Matthew 13:29-30 But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”
There is something deeply instructive in the restraint of the Lord. When the servants recognize the problem in the field, their instinct is immediate action. They want to fix it, remove it, clean it up. But the Lord responds in a way that challenges human urgency. He tells them to wait.
This is not indifference. This is wisdom.
In the natural world, wheat and tares often grow so close together beneath the surface that their root systems become intertwined. What appears separate above ground is deeply connected below. To pull one too early risks damaging the other. What seems like a simple solution on the surface is far more complex at the root level.
Yeshua (Jesus) is revealing something essential about how God governs His field.
There are realities at work beneath the surface that we do not fully see. There are connections, dependencies, and timings that are hidden from natural perception. What looks like a clear situation to us is often far more intricate in the wisdom of God. And so, instead of immediate separation, the instruction is patience — let both grow together until the harvest.
This speaks directly to one of the most difficult tensions believers face. Why does God allow what seems contrary to His nature to continue? Why are things not dealt with immediately? Why does the field remain mixed? The answer is not delay — it is design.
God is not reacting to events as they unfold. He is working according to a predetermined moment called the harvest. Until that moment arrives, there is a divine allowance for growth. Not because everything in the field is acceptable, but because everything in the field is moving toward a point of completion.
There is a process unfolding, one that cannot be rushed or bypassed. As growth takes place, it begins to reveal the true structure of what has been planted. Over time, what lies beneath the surface is exposed, bringing depth into view that was once hidden. And as maturity is reached, clarity emerges—making evident what could not be fully understood in the earlier stages.
What cannot be safely separated in its early stages will become unmistakable in its fullness. What is hidden in development will be evident in completion. God is allowing time to do what premature action cannot accomplish without causing harm.
This requires a shift in how we see the present moment. The field is not out of control — it is under supervision. The presence of mixture does not mean the absence of oversight. The Lord has not lost authority; He has established timing.
And that timing is purposeful.
There are things being strengthened in the wheat during this season that could not develop any other way. There is endurance being formed, roots going deeper, stability being established. The very environment that seems confusing is also producing resilience in those who are truly planted.
At the same time, everything else is moving toward its own exposure.
Nothing remains undefined forever.
The harvest is not just a moment of action — it is a moment of revelation. It is when everything becomes clear without force, when separation happens without confusion, when what is true and what is not can no longer be mistaken.
Beloved, this is the hour to trust the wisdom of the Lord over the urgency of the moment. Do not be troubled by what you cannot yet separate or shaken by what seems unresolved — God is not behind, He is precise. He sees beneath the surface and knows the exact moment for perfect separation. Your call is to stay rooted, grow steadily, and remain anchored in Him. The harvest is coming, and with it will come clarity — everything revealed and set in its proper place. So stand firm and trust His timing, for the One who said, “let both grow together,” has already appointed the moment when He will say, “now separate.”
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]As we discussed last week, the word for “sign” in ancient Hebrew is “oht”. It was used in Genesis to designate God’s covenant sign with Noah, (the rainbow). And we see now the same word again, in Exodus, identified with the deliverance of the Jewish people from the tenth plague, when the angel of death passed through all Egypt to strike the firstborn. Anyone under the “sign” of the blood was spared.
Yesterday we wrote about one of the greatest moves of God … the Moravian Revival. When the community was in complete disarray, Count Zinzendorf focused on how they could live together in love despite their differences. He called all the men together for an intense study of the Scriptures to focus on how Christian life in community was portrayed. These studies combined with intense prayer convinced many of the believers that they were called to live together in love and that their disunity and conflict were contrary to the clear calling of Scripture.
In the late 1800s, an awakening in South Africa led by Andrew Murray was a powerful move of God. Studying that revival yields essential insights concerning the events occurring now throughout the United States. As the spirit of God began to move in Cape Town, Murray compared the SA revival with past experiences of revivals in Europe. He decided that the intense “emotionalism” was a false experience of God and charged in to break up the meeting. Stepping out of the church, he encountered his father standing and weeping. His father rebuked Andrew, “How dare you stop something that I have prayed to happen for 30 years!”
Revivals, that is, genuine Divinely ordained seasons of the activity of God among men, have a universally unusual character. Normal activities and behaviors give way to the tangible influence of God’s Holy Spirit, whose inspiration brings a freedom of expression, emotion, conviction, worship, and other variations from normal experience.
During the Catholic inquisitions, as millions of Christians were being killed by the Jesuit Priests for apostasy, throughout Europe, Christians were fleeing. In Bohemia alone, there were an estimated 4,000,000 Christians before the Jesuit inquisition, and ten years later, only 800,000 people remained in Bohemia – all of whom were Catholic. These terrible events prepared the ground for one of the greatest moves of God that have ever been recorded, the Moravian Revival, which lasted for over 100 years. Gustav Warneck, the German Historian of Protestant Missions, testified, “This small church in twenty years called into being more missions than the whole Evangelical Church has done in two centuries.”
I love to study past revivals and in studying them, there are two recurring themes that stand out:
First, that He has often used obscure and unknown individuals to lead revivals, and that even these men whom He used so powerfully never considered themselves to be “special”, but often wanted to stay out of the limelight.
During the Great Depression, poverty swept across America like a whirling tornado, ripping up dreams and scattering hopes to the wind. One such poverty twister hit a small part of Texas where a man named Yates ran a sheep ranch. Struggling even to keep food on the table, Yates and his wife did all they could to survive. Finally, they had to accept a government subsidy or lose their home and land to the creditors.