About the Book
"The Sower" by Franklin Graham is a Christian novel that follows the story of Paul Stepola, a dedicated Christian who is tasked with spreading the gospel in a world that is increasingly hostile towards followers of Jesus. As Paul faces challenges and persecution, he must rely on his faith and courage to fulfill his calling as a sower of God's word. Through his journey, readers are inspired to reflect on their own faith and commitment to sharing the message of salvation with others.
John G. Lake
John G. Lake was born in Ontario, Canada on March 18th, 1870. He was a family man, person of integrity, honor, a savvy businessman and a good father. If you knew him you wouldn’t otherwise know that he would soon become one of the greatest men of God the world would ever know. He had a genuine love for the Lord Jesus and was known by his friends as a man who dedicated himself to intimacy with The Lord. It was out of this place that he loved his wife, was a man of integrity and built a very successful business career. To give you perspective, by 1905 John G Lake was making $50,000 per year this sum would be like upwards of 1.3 million dollars per year annually today. John grew up in a family environment which was plagued with sickness and death, it is said that his earliest memories were of sickness, death and funerals. Lake was from a large family, he had 16 siblings, 8 of which tragically died of various diseases. It is no coincidence that “the man of healing” was tormented from a young age with death and disease. The enemy will often oppose destinies with radical circumstances through a distortion of the very thing that we are called to walk in. Lake Was exposed to dramatic healing when he visited John Alexander Dowie’s ministry and was, in prayer, instantly healed of a rheumatism which had caused his legs to grow incorrectly. Just two short years into their marriage, Jennie Lake was diagnosed with tuberculosis and heart disease. Over the next couple of years, the condition worsened and the doctors resigned to the fact that it was only a matter of time before she would die. John allowed this situation to provoke him into faith, after being exposed to such death and disease from a young age he had a hatred for such things. When he would read the word of God he saw that his Christian experience was less than the promised “power of the Holy Spirit”. As Jennie was on her deathbed and perhaps taking her final breaths Lake was overcome with anger over sickness and threw his bible against the fireplace mantle! When he went to pick up his bible it was opened to Acts chapter 10:38 which says: "God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.” Lake had a surge of faith in that moment and sent a telegram to Dowie asking him to pray. Within an hour of Dowie praying she was fully healed! Not long after Jennie was healed, God began to speak to Lake about going into full time ministry. After some time of contemplation and seeking the Lord, God confirmed to John and Jennie separately that they were to move to South Africa to begin their life of ministry. John and Jennie then gave away all that they had, John forsook his mega-salary and they went on their way alongside some of their friends as ministry partners.
When they arrived in South Africa, they had no money. The problem was, that they needed at least $125 in order to clear customs. they nervously waited for their turn in line, rehearsing what they would say to the immigration officer They were in desperate need of a miracle, as the law read that they would be subject to deportation as quickly as they arrived in South Africa. Just as they were about the get to the front of the line, John felt a tap on his shoulder… A man was standing behind John and said “excuse me sir, can I have a word with you?” John nervously steps out of line at the man’s request and the man said “when I saw you and your family in line, the Lord told me to give you $200 cash”. The Lord provided just enough money for John and his family to enter the country. But their needs didn’t stop there. The Lakes and their crew had no ministry contact in Johannesburg. Soon after they cleared customs, a woman approached John’s friends and asked how many people are in their family, when they told her, she responded “no, not you” and went over to John and asked the same question. John replied “9” and she said “you’re the ones!” She went on to tell John that the Lord had spoken to her last night that she was to give her home to a family of 9 people who are coming from America to do God’s work. John, Jennie and their crew rejoiced in the dramatic provision of the Lord. Their time in South Africa was marked with waves of revival, there were multitudes saved, healed and delivered over the course of their 5 year ministry tour in South Africa.
By far my favorite story from this season of Revival takes place shortly after the Lake family and their team arrived in South Africa. A mighty plague was sweeping through the nation, the death count was climbing dramatically. So much so that there was a surplus of corpses who were victims of the plague and there was no one to bury the dead; if someone was to come in contact with a dead body they would most certainly become infected and their death sentence would immediately begin. John G. Lake astounded the medical officials because he, without any gloves or protective clothing began burying the dead. Physicians in a panic approached John and rebuked him for coming in contact with the dead, John boldly responded "when the disease comes in contact with my skin, you can watch it die". The doctors thought he was insane, so he challenged them to put a drop of the plague on his skin and watch it under a microscope. When they did so, John was right! The plague cells literally burned up the second they came in contact with his skin!
It is tough to understand what would happen towards the end of the Lake’s missionary journey in Africa. One day while John was away on a ministry trip, his wife Jennie suddenly passed away. The cause of her death was malnutrition and exhaustion. It wasn’t uncommon for the sick and broken to line the lawn of John G Lake’s home and Jennie, as an act of sacrifice, gave away all their food and any resources she could to the broken which frequented their house.
Although John and Jennie’s faith and sacrifice is commendable we must learn from this fatal mistake. John’s priorities clearly became altered as the demand for ministry raged on. He failed to guard and keep the very precious gift that God had given him, he allowed the demands of ministry to distract him from the needs of his family unto the tragic and preventable death of his wife. In the wake of Jennie’s death their children became bitter with John and subsequently God. Some of his children left the faith and the most recent accounts of them suggest that they died not following Christ. To this day some of John’s great grandchildren do not follow the Lord. John’s failure to obey the basic command of scripture for “husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church” and his preoccupation with the demands of ministry opened up the door for the enemy to ravage his family. After Jennie’s death John moved back to the United States and remarried. He would then pioneer his famous healing ministry based out of Spokane Washington. Unfortunately John did not learn his lesson the first time, in the midst of more flames of revival he continued to be a poor father, emotionally disconnected from his children.
the quiet power of ordinary devotions
As Christians, we are not interested in merely reading our Bibles. We want to be moved, inspired, changed by what we read. We do not wake up early simply to pass our eyes over the pages of Scripture. We come to meet God (1 Samuel 3:21). We come to taste honey and gather gold (Psalm 19:10). We come to “rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8). That means days of ordinary devotions, as we’ve all experienced, can be all the more disappointing. As any faithful Bible reader knows, many devotional times come and go without fireworks. We may get alone, ask for God’s help, read attentively, and then rise up feeling — normal. Our time in the living, active, inspired word of God has felt spectacularly ordinary. Sometimes, the ordinariness comes as a result of our lingering blindness to glory. I, for one, feel a kinship with those disciples on the Emmaus road, to whom Jesus said, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken” (Luke 24:25). God save us from foolish minds and slow hearts, which so often close our eyes to the light of his revelation. “The grace of God sometimes lands on us like lighting, and sometimes falls like dew.” Yet the cause does not always lie in us. If we are reading our Bibles rightly, in fact, we should expect many mornings of ordinary devotions: devotions that do not sparkle with insight or direct-to-life application, but that nevertheless do us good. Just as most meals are ordinary, but still nourish, and just as most conversations with friends are ordinary, but still deepen affection, so most devotions are ordinary, but still grow us in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Saturated with Scripture As a new Christian in college, I carried in my pocket a packet of Scripture-memory cards from the Navigators. On one of the first cards, I found 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” I believed Paul’s words readily, having felt firsthand the profit of books like John and Romans, Philippians and James. Scarcely did I realize then, however, that Paul would have thought first of passages quite different from these — passages from which I struggled then (and still do now) to find the same kind of encouragement. Consider, for example, some of the God-breathed, profitable Scripture Paul had in mind as he wrote 2 Timothy: Solomon’s discussion of wisdom in Proverbs 2:6 (2 Timothy 2:7) Isaiah’s prophecy of the cornerstone in Isaiah 28:16 (2 Timothy 2:19) The story of Korah’s rebellion in Numbers 16 (2 Timothy 2:19) The account of the Egyptian magicians in Exodus 7–9 (2 Timothy 3:8) Few of us would dip into these passages for immediate edification. Few of us would offer them as our first illustrations of God-breathed, profitable Scriptures. Many of us, after stumbling through such pages of God’s word, emerge on the other side feeling unchanged, uninspired — ordinary. We can strive to avoid such experiences, of course, by staying safely in those parts of Scripture where we have felt God’s breath most powerfully. And yet, if we want a soul not merely sprinkled but saturated with God’s words, our only option is to carry on a long, patient acquaintance with passages that seem obscure. With passages that, upon first, second, or even fifth reading, leave us feeling quite ordinary afterward, but that slowly reveal the scope of God’s glory and make us “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15). Devotions Without a Devotional Perhaps our impatience with days of ordinary devotions comes from the expectation that daily devotions  should be like devotionals . A devotional gathers perhaps a month’s or a year’s worth of daily readings, each designed to give a boost toward Godward thinking and living. And the best of them do so quite well. Daily devotionals have a place in the Christian life. (I would have to ditch Charles Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening  if I thought otherwise.) Yet we do well to remember that, in giving us Scripture, God did not intend to give us a typical daily devotional. If he had, the chronicler might have spared us his genealogies, Ezekiel might have skipped his extended temple vision, and the author of Hebrews might have left out Melchizedek. If a daily devotional is like a photo album, with each page offering a self-contained snapshot of glory, Scripture itself is like a mural, with each day’s reading comprising only a centimeter of the whole. Some days, we happen upon a centimeter bright with glory, perhaps Psalm 23 or Romans 8. Other days, a dark image appears before us, as when we read prophecies or stories of judgment. Still other days, we find a section that simply mystifies us, the kind that we would never find in a daily devotional. Over time, though, we begin to grasp a glory in this mural that a snapshot could never give: a swirl of brightness and darkness, clarity and obscurity that coalesces into a masterpiece. And on those days, we will not wish that we had stayed safely within the snapshots of glory. Grace Like Dew We can rarely judge the value of our daily devotions, then, by considering any day in itself. In fact, initial impressions can deceive. High-octane devotions do not always lead to spiritual growth, and ordinary devotions often yield more fruit than we expect. J.C. Ryle once preached, Do not think you are getting no good from the Bible, merely because you do not see that good day by day. The greatest effects are by no means those which make the most noise, and are the most easily observed. The greatest effects are often silent, quiet, and hard to detect at the time they are being produced. Think of the influence of the moon upon the earth, and of the air upon the human lungs. Remember how silently the dew falls, and how imperceptibly the grass grows. There may be far more doing than you think in your soul by your Bible-reading. “Ordinary devotions are not the enemy. Like the manna in the wilderness, they too are from God.” The grace of God sometimes lands on us like lighting, and sometimes falls like dew. During some devotions, God places us in the cleft of the rock and lets us catch the trailing edge of his glory as he passes by (Exodus 33:18–23). During others, he shrouds us in darkness so that we cannot see (Isaiah 50:10). Yet if we read patiently and faithfully, not trusting in our wisdom but crying out for God’s, then the grace of God, though perhaps hidden in the moment, will in due time reveal its silent working. Sometimes, then, we do well to ask of our morning devotions not “What were my feelings?” but “What, over time, are the effects?” Regardless of what I feel on any given morning, am I coming to treasure more of Christ’s multifaceted glories? Is God’s word making me a more holy husband, wife, brother, sister, friend? Am I growing in my readiness for every good work (2 Timothy 3:17)? Manna and Milk Ordinary devotions, of course, are not the ideal. We do not hope to come to our Bibles and walk away unmoved — or, worse, confused. We hope rather to “behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18) and walk away full of praise. And when this hope is deferred, it too can make the heart sick. Yet neither are ordinary devotions the enemy. Like the manna in the wilderness, they too are from God. They too nourish and sustain us, even if imperceptibly. If we will patiently, faithfully eat the food God provides, ordinary days will give way to the milk and honey we long to taste again. And in the meantime, how good it is for us to be thrown back on God, knowing more deeply than ever that if we are to see at all, he  must give us sight. How good to sing with the psalmist, “As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the Lord our God, till he has mercy upon us” (Psalm 123:2). In God’s good time, if we do not give up, the unfolding of his words will give light (Psalm 119:130).
