Spiritual and Physical Parallels in Farming

The team at ITEC developing our farming training program had the opportunity to attend a training at Farming God's Way headquarters in Wisconsin earlier this year. Many new and helpful concepts were learned and have already been put into practice as the corn continues to grow skyward in our test plots.

Spiritual Application

Farming lends itself to some great spiritual truths, as found throughout Scripture. Through analogy, agriculture can show us how we can cultivate spiritual growth, work hard, and be watered by the Gospel. We are reminded that humans put forth the effort and work the soil but ultimately God brings the yield.

As our team learned more about methods to yield a larger crop, they were reminded of these spiritual parallels of farming. Psalm 101:14 says, "You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth." Farming is a great avenue to train people around the world and speak to their spiritual need as well. Our desire is for future agriculture students to take this tool and feed their people both physically and spiritually.

Physical Application

Among the many things taught through the week, our team learned to make small changes to a compost pile to improve nutrients into the soil, leading to larger yields. In many developing areas, farmers are faced with small or decreasing yields in their fields. The techniques learned by our team will be of great help to our brothers and sisters across the globe in improving their harvest.

Our team at ITEC is working hard to use these conservation agriculture principles on our test plots that have been planted this season. We anticipate a sweet corn party in the ITEC future!

Pray for the Harvest

In different cultural contexts, there can also be spiritual battles that affect the land. In some regions, farmers are taught to bring witch doctors in and have sacrifices made on the land in order to produce a larger crop. Pray that this bondage can be broken through the name of Jesus!

Moving forward, we ask that you pray with us that God would prepare the way and move as only He can. We are thankful for our partnerships with Farming God's Way and Foundations for Farming, and their openness to share their curriculum and expertise with us. Pray for wisdom as the team currently works to develop the ITEC farming training curriculum and simultaneously continues work in our test plots.

God has provided an amazing opportunity to use farming as a tool to spread the gospel, we are extremely grateful for all He has done and will do!