by love, does the Bible explain any further what that means? In 1 Thessalonians 4 Paul is writing to urge the brothers to live in order to please God. He then tells them to avoid sexual immorality and encourages them in their love for one another. He then sums up by giving what I consider an application of what love should look like in our lives.

“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet live, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” (1 Thess. 4:11,12)

There are four major applications I believe this verse calls us to.

1.-Godly lifestyle: To promote and support, restful, God-focused living.
2.-Stewardship: To work and care for creation.
3.-Testimony: To display the work of the Gospel.
4.-Provision: To provide for the needs of people.

Lord willing, I will talk more about these applications in later posts.

Let’s consider today, “Why do I farm?” Is it primarily from a self-centered motive or a Christ-centered motive? I find both motives in my own heart daily. May the Lord enable us to continually redeem our dirt by removing our selfishness and replacing it with Christ.


Does God Care How we Farm?

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Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship.  Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.       Romans 12:1,2

If we claim to be Born Again farmers (farmers who are redeemed by Christ and who have given their lives to God) we must ask the question, ‘Does He care how we farm?”

One of the most perplexing things I have noticed in my pursuit of God-glorifying Agriculture,or Born Again Dirt, is the lack of other Christian farmers with the same desire or vision. There are very few, if any books or resources for Christian farmers seeking to honor God with their farms. There are a few, but for the most part, the apparent general consensus in the church is that farming is spiritually neutral.

If asked, “Does God care how we farm?”, many Christians today would probably answer something like, “Of course! God wants Christian farmers to be honest, fair, do a good job, and do to others as they would want others to do to them.” However, that still leaves the question, “So how does God want Christians to farm?” In other words, we understand that we need to follow Christian morals in farming, but does it matter what design we follow? I mean, should we follow a more industrial design, or organic? Should we use compost, or 13-13-13 chemical fertilizer? Should we use genetically modified seeds, or heirloom? From my observations, many professing Christian farmers, at least in practice, basically say, “As long as we do it for the right reasons, it doesn’t really matter what design we use.”

The problem I see with that opinion is that designs are not meaningless. Every design is intended to accomplish something, and behind that design is a purpose. Every design is designed for something.

This something, or purpose, gives a spiritual bias to the farming design. Why? Because everyone’s goals and purposes are the result of what they worship. So we can’t say that as long as our purposes are good, then our designs don’t matter because they could be designs that contradict or interfere with our purposes. It’s like saying that if you want to go ice-skating it doesn’t matter what design of shoe you wear, or if you are golfing it doesn’t matter if you use a driver to putt with or a putter to drive with!

As Christians, because we worship God we are to do everything for His glory. That is the purpose of our farming. So our farm design should be based upon and influenced by our worship of God.

God cares about how we farm because agriculture, like anything we do in life, is an act of worship. We were created by God to worship, and He demands that worship. He wants our farms to reflect the fact that we have given our hearts to him, acknowledging Him as the owner and creator of all. He desires that we purposely seek to find out how we can worship him in the way we farm because if we don’t, we will fall into idolatry. Because of sin, our natural tendency is to farm in such a way that it reflects a worship of creation, instead of the Creator.

In order to properly worship God through agriculture, we need to recognize that we don’t own our farms, He does. Of course, most of us believe that, but do we act upon it? Do we realize that it means we don’t have the right to do whatever we want to with our farms? Do we realize that if we treat our farms like they belong to us, making decisions according to our own plans and purposes, that we are acting like thieves? In order to properly worship God though our farming, we need to repent of carelessly using His property for our own means, in our own means, and seek to discover and implement His plan for our farms. Only then can we expect His blessing.


See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess. But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.       Deuteronomy 30:15-18

The Biblical Beginnings of Agriculture

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(The article I planned to post this week isn’t finished yet, so I decided to share some thoughts I had written some time ago about the Biblical origins of farming. I pray that they contain some truths that might be helpful.)
 
When God created mankind, he described for them their mission on the earth. They were told to be fruitful, to multiply and fill the earth, to subdue the earth, and the rule over the creatures of the earth. God gave man the responsibility of having dominion. He was not just another one of God’s creatures. Man was the image of God, His representative on earth. As God’s image bearer and representative, man was to reflect the glory of the creator by his Godly Dominion over the creation.
 
It seems to me that the garden of Eden was a training ground for man, showing him how he was to have dominion over the earth. This dominion was not to be one of the exploit and ruin of creation for the sake of man, but rather one of beauty, fruitfulness, and care. This dominion was one of stewardship; the delegated care and fruitful management of that which belongs to another. The creation should benefit from the hand of man.
 
Man was created to work the ground, and the ground was designed to be worked by man. Genesis 2:4,5 says “When the Lord God made the earth and the heavens and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground . . .” (emphasis mine). Many people would have us believe that nature is in its perfect and best state as wilderness, and any intrusion by man is a blight on the landscape. However, although the ‘unsubdued’ parts of nature were declared ‘good’ by God at the end of the creation week, the man and his role to work and care for the earth was also declared good. Wilderness is good, but its design and intent was that it should be improved by man’s proper management. Isaiah 45:18 declares, “For this is what the Lord says – he who created the heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and made the earth, he founded it; he did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited,” (emphasis mine).
 
Obviously, the application of dominion was not limited exclusively to farming and working the ground itself. Other means of dominion by proper fishing, construction, metalworking, woodworking, and other crafts are practiced by Godly men in scripture, including the Lord Jesus himself. But scripture seems to indicate that agriculture should be one of the foundational and primary applications of man’s dominion, rather than one of the rarest like we see today.