EXPONENTIAL GROWTH! GOD’S WORD TO ME IN 2013!
MERRY MONDAY BY PARRIS BAILEY
“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that soweth seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt.” Amos 9:13
Exponential is said to increase or decrease exponentially if its rate of change must be expressed using exponents. A graph of such a rate would appear not as a straight line, but as a curve that continually becomes steeper or shallower.
We should always be experiencing an abundance of spiritual blessings in heavenly places. We can be replenished with the graces, and goodness of Christ’s house everyday as we eat his bread and drink his wine. But are we? This scripture is talking about a supernatural abundance of blessings that will exceed belief and even the course of nature. E. Stanley Jones calls it the “explosive power of a new affection.” Revival can come when we stay at our posts keeping faithful. The seasons come and the seasons go but suddenly the crops become so copious that the time of ploughing and gathering all run together. This is exponential growth!
What I like about Amos is that he begins to speak hyperbolically when he speaks of mountains dripping with wine, but he paints a beautiful picture of the rain of God upon our lives.
Spurgeon says, “Man’s promises even at the best, are like a cistern which holds but a temporary supply; but God’s promises are as a fountain, never emptied, ever overflowing, so that you may draw from him the whole of that which they apparently contain, and they shall be still as full as ever.”
The next thing about exponential growth is it not only happens in our personal life but Amos is talking about a great ingathering of souls. The harvest is to be so great that, before the reapers have fully gathered it in, the ploughman shall begin to plough for the next crop – while the abundance of fruit shall be so surprising that before the treader of grapes can have trodden out all the juice of the vine, the time shall come for sowing seed. One season, by reason of the abundant fertility, shall run into another. Now you all know, what this means in the church. Spurgeon calls it ‘the rapidity of the work of grace”, so that the plougher shall overtake the reaper.
Notice that God does not promise that there shall be fruitful crops without labor; but we read of ploughmen, reapers, treaders of grapes, and sowers of seed; everyone doing their part. The ploughman doesn’t wait, nor the sower but they all go out into the field to work! They have all their guns ready so to speak and are standing, shoulder to shoulder, ready to make a tremendous charge against this world system. We operate in
a different dichotomy than the world. “Enlarged effort should always follow an increased hope of success.” Spurgeon