Wanting the Most Good for Anybody

At the end of every podcast, we like to ask our guests to share what God has been teaching them in this season of life. This week’s guest is Craig Deall, he serves as CEO of Foundations for Farming—an initiative aimed at bringing transformation to individuals, communities and nations through faithful and productive use of land.

Psalm 126:5-6

Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them.

That journey of forgiveness led us to obviously many, many tears. But you read in Psalm 126 where it says if you sow in your tears, you'll reap songs of joy. 

When we’ve been wronged our natural instinct is to hunker down and just feel sorry for ourselves and feel resentment. But we decided to sow and that for us was teaching farming. And that's how I joined Foundations for Farming, where we teach the very poorest of the poor in our nation and throughout Africa because we love them, because we don't want them to fail. And love for me is wanting, you know, the most good for anybody, even those that don't deserve it. 

So we continue to serve like Joseph and Daniel in our nation. We got an incredible farming technique based on what we see in creation and management system, based on teaching the very most vulnerable and the poorest people, the least of his brothers in this nation. And so we do that. And for us, we say that once we had a farm in Africa. Now Africa is my farm because God has given me just such wide scope where I'm able to help people. 

And we look at just our foundational scripture, a challenge to leave you with. Isaiah 58 talks about the true fasting and the unselfishness of Christ. That's what we try to teach through our farming methodology is the unselfishness, the humility and the faithfulness of Christ Jesus. 

And so as I read scripture, which we come back to all the time, we’re reminded that we need our nation of Zimbabwe to be turned around and to be healed.

And in verses 11-12 of Isaiah 58, which says you'll be known as the rebuilder of the ancient ruins. But in the first eleven verses it talks about the true fast. The Israelites were doing all the religious stuff and they were fasting and praying and cried out to God and say, Why aren't you listening to us? And God answers very simply by saying because you're praying with a selfish heart. And if you pray with a selfish heart, I won't hear. 

And so our selfishness is tested when we make a plan for the poor, because God then says the true first is this when you make a plan for the poor. Which is wrapped up in loose the chains of oppression, feed the hungry, clothe the naked. 

Then he says your righteousness will break forth like the dawn. The glory of the Lord will be your rearguard. You'll be known as a well-worded garden, in a sense, scorched land. 

And so it's this heart for the poor. This absolute unselfishness that has the ability to turn around a nation and bring it into prosperity. So we go to where Jesus goes. We go to the poorest of the poor and we serve them as diligently as we can. And that, we believe, can break that twin bandages of poverty and dependency across a continent.