By D.Brandt Berg
Download Audio (10.5MB)
When very special opportunities arise, we’ve found from years of experience in the Lord’s work that it's something God does in a special way to reach a special audience that you may not have the opportunity to reach again.—Someone He wants to reach or some particular field of ministry that He wants you to proceed with and pursue and not to forsake too soon.
The primary ministry of all of us is reaching the lost and reaching the people who need the message. It’s more important even to leave the ninety-and-nine and go out and seek the one lost sheep—the ninety-and-nine are safe in the fold.1 There are far more out there who are unsaved and who need salvation and who need the message and the love of the Lord who do not yet know Him and are not yet convicted about serving Him, to whom you can speak and give the message both of His love and His call to service.
So I would not pass up a golden opportunity to reach people who are needy, including the poor rich, who seldom are ministered to by missionaries, particularly missionaries like us with such a simple message of His love. They are also in turn able to provide you more opportunities of service, as well as to help support the Lord’s work.
It’s important not to neglect those golden opportunities which the Lord presents and gives you a foot in the door to pursue. We have found it’s best to go ahead with those things as long as you can, and you’ve at least entered the field and covered as much of it as you can while you can, because you can’t always go back to it. You don’t always have a second chance. Sometimes we’ve thought, “Well, we have something else we’ve got to do in the meantime; we’ll go back to that later”—and we went back later and there had been a change of heart and they had grown cold.
God has certain setups that are golden opportunities, and that kind of opportunity is very rare. You have to have a real sixth sense of the Lord—maybe it’s a seventh sense of the Holy Spirit and His guiding—to recognize such unusual opportunities and to realize that this is something that God has suddenly opened to you, a golden opportunity that must be pursued at once and followed up now or it may never come again and you may never be able to reach those same people again, or that class of people or that type of people in that particular field again.
God has His harvest times, and they don’t always last, because as He said, “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. The field is already white unto harvest.”2 Why is He in such a hurry? Why does He want to get so many laborers into the harvest quickly? Because the harvest won’t last if it’s not reaped when it’s ripe, and then you’ll be sorry.
You may find out when you come back that the harvest has been devastated by some storm of the enemy or some opposition or some freeze of their hearts, and it’s gone and past and you’ll never have it again. So it’s important to try to seize these golden opportunities of harvest time which may come but once, sometimes never again.
God rarely opens doors that He doesn’t want you to enter. When He opens doors like that, it generally means that you’re supposed to enter and follow it up until He closes the door. I have found that He will always let you know, and the time will come when the door will close, if you’ll follow it up at the time and do your best, harvest rapidly while the field is free and open and the harvest is good and the opportunity is golden and the people are receptive and responsive and their hearts are open.
If you wait too long or neglect it or put it off, you may find that the door has closed or God has even allowed it to be closed because you missed the ideal time, the psychological moment, the spiritual moment, God’s golden-harvest moment: His golden opportunity when the harvest is ripe and ready to be reaped.
We say, “I’ll do that when I get back” or “Later.” We procrastinate, we put it off, we postpone it, and we find out when we come back that the whole situation has changed—there are different people in charge who are not interested; the people have lost interest. The whims of man are fleeting, fame is fleeting, and when you’re on that wave of receptivity, you’ve got to ride it as long as it lasts, because it may eventually crash on the beach and go to pieces. But you can ride it while it lasts and you can get the glory of it while it’s going.
I preached almost this same sermon to a little group of 50 hippies in a little club called the Light Club in Huntington Beach a long time ago. I told them, "We’ve got to ride the wave now while it’s here, because it won’t last forever!" And it only lasted a few months, but as a result we became known almost nationwide before it crashed.
I have found that God’s appointments will not be disappointments. But you can disappoint God if you don’t meet His appointment, if you don’t get there and stay there when He wants you to be there. If you set for yourself too rigid a schedule, you may miss something that God is opening up. You may miss some choice field, some ripe harvest, and find out you just cannot get back in again, discovering that things will never be the same again. We must follow up such golden opportunities when we have them and ride the crest of that wave until it breaks on the shore.
This is what we have done many times over the years, and we have ridden the crest of a wave of popularity and receptiveness, a ripe harvest field, and we have reaped it until the Lord shut the door and it was no more.
This reminds me of a marvelous opportunity we had at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair, six months of reaching 10,000 people a day with our witness at our little booth there; handing out hundreds of thousands of tracts and pieces of Gospel literature to thousands of people who maybe never heard or never got anything else with a personal sweet witness, smiling happy face of a young person, a kind loving word, and would remember it forever.
Our booth had a beautiful seven-foot-tall picture of Christ, the Prince of Peace. The theme of the fair was peace, and it had a beautiful golden frame with a blue tinge to the picture against this bright orange wall. Blue and orange were the fair colors, so a lot of the news media took pictures of it and marveled at the beauty of our little exhibit, which was the cheapest, smallest one in the whole building. People commented on it, and the manager loved us and loved it.
We had that opportunity only two summers and that was it. We almost didn’t go back the second summer, but the Lord convicted us and gave my mother a vision that we had forsaken our plow.
So we went back and we did what the Lord told us to do. We followed God instead of following our schedule or even some of our own ideas and our own plans and our own personal feelings. It was a marvelous opportunity that only lasted a little while. If we’d failed to go back, it would have been gone forever.
So don’t leave that plow deserted in a fertile field before a ripe harvest which God has opened a door to. Don’t forsake it, and don’t forsake the task God has given you. Don’t abandon something that is fruitful and paying off—as long as you’re reaping and fruitful and getting souls or support or the blessing of the Lord spiritually or in some other way. As long as God is blessing you and making you fruitful and making you a blessing, pursue it and keep after it until it comes to its end. And it generally will end, because harvests don’t last forever, fields are not open forever, doors do not stay open forever. Something closes them in the long run, and the time is gone, the time is past. “The summer is ended, the harvest is past,” the Scripture says, “and yet we are not saved.” They are not saved and the time is gone.3
“There is a time for everything,” God’s Word says. “A time to laugh, a time to weep, a time for peace and a time for war.”4 And there’s a time for each field, a time for each harvest, and we need to get action on the harvest fields when they are “white unto harvest” and ripe and ready, before they rot in the field or are destroyed by the storm or the freeze.
It’s important to go through the open doors and accept the invitations and take advantage of the golden opportunities which may only knock once and be gone forever. The door may only be opened once and then be slammed shut and locked forever afterwards. May God help us never to fail to go through those open doors and take advantage of those marvelous harvest fields which may never be available again.
When things are going strong, that’s the time to keep at it! If Nehemiah had come down to fiddle around with something else then, he might never have finished the wall.5 We have to keep on the job until it’s finished. Do the thing until the time is spent and over and the harvest is harvested and the door is shut and the wave is spent and crashed; then God will let you know when it’s time to go on someplace else and do something else.
“Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called.”6 When God calls you to a certain ministry, you’ll want to stay in it until you’re finished, and then go on to whatever else God wants you to do.
Don’t pass up those golden opportunities, leaving a plow in the field that may not be there when you get back. The field may not be there either. It may be their last chance. Seize it today!
Originally published October 1980. Updated and republished April 2013.
Read by Simon Peterson.
1 Matthew 18:12.
2 Matthew 9:37; John 4:35.
3 Jeremiah 8:20.
4 Ecclesiastes 3:1–8.
5 Nehemiah 6:3.
6 1 Corinthians 7:20.
Download Audio (10.5MB)
When very special opportunities arise, we’ve found from years of experience in the Lord’s work that it's something God does in a special way to reach a special audience that you may not have the opportunity to reach again.—Someone He wants to reach or some particular field of ministry that He wants you to proceed with and pursue and not to forsake too soon.
The primary ministry of all of us is reaching the lost and reaching the people who need the message. It’s more important even to leave the ninety-and-nine and go out and seek the one lost sheep—the ninety-and-nine are safe in the fold.1 There are far more out there who are unsaved and who need salvation and who need the message and the love of the Lord who do not yet know Him and are not yet convicted about serving Him, to whom you can speak and give the message both of His love and His call to service.
So I would not pass up a golden opportunity to reach people who are needy, including the poor rich, who seldom are ministered to by missionaries, particularly missionaries like us with such a simple message of His love. They are also in turn able to provide you more opportunities of service, as well as to help support the Lord’s work.
It’s important not to neglect those golden opportunities which the Lord presents and gives you a foot in the door to pursue. We have found it’s best to go ahead with those things as long as you can, and you’ve at least entered the field and covered as much of it as you can while you can, because you can’t always go back to it. You don’t always have a second chance. Sometimes we’ve thought, “Well, we have something else we’ve got to do in the meantime; we’ll go back to that later”—and we went back later and there had been a change of heart and they had grown cold.
God has certain setups that are golden opportunities, and that kind of opportunity is very rare. You have to have a real sixth sense of the Lord—maybe it’s a seventh sense of the Holy Spirit and His guiding—to recognize such unusual opportunities and to realize that this is something that God has suddenly opened to you, a golden opportunity that must be pursued at once and followed up now or it may never come again and you may never be able to reach those same people again, or that class of people or that type of people in that particular field again.
God has His harvest times, and they don’t always last, because as He said, “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. The field is already white unto harvest.”2 Why is He in such a hurry? Why does He want to get so many laborers into the harvest quickly? Because the harvest won’t last if it’s not reaped when it’s ripe, and then you’ll be sorry.
You may find out when you come back that the harvest has been devastated by some storm of the enemy or some opposition or some freeze of their hearts, and it’s gone and past and you’ll never have it again. So it’s important to try to seize these golden opportunities of harvest time which may come but once, sometimes never again.
God rarely opens doors that He doesn’t want you to enter. When He opens doors like that, it generally means that you’re supposed to enter and follow it up until He closes the door. I have found that He will always let you know, and the time will come when the door will close, if you’ll follow it up at the time and do your best, harvest rapidly while the field is free and open and the harvest is good and the opportunity is golden and the people are receptive and responsive and their hearts are open.
If you wait too long or neglect it or put it off, you may find that the door has closed or God has even allowed it to be closed because you missed the ideal time, the psychological moment, the spiritual moment, God’s golden-harvest moment: His golden opportunity when the harvest is ripe and ready to be reaped.
We say, “I’ll do that when I get back” or “Later.” We procrastinate, we put it off, we postpone it, and we find out when we come back that the whole situation has changed—there are different people in charge who are not interested; the people have lost interest. The whims of man are fleeting, fame is fleeting, and when you’re on that wave of receptivity, you’ve got to ride it as long as it lasts, because it may eventually crash on the beach and go to pieces. But you can ride it while it lasts and you can get the glory of it while it’s going.
I preached almost this same sermon to a little group of 50 hippies in a little club called the Light Club in Huntington Beach a long time ago. I told them, "We’ve got to ride the wave now while it’s here, because it won’t last forever!" And it only lasted a few months, but as a result we became known almost nationwide before it crashed.
I have found that God’s appointments will not be disappointments. But you can disappoint God if you don’t meet His appointment, if you don’t get there and stay there when He wants you to be there. If you set for yourself too rigid a schedule, you may miss something that God is opening up. You may miss some choice field, some ripe harvest, and find out you just cannot get back in again, discovering that things will never be the same again. We must follow up such golden opportunities when we have them and ride the crest of that wave until it breaks on the shore.
This is what we have done many times over the years, and we have ridden the crest of a wave of popularity and receptiveness, a ripe harvest field, and we have reaped it until the Lord shut the door and it was no more.
This reminds me of a marvelous opportunity we had at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair, six months of reaching 10,000 people a day with our witness at our little booth there; handing out hundreds of thousands of tracts and pieces of Gospel literature to thousands of people who maybe never heard or never got anything else with a personal sweet witness, smiling happy face of a young person, a kind loving word, and would remember it forever.
Our booth had a beautiful seven-foot-tall picture of Christ, the Prince of Peace. The theme of the fair was peace, and it had a beautiful golden frame with a blue tinge to the picture against this bright orange wall. Blue and orange were the fair colors, so a lot of the news media took pictures of it and marveled at the beauty of our little exhibit, which was the cheapest, smallest one in the whole building. People commented on it, and the manager loved us and loved it.
We had that opportunity only two summers and that was it. We almost didn’t go back the second summer, but the Lord convicted us and gave my mother a vision that we had forsaken our plow.
So we went back and we did what the Lord told us to do. We followed God instead of following our schedule or even some of our own ideas and our own plans and our own personal feelings. It was a marvelous opportunity that only lasted a little while. If we’d failed to go back, it would have been gone forever.
So don’t leave that plow deserted in a fertile field before a ripe harvest which God has opened a door to. Don’t forsake it, and don’t forsake the task God has given you. Don’t abandon something that is fruitful and paying off—as long as you’re reaping and fruitful and getting souls or support or the blessing of the Lord spiritually or in some other way. As long as God is blessing you and making you fruitful and making you a blessing, pursue it and keep after it until it comes to its end. And it generally will end, because harvests don’t last forever, fields are not open forever, doors do not stay open forever. Something closes them in the long run, and the time is gone, the time is past. “The summer is ended, the harvest is past,” the Scripture says, “and yet we are not saved.” They are not saved and the time is gone.3
“There is a time for everything,” God’s Word says. “A time to laugh, a time to weep, a time for peace and a time for war.”4 And there’s a time for each field, a time for each harvest, and we need to get action on the harvest fields when they are “white unto harvest” and ripe and ready, before they rot in the field or are destroyed by the storm or the freeze.
It’s important to go through the open doors and accept the invitations and take advantage of the golden opportunities which may only knock once and be gone forever. The door may only be opened once and then be slammed shut and locked forever afterwards. May God help us never to fail to go through those open doors and take advantage of those marvelous harvest fields which may never be available again.
When things are going strong, that’s the time to keep at it! If Nehemiah had come down to fiddle around with something else then, he might never have finished the wall.5 We have to keep on the job until it’s finished. Do the thing until the time is spent and over and the harvest is harvested and the door is shut and the wave is spent and crashed; then God will let you know when it’s time to go on someplace else and do something else.
“Let every man abide in the calling wherein he is called.”6 When God calls you to a certain ministry, you’ll want to stay in it until you’re finished, and then go on to whatever else God wants you to do.
Don’t pass up those golden opportunities, leaving a plow in the field that may not be there when you get back. The field may not be there either. It may be their last chance. Seize it today!
Originally published October 1980. Updated and republished April 2013.
Read by Simon Peterson.
1 Matthew 18:12.
2 Matthew 9:37; John 4:35.
3 Jeremiah 8:20.
4 Ecclesiastes 3:1–8.
5 Nehemiah 6:3.
6 1 Corinthians 7:20.
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