Mesquite Bean July Edition

The Mesquite Bean

Newsletter for ‘Christian Cowboy Fellowship’ Roswell NM July 2008



Dear Fellowship family,

I hope that you all have a fun and excitement filled 4th of July. I know that we did. We went up to Capitan, it was so nice just to get away for a couple of days and see some pretty country. We got to watch both of our “boys” compete in the ranch rodeo, on opposite teams, by the way. And it was just fun. It is so much more fun when you know the folks on the teams, than when you don’t. Makes it much more interesting. Thankfully all went well and no bones were broken, and everybody stayed out of the emergency room. That is always a plus.

When I was a kid, I loved wheat harvest. It was a busy time at our house, and a very hard couple of weeks, but for some reason I just loved it. I think a ripe field of wheat is a site to behold. Now I do have a son that will make fun of me because of that statement, calling me names such as, “sod-buster”. But I don’t care I love the way a wheat field just ripples and waves. I love the smell of freshly cut wheat, and I love to grab a handful and just let it trickle out of my fingers.

I remember when I was very young, Daddy had a room in the barn and that is where he stored his seed wheat that he would use for the following year. In order to get the wheat into the barn he would have to drag the auger up to the barn and poke the end into a hole in the top of the room, and with a seed scoop he would scoop seed wheat in a big pile and the auger would suck it up and let it fall into the room. It was a very hard and time consuming task. And while I am sure he dreaded it each and every year. I just loved to sit and watch how the wheat would be sucked up, go out the end of the auger and fall in a river of golden seeds into the room.

As I was thinking about that memory the other day, I had a thought. Jesus mentions in the bible about the wheat and the chaff. So I went searching, and sure enough I found what He had to say about it. In both Matthew and Luke this statement is made, “His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather the wheat into His barn; but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Luke 3:17 NKV) Now every wheat farmer knows that chaff is useless. You could plant a bucket of chaff, water it, tend to it, and nothing will ever come up. It does nothing. There is no food value in chaff, it is absolutely worthless. All is does is make you itch when it gets on you. But wheat…now that is a different story. Wheat is the staff of life so to speak. Wheat is grown for food. Most is made into flour and what is made out of flour? Bread. Bread is the mainstay of most of our diets in some way or another. So wheat is good.

When Daddy would place the wheat into the auger and it would run up the tube and fall into the barn do you know what would happen to the chaff? It would just fly away. The wheat was heavy and it would fall into a pile, but the chaff, there was no substance and it would just melt away into the wind. I have said all that to make this point. We live in both an exciting time and in a scary time. I feel that we are seeing Bible prophecy unfold before our eyes. I personally feel that time is short. I know that one knows the time, or the season, and I am sure not a theologian by any means. But I do think that the Lord puts a “knowing” in the spirit of His people, and the urge to watch and wait for Him. If He comes in this generation or waits for the next, we do know that He is coming, He has made a promise, and He has to keep it, it would go against His character to not. In light of this, what I am afraid of is...there is a lot of chaff out there. Matter of fact this world if full of chaff. I see it just like the wheat that Daddy would put up every year. The good grain would fall, it would be full of life, and would reproduce the next year, and provide another crop. That to me is like Christians that are learning and drawing closer to the Lord. They are walking the walk that He has laid out for them. And in doing so, they will draw more people to Christ. They like the wheat are solid and heavy, and set aside for a specific purpose. And then there are the people that are like the chaff. They have no foundation, no substance. They just separate from the wheat and do their own thing. And end up being carried away by the winds, going hither and yon, and never amounting to anything.

When I think about that it scares me for them. Because what does Jesus say He will do with the chaff? He will in a sense clean the chaff from the wheat. The wheat, His children He will gather into His barn. I just love that picture by the way. It is so comforting. But the chaff, it says He will burn with unquenchable fire. That picture scares me. Folks I think we are only starting to see this beginning to happen. I think that the Lord is doing a “winnowing”. I believe that He is separating and setting aside His children from the world. We are called to be separate we are called to not be conformed to this world. But in this day and time it is getting very very hard to see the division. Evil is called good, and good is called evil.



I pray that as the body of Christ we will wake up. We will make a stand for the Lord, no matter what the cost. And the cost could and probably will be high. I pray that we will be “wheat” set aside in the Masters barn, gathered up and taken care of. I pray that none of us is like the “chaff”, blowing this way and that, and never amounting to anything, and finally being burned up in the unquenchable fire. What a horrifying thought.

One final thought. Good seed wheat reproduces. That is its purpose in life. And one crop reproduces another crop, and so on and so on. But if you leave your seed wheat sitting and it never gets planted….do you know what happens? It will eventually get full of weevils. And eventually they will eat it till nothing is left but powder; the chance for another crop is gone. We are to be like a farmer. He plants the seeds, and prays for rain, and depends on God to make the crop grow. My Daddy was a dry land wheat farmer, so I know a lot about praying for rain. But we have to be faithful; we have to live and be good “wheat”, and to grow in the word and in our relationship with the Lord. And when our seeds are planted we need to, pray for Him to send the rain, and when those seeds sprout, He will be faithful to gather us, and bring us into His barn for safe keeping.



God Bless and Happy Trails