Now I Really Live on a Farm

Yesterday was a big day. The cows arrived.

I now have what I believe to be 15 cattle on the property, including 14 heifers and a bull who looks very tired, for obvious reasons.

I took the cart out yesterday and greeted the livestock. They stared at me the way male engineers stare when a woman enters their cubicle farm. They approached within about 50 feet. I don’t know what kind of cattle they are. Some are completely black, so I assume they’re Angus. Others have a lot of red on them, so maybe they’re part Red Angus or Hereford. Others are white. Charolais, maybe? I don’t know if any of the heifers are purebred.

I am assuming all of the non-bull types are heifers. It has been maybe 30 years since I’ve spent time with cattle, so I can’t tell a heifer from a steer at 50 yards without seeing it from a few angles.

I wasn’t expecting a bull. Some bulls are obnoxious, so I kept an eye on him. He came near the cart and started snorting and pawing the ground, but it turned out he was just throwing dirt on himself. He seems to enjoy that. I have a big berm in my pasture, and he found a bare place in it and got as dirty as he could.

They spend a lot of time trotting. Not sure what that’s about. Maybe it has something to do with the new surroundings.

Manure production has already begun, so I’m happy about that. My friend Mike was asking me how I intended to collect manure. I said I was going to throw it in the bed of the cart. That didn’t sit well with him. He thought I should use a tub. Here’s how I see it: cow manure is not real poop. I would never throw dog poop or hog manure into my cart’s bed, but dry cow manure is not much different from composted grass clippings, so it doesn’t scare me.

I want to combine it with my copious leaf piles.

I was not happy to see that the heifers liked climbing on my berm. I don’t want them to mash it down. I still intend to shoot out there.

Here’s a great thing about cattle, which I didn’t know until yesterday: they love Spanish moss. I saw them eating it. I figure a cow can reach up maybe 6 feet, so if they do their job, all the Spanish moss below that height should disappear in a few months. If only they climbed trees.

My pasture will be kept trimmed, so I won’t have to mow it. The cattle will eat a lot of the weeds. They’ll eat Spanish moss. Free manure. Tax break for agricultural use. Free fence maintenance. It’s a good deal.

Aside from all that, they improve the atmosphere. A farm should have something going on.

I sent photos to my friends. I was surprised at how enthused these city-dwellers were. One young lady said, “Teach me to be like you.” I told her she needed to be like Jesus, not me. I reminded her to pray in tongues a lot every day, and I said she needed to ask God for correction and get away from the ungodly people in her life. So the cows brought me an opportunity to serve God.

It’s funny, but out of all my grandfather’s grandchildren, it looks like I turned out to be most like him. He had a number of farms, and he had tenant farmers. He had a lot of real estate, and he managed it and rented it. I’m doing all that stuff. The other grandchildren don’t seem to be following in his footsteps. He was especially fond of me, so maybe it’s fitting that I am inheriting his mantle.

I wonder if I’m going to increase my holdings.

Last night, a young friend called to tell me how his walk was going. He’s getting a lot of the same messages I am. He has been surrounded by very counterproductive people all his life. He lived in Miami Gardens, which is a very backward, crime-filled area, and he was happy there. Now he says he has to stay away from places like that and cut off a lot of people. I was glad to hear that. God keeps showing me the connection between joy and ridding myself of unequal yokings.

When you don’t have joy, you lack strength and enthusiasm, so you don’t get as much done as you should. Or you force yourself, and you live in misery.

Today, as usual, I watched Derek Prince with breakfast. He said some things about the sabbath, which is Saturday. God showed me something.

Many Jews say the commandment to keep the sabbath is the most important commandment. A famous zionist named Ahad Ha’am said, ” “More than Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.” They see it as a source of strength.

Derek Prince was talking about Sunday, the day after the sabbath. According to him, Jerusalem goes wild on Sundays. People are rested up from the sabbath, and they go out and attack life. Why is that?

God has shown me that being around beings who are against him drains joy and strength. If that is true, then by the symmetry of the supernatural, being with God and the righteous must increase joy and strength.

I’m not ignorant enough to think that most Israelis spend the sabbath with God. Most are atheists or very weak Jews. Nonetheless, God has a strange pattern of blessing the Jews in certain natural areas, even when they’re in rebellion. He has made them smart, capable, and prosperous, and he has kept them alive. Also, the principle of rest works in the natural as well as the supernatural. Israelis may be keeping the sabbath poorly, but it still produces some results.

The Bible tells us to rest in God. It says to wait for him to act, and things will be fine.

Rest is necessary, if you want to have strength to get things done. The best rest is time spent in the presence of God, trusting him to look after you.

The sabbath must have been a shocking idea in the ancient world. As far as I know, from listening to other people, the ancient world had a 7-day work week. The Babylonians only got one day off per month. It must have been strange for the Jews to have Moses tell them they had to give up 14% of their productive time.

I think God is confirming something to me. If you want strength and help, you have to pull away from the world as much as you can. It’s not enough to sit in church once a week and then go home and watch godless TV and devote yourself to worthless pursuits.

God has a history of drawing people out. It is believed that the name “Moses” means “to draw out.” He drew Enoch out of the world. He drew Noah’s family out of the world. He drew Abraham out of Ur. He drew Lot’s family out of Sodom. He drew the Jews out of Egypt. Now he draws his children out of the godless world, even while we live in the midst of it. Eventually, he will draw us out in the rapture.

“Moses” means to draw out of water. That makes sense. In the Bible’s symbolism, the world is a sea, and the water is voices. We have to be drawn out of, and set above, the water of ungodly voices. Remember how Peter walked on water, as long as he was focused on Jesus? God has used drowning a number of times, to show the way he feels about those who are against him. He drowned the entire human race. He drowned Pharaoh’s army. He drowned the pigs Jesus allowed demons to enter. He also drowns our old selves when we are baptized.

The first psalm says that if you want to prosper, you can’t walk in the counsel of the ungodly. That’s a big deal. Many churches teach the counsel of the ungodly, almost exclusively. They teach positive thinking and meditation. They teach hard work (a Biblical curse). They teach people to have high self-esteem, even though God says he fights the proud.

Synagogues are notorious for teaching worldly counsel. They teach leftism and false “social justice.”

If we rely on the counsel of the ungodly, and we seem to succeed, how can God be glorified? He doesn’t take credit for other people’s work. If you want God to do the work of helping you, you need to stop relying on the world and yourself.

God limited the number of Gideon’s men so he could receive the glory for winning the battle. He used a skinny teenager without armor to kill Goliath, so he could receive glory. He used one weak man–Samson–to defeat the Philistines, so he could receive the glory. He came in the form of a weak man–Jesus–to conquer the world, so he could receive the glory. He made the Hebrews stand by and do nothing while he drowned Pharaoh’s army, so he could receive the glory. He cursed Moses for striking a rock to bring water out of it, instead of merely speaking to it, because Moses deprived him of glory.

If you want power to flow, glory has to flow to God. We have to be completely dependent on him. Otherwise, he folds his arms and lets us fight our own battles.

When you spend time with God instead of working, you give God glory. When the Jews refrained from working one day per week, trusting God to look after them, they gave God glory.

This stuff is important. It explains why God doesn’t move more powerfully in our lives. We want him to do the work, while we credit human beings.

I feel that God also showed me something about harmony.

God has told me there is no peace without authority, and he also says authority comes from time spent in the presence of God. God brings organization. When the Spirit rules people, they never disagree, and they always work together. We have to be baptized with the Holy Spirit in order for God to harmonize us, because God communicates with us and orders us through the Spirit.

Harmony is a necessary ingredient of peace. You can’t have peace without harmony.

Why does God like music so much? Because it organizes people. It unites us. While we sing and dance to the same tune, we are unified. We respond to the same melody and rhythm. It’s a picture of heaven, where everyone is unified, all the time.

Machines do a lot of our work for us now, but back when men moved things with their backs, music was necessary in order for them to succeed. They used to sing songs while they worked. For example, men pulling on an anchor line might sing and pull in unison on certain beats.

Harmony multiplies our strength. When an army walks across a bridge, they don’t march in time. They break step, because otherwise, the power of their unified steps could cause the bridge to resonate and collapse.

Some people who say they have been to heaven claim the flowers there sing. That makes sense. Surely every living thing in heaven is in order, and music is a manifestation of order.

I suspect that even the trees in heaven sing. I’ll bet the trees in the Garden of Eden sang.

Maybe this is why singing in tongues is so much more powerful than speaking in tongues.

I asked God for wisdom yesterday. He has promised to give wisdom liberally to people who ask. It seems that he is piling it on. It’s a little overwhelming.

He’ll do it for anyone, so ask him.

I think it’s time to run the harrow and get rid of some leaves. I hope what I wrote is useful to you.