Wake Up and Go

The Greek word therismós — harvest — carries a built-in urgency. It does not simply mean grain ready to be cut. It implies a window. A season that opens and closes. Fields that are ready today will not wait indefinitely for a worker who is almost ready.

On Sunday, May 24, Max stood in Courts of Praise and issued a challenge that left little room for comfort. Three speakers — Zadok Barton, Annie, and Max — each came with a different thread, and all three threads pulled in the same direction: God is at work around you. He has already sent you somewhere. The question is whether you are awake enough to move.

The Question He Already Has the Answer To

In John 6, Jesus looks out at a crowd of thousands and turns to Philip with what seems like an impossible question: “Where shall we buy bread, so that all these people may eat?” Verse six answers the question before Philip can: “He said this to test him, for He well knew what He was about to do.”

God was not asking Philip for a solution. He already had one. He was watching to see how Philip would respond — with panic, with calculation, with surrender, or with trust. Philip responded with math. He ran the numbers and concluded there was not enough. He was right, by his own resources. He was wrong about what was available.

“When God gives you a job to do, He already knows what He’s going to do with you. He’s waiting for your yes.”

— Max  ·  May 24, 2026

Max made the point plainly: God’s questions are not requests for information. They are invitations to collaborate. The outcome is already settled. What God is waiting for is your participation — your willingness to step toward the impossible and let Him work through it. The feeding of five thousand was not Philip’s miracle to produce. It was his miracle to witness, if he would just hand over what little they had.

“In the moments it feels like not enough, there’s always going to be more than enough at the end.”

— Max  ·  May 24, 2026

You Cannot Out-Give God

Zadok Barton opened the service with a word rooted in Genesis 22. Abraham already had everything God had ever promised him — the land, the wealth, the long-awaited son. And then God asked for it back.

That is the part that tends to get glossed over. This is not a story about a man who had nothing, choosing to trust God with nothing. This is a story about a man who had everything — and still said yes. The faith required to surrender something you do not have is far less than the faith required to surrender something you have been holding for decades. Abraham passed that test. And God swore by Himself — there is no higher guarantee — that He would multiply what Abraham released.

Zadok testified to this from his own life. Before he was married — just weeks away from the wedding — he and his fiancée were raising support to move to the mission field in Mexico. At a service, they heard a missionary speak, and he felt the Holy Spirit prompt him to give away the few thousand dollars they had already raised. It was hard. But he and his fiancée chose to obey.

A few months later, they realized the Lord had returned three times what they had given. He bore witness to a pattern: what you release to God, He does not leave empty. He fills it.

“He had everything — and God asked for it. Instead of denying the Lord, he said yes. And then God returned it — multiplied.”

— Zadok Barton  ·  May 24, 2026

Wake Up

Annie kept it short. She asked the Lord what He wanted to say, and heard one phrase: “Wake up.” She sat with it for a moment, then brought it to the room.

She described what she saw when she heard it: people so absorbed in their own trials, their own needs, their own navigation of hard seasons — that they had stopped seeing what God was doing right around them. It is easy to do. When something in your life is pressing, it fills the frame. The worry becomes the whole picture. God’s activity in the periphery goes unnoticed.

“Wake up,” she said. “Look around. The Father is working. He’s working. And He wants to work even more. As much as you say yes, He’ll work.” Her own son — a young man who works fifty to fifty-five hours a week in obedience to what God has assigned him this season — preached a few weeks prior with a simple conviction: the way you talk and walk and are, wherever you are, will tell people who you belong to. You do not have to be a missionary to the nations to be a witness. You just have to be awake.

Sent to Places He Is About to Go

Luke 10:1 records that Jesus appointed seventy others and sent them out two by two into every town and place “where He Himself was about to come.” That last phrase is easy to miss. He did not send them to places He had already been. He sent them ahead of Himself — into places He was about to visit.

That changes the assignment. If you are sent to your workplace, your neighborhood, your block — Jesus is about to show up there. Your job is not to produce miracles. Your job is to be present before He arrives. To pray, to serve, to plant seeds, to be the kind of person whose presence signals that something is different here. He will follow.

Max spoke about traveling to a foreign nation, getting detained and held in a hotel because he lacked a government document. He sat in that room and told God he had no idea what to do. Through a network of relationships he could not have manufactured, the document came. He eventually spent days in the city — visiting the community, sharing meals, praying, and watching people get healed and saved. Then a government official tried to block his access, fearing he would convert people. Max did not understand why this was happening. Then he heard the Lord say: “Max, you’re looking at this the wrong way. This person understands who you are. And he’s afraid.” The enemy knew what Max carried.

“The devil is afraid of who you are.”

— Max  ·  May 24, 2026

Do you know what you are carrying as a son or daughter of the Most High God?

Rivers That Flow Outward

John 7:38 is one of the most direct descriptions of life in the Spirit anywhere in scripture: “From his innermost being shall flow constantly springs and rivers of living water.” The word is constantly. Not on Sundays. Not when it is convenient. Not after you have recovered from the hard week. Constantly.

Max asked a question worth sitting with: who benefits from the rivers of living water? Is it for us — a personal reservoir we carry around? Or is it for the people around us, the communities we live in, the nations we are sent to? The Holy Spirit is not given to be pooled up. Living water that stops moving becomes a swamp. It is given so it can flow — through us, into the places and people God is already reaching toward.

That is why the call to prayer is not a program suggestion. Prayer is how the flow starts. It is how workers get sent into the harvest. Luke 10:2 does not say, “Go into the harvest and figure it out.” It says, “Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers.” Intercession precedes the sending. The harvest does not begin at the field. It begins on your knees.

A Note for This Week

Three speakers. One direction. God is at work around you — in your workplace, your neighborhood, your family table, and in nations on the other side of the world. He has already sent you. He is already going there. The question is not whether He has a plan. The question is whether you are awake to it.

This week, take one concrete step. Identify one area you have not fully surrendered and bring it to the Lord with an open hand. Find two or three people and start praying together — not about your own needs, but for the places God is sending you. Wake up to someone in your orbit who is hungry, tired, or stuck — and let the living water in you flow toward them. You do not have to have a strategy. You just have to go.