Noah Sanders (Farmer)

Today's episode will begin in three minutes. But first I want to tell you about something crazy I'm doing for my new book, five Mere Christians. I've never seen an author do this before, but I'm giving a money back guarantee on this book. I'm so confident you're gonna love this book that if I'm wrong, if you pre order the book, you don't love it, I'm gonna send you a $20Amazon gift card as a money back guarantee. Why? Two reasons. One, this is a different book for me, right. I know this is a very different biography. What is Jordan Rayner doing? And I know it's risky, so I'm going to de risk it for you. Because listen, in my other books, Redeeming youg Time, the Sacredness of Secular Work, Master of One, etc, etc, I am telling you and me how we can glorify God in our work, but in five Mere Christians, I'm doing something very different. I'm showing you what that looks like practically through these unforgettable life stories of five Mere Christians from history. These are the top men and women that I would love to have on this podcast today if, you know, they weren't dead, right?

So that's the first reason this is.

A risk and I'm gonna de risk.

This book for you.

Here's the second reason. I'm just confident you're gonna love this book. My friend Mark Batterson said, quote, five Mere Christians proves that biographies can be extremely entertaining, profoundly helpful, and mercifully short. If you're looking for a book that combines the punch of a great sermon with the pace of a great thriller, this is it. Highly recommended. End quote. But here's the thing. In order to qualify for this money back guarantee, you got to do two things. Step one, pre order five Mere Christians in any format, hardback, ebook, audiobook, whatever. And then step two, go to 5merechristians.com and fill out the form on that page and that's it. But you got to do it by midnight Eastern Time on May 9. By filling out that form, you'll also get all of the pre order bonuses listed on 5 mereChristians. Calm and be entered to win this crazy, epic trip for two to Europe. So visit 5merechristians.com right now to sign up. Now, please enjoy today's episode.

Hey friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians podcast. Hi, I'm Jordan Raynor.

How does the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or.

Religious professionals, but who work as archivists blacksmiths, and SEO strategists. That's the question we explore every week. And today I'm posing it to Noah Sanders. He's a farmer and the author of Born Again Dirt Farming to the Glory of God. Noah and I recently sat down and had a terrific conversation about why faithfulness in our work requires focus and killing things that are working as an act of worship to the Lord.

We talked about how dreaming about work on the new Earth makes it easier.

Much easier in my case, to focus on the work we believe that God has called us to in the present. And we talked about why you should stop asking what you can learn from from a particular person and start asking.

What is God teaching you through that person?

My mind was blown at this section of the episode. I thought it was such a brilliant question and way of thinking. Guys, trust me, you're gonna love this conversation with my new friend, Noah Sanders. Noah Sanders, welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast.

Thanks so much, Jordan. What an honor to be on here with you.

I'm super pumped about this. Hey, so did you grow up on a farm? Like, what's the story here? Did you grow up in this business?

No, I didn't. I come from a bit of a legacy of farmers in Indiana, but like so many family farms, you know, by the time it got to my granddad's generation, he was just doing it part time. And then by the time it got to my dad's generation, the farm had to be sold off for inheritance taxes. So there was no farming when I was growing up. We grew up in town, but we did move out to 11 acres when I was around 10 because my dad did want to have some place for us kids to run around and experience some of that country life. And it was during that time that I really kind of got bit by the bug of gardening and God's creation. And it really was just a journey of discovering that all the passions God had given me equipped me really well to do what he called me to do in agriculture, because it's a very diverse field. But it was something that I kind of had to learn from scratch. But part of that was a blessing because I had to start with my first passion was my love for Jesus. And so I'm like, well, how do I farm in a way that reflects that? So rather than having to unlearn a bunch of stuff, I kind of got to build from the ground up, which has its pros and cons, but I'm really grateful for that part of the journey.

Were you thinking seriously about how your faith influenced your vocation as a farmer right from the get go. Like, when did that happen for you?

Yeah, I was really blessed. My dad got saved after a failed marriage and he had had a pretty good, like a really good childhood. Like he hadn't had any bad things growing up, but he just realized that he couldn't just be an okay parent. He needed to really invest in his kids. So I was really blessed with a dad that mentored me, discipled me. I came to Jesus to know Jesus when I was pretty young. And then I just remember when I was like 10 or 11, this, that tap on the shoulder. God's like, gave me that hunger just to know him and I want to live all for him. Very diverse interests. I was looking at this question you had towards the end of the show that you say, you ask about what would you want to do on the new earth? And I'm like, I'm just excited about all of eternity because I want to do everything, you know, and because I have so many different interests. But Jesus was the one thing that never ran out and it made everything else come to life. But I just, I had, I remember when I was, had that early Christian passion for the Lord, going to this one prayer retreat for young people and you know, there's that, that call at the end for how many people want to commit their lives to full time ministry. And I remember seeing, you know, thinking that point in time, you know, I really appreciated those young people going forward to kind of commit to that, what they were referring to as full time ministry. But I had seen so much of what God had done in my heart and life and then through my dad's life, just as a mere Christian with his work and the hospitality that we did that. I'm like, my heart was for everybody that didn't go up to commit to full time ministry. I'm like, what about the rest of us? We aren't just here to just support these guys. When I started farming, it was really a part of, I just want to do something that allows me to glorify God and, and to love other people, but that it began a journey of trying to understand what that actually looks like in a profession rather than just sticking a fish bumper sticker on your farm truck.

Amen. I love it, man. I love it so much. All right, so let's go there, right? You say on your website, quote, I help people who love Jesus and love agriculture connect their faith and farming so that they can find purpose in glorifying God and serving Others while excelling in land stewardship.

End quote.

So how does agriculture, how can land stewardship glorify God practically? No, what does that look like?

Yeah, that's a really good question. And I think I've wrestled with the, over the years of like, what does it mean to glorify God? Because sometimes we have this idea of whatever you do, as long as you do the glory of God, it's valuable. And one way of thinking about that, it's true. But another way is like you look at in Matthew chapter seven where it's like, hey, some people did all these amazing things, casting out demons and performing miracles in Jesus's name. Probably for Jesus, but then he's like, I never knew you.

So yeah, these are the people saying Lord, Lord. They believe Jesus was Lord.

Yeah, right. And so I think the first thing I tell people about how do you glorify God with agriculture? Is it's gotta be an act of obedience, not just something cool that you wanna do for God.

What do you mean by that? Go deeper there.

Yeah. So obedience is, I believe, the, really the definitions of success in the Christian because it's what requires a relationship, us going and doing cool things for God. We actually don't even need to know him. You know, it's like I could go do cool things for the governor of Alabama, but I don't have to know them to do that. But obedience, like, if I'm really doing it for them, it's got to be out of obedience. There's a story I tell about one of my dogs that used to help me around the farm when I would move these flocks of chickens because we did these free range chickens. And part of the ways that we protected them from predators is we kept geese in there. And so we would move, I'd have to take down the fence and move the flock to a new location. And the dog would. Was really good and helpful, but the geese were very aggressive. And so he kind of my dog felt like he needed to protect me from them. And he listened pretty good and would not mess with them. But one day I remember he kind of got into a squabble with the geese on the other side of the chicken pen. And next thing I know, he's chasing them all over the farm. And, and I just remember knowing my dog, I mean, he, you couldn't fault him for his passion and zeal and really his desire to help because he was always looking for something to help as a little collie dog. And so you could maybe say he was doing it for the glory of his master. But what he wasn't doing was listening to me saying, stop, stop, stop chasing the geese. And so I felt like God's like, you know, that's like, you know, sometimes you're out there chasing the geese for my glory. What you're not doing is listening to me and obeying. And so for some people, agriculture can be something that it can be a distraction from the Lord. You know, it's easier to go work in your garden than to work on your marriage. You know, it's easier to anything we can run to apart from God. So that's where it's got to be, first of all, something that we're pursuing because we feel like it's God, something God's leading us to do. And then I feel like it's more, not so much that I glorify God through my farm, but it's God glorifies himself through my obedience to farm, if that's what he's told me to do. And the way he glorifies himself might be through me succeeding in a way that everybody applauds and I point to the Lord. Or it could be I have some friends in Africa that they have great testimonies of what happened when they lost their farms due to unrest or all. So it's like, we don't. That's not up to us. Our job is to obey. And then God gets to choose how he glorifies himself. So that's the first thing as far as glorifying God in there, every aspect of life, we have the opportunity to reflect the truths of the gospel and learn to live that out. And I can go some more into some more detail on agriculture in particular. But agriculture is a particularly interesting area because it deals with life. And I think there's a moral dimension and complexity there that adds a different. You know, in the past, I've done things like blacksmithing or musical instrument repair, and there was not near the intensity of controversy around how you do that as there is in agriculture.

What's the controversy around how you do agriculture? Educate me on this. I'm ignorant here.

So when I first started farming, I was like, I want to just do the. Be the very best farmer I can in order to honor God, you know, and you think, I'm going to be moral, I'm going to have high standards of character, all that kind of thing, in the way that I reflect God, but I'm just going to excel in being the best farmer that I can. The challenge was, you know, you have to oversimplify it. Two competing camps in the world today. One is kind of our status quo conventional agriculture. And then there is the more environmentally organic kind of approach. And it was interesting because I grew up in Auburn, Alabama, which is where our land grant college is. So it's very much the industrial agriculture aspect. And I got to see a lot of that. But they were just so if I succeeded according to industrial agriculture, though, there was a whole group of people over here saying, oh, you're a horrible person. You know, you're not. You're destroying the earth and producing unhealthy food or whatever. And then if you're over there into the organic agriculture aspect, there's a whole degree of people that are like, you can't feed the world that way. And, you know, you're just worshiping the earth. So it was like, whoa, if I'm just like, how do I. What's the best way to grow? Tomato plant to honor God? There's a million different options and people that would tell you that you were failing if. If you were succeeding according to one standard or the other. So that's what really made me delve into why. And I realized it really was a difference of worldview and worship really. On one hand, the industrial agriculture elevates and worships man and what we can accomplish through science and how we can manipulate, you know, nature and creation to do what we want it to do. And it looks to science to solve all of our problems. And the environmental agriculture, on the other hand, you know, worships nature and natural processes and, you know, looks to nature and kind of factoring it rules out a bit sometimes man's role in nature as a steward, but it worships that.

So it's almost like there's idols on both. Both sides.

There is. It's an idol of man or an idol of nature worship.

So how did the gospel help you find a middle third way?

Talk about that, right? So I realized just like anything in life, Satan doesn't mind if we get what God's called us to do. Imbalanced, you know, you can have a partial truth which is still a lie. And so, on one hand, industrial agriculture does a great job of focusing on productivity and fruitfulness and making stuff. And on the other hand, then environmental agriculture really excels in how do we care for it, how do we sustain it, how we make sure that it, you know, is going to be here for the next generation. And it's interesting because then if you go back to Genesis, God told man to care for and work the garden Both of those. And that requires this tension of, how do you do that? Like, there's no formula for how do you balance care and work at the same time? It's something that I feel like God. With all these things that we have to hold in balance, it requires a relationship with God to ask, what does this look like for me in my context? And so that's where, as I began to say, okay, if the worldview and the belief systems of these two different camps produce a particular expressions of agriculture, shouldn't my worldview produce a certain expression of agriculture? Shouldn't it make a difference? Shouldn't my farm looked different because I worship Jesus and the Creator than man or nature? And I just began to ask those questions so that I wasn't unwittingly living out an orthopraxy that didn't reflect my values.

Yeah, it's really good. All right, so in what ways does your farm look different because of your apprenticeship to Jesus?

Yes, that's a good question. And it's not legalism and it's not license. Neither one of those requires a relationship. It's this idea that the gospel is not, hey, I've arrived at this particular place that you can arrive at too. But it's a walking in the reality that I am not where I need to be because of the fall. God had an original design for creation and for my life. And that was broken because of our rejection of God's way of doing things. And so everything that we see around us is this broken relationships with ourself, with God, with others, with his creation, and daily now as God's. Through God's provision in Jesus, I can be restored to my relationship with the Creator. Then I need to say, well, how does that. How does he want to then heal my relationship with myself, my role as a steward, my role. How do I relate to other people, how do I relate to his creation? And so it's asking those questions, okay, so how, if I'm to approach a garden and I believe that it was made by the Creator and I'm the steward of it, and my natural approach to this is selfishness and unfaithfulness and pride, how can I understand how those impact the way that I do it? And how can I build this garden in a way that reflects the humility of Jesus, the faithfulness of Jesus, and the unselfishness and generosity of Jesus? And it actually does in amazing ways. And what we. We tend to focus on, we work with a ministry that's kind of international, called Foundations for Farming. It's a network of people utilizing some methodologies and discipleship principles that came out of Zimbabwe, Africa. But we build that foundation as Jesus Christ. And practically how we do that is we. We start with his heart of humility, faithfulness and generosity and unselfishness. So practically, when the humility causes us to say, you know what? This land isn't mine. It belongs to God. And I'm here for a short period of time, God knows a lot more about this than I do. So when I'm facing challenges with not only, well, if he owns it, first of all, I need to say, what am I supposed to do with it? And so that goes back to the Garden of Eden. When God made all his creation, he said, it's good. And then he put man on the earth and said, you know, take dominion. I often think if I was Adam, I'd look around and be like, man, it looks pretty good. What am I supposed to do with it? You know, let's just take a walk. But you look at God planted the first garden, and I think there's three attributes that I've always noticed in that one, it was his creation reordered for an increase in beauty because it says, he planted all kinds of fruit trees that are pleasing to the eye and increase of productivity or usefulness. They were good for food. And then it was also a place for man to live. So the habitability of it. So increased beauty, productivity, or fruitfulness and habitability is what God was like, look, this is what I want you to do with the rest of creation. And it's interesting because whether you're. Even when you're a craftsman making a table or you are designing a software or whatever, you're still doing the same thing. You're using God's creation to create more beauty, more usefulness, and something reorganizing in a way that it can interact with humans. You know, a garden has paths. A tool has a handle. You know, a computer has a keyboard. And so when we understand that that's kind of our role is to reflect him as the Creator in the way that we continue to develop his creation, then we recognize I can't do that in my sinful state. I'm just going to keep messing that up. So I need Jesus to help me to sit at the feet of the Creator and say, what does my Father do? And that's what we teach people to ask. The question is, if I'm okay, well, how do I plant stuff in my garden? How do I prepare my garden? Well, what does My father do. Let's just go look at his creation, not because we worship it, but because we know it's his wisdom. And ways are so amazing. And if, even if we can just apply a few simple things in childlike faith, there's incredible benefits. It's like the more in farming, the more you appreciate the design of the Creator and you utilize it for every one thing that you do to shift your production models closer to the way that the designer intended it, there's always these numerous unintentional beneficial side effects. And every time we deviate from that and we do something unnatural and we force and manipulate it to do things it wouldn't do otherwise, then there's all these unattended negative side effects.

Yeah, you've been hitting on this theme a couple of times that I want to get explicit and practical. And you've said that a couple of minutes ago you said God knows a lot more about farming than I do. And quite quote on your website, you talk about learning from the master farmer. And it made me think of Isaiah 28 that says that God instructs farmers and teaches them the right way, end quote. So, like, what does that look like practically for you? Like, what does that process look like of sitting at the feet of the Lord and learning how practically to do this craft in the right way? How does that show up? What's an example of that?

Well, let me just share a quick story that I share with, like, all the time. And I teach people that we train to teach. And that's the story of my mentor out of Zimbabwe, Africa. He was a commercial farmer in what was originally Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. And he was a tobacco farmer for 20 years. He ended up getting saved in the end of the 70s and then was convicted about growing tobacco because he hated smoking. Thought it was bad for you, but it's what he made his living doing. So his kids called him out on it. It's like, hey, dad, why do you do this? And it was actually, he woke up one morning and read that First Corinthians 10:31. So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. And he became convicted. He was kind of being having this dual standard in his life. So he promised God he'd never grow any tobacco again. And they started growing food, he and his wife. And it's like instead of the blessing they thought they would get, they ended up having two terrible droughts and they lost the farm and were poor for a while. But he would say, now God has to Humble us before we'll listen to him sometimes, you know, before we can really be used by him. But he ended up getting a job working at another farm that was also struggling. And the yields were going down. Every year they were doing this deep plowing, which is what they were taught at the time. They were having real erosion problems. Their costs were going up, their yields were going down. And so he finally kind of get to the end of himself. And he was like, there's got to be some other answers. But there wasn't. They didn't have Google back then and that kind of thing. But he read in Romans 1 where it talks about how God's attributes, his divine nature, is clearly seen being understood through what has been made. And so he said, well, maybe I can go learn from him in natural creation. So he went out to what they call the bush or the forest, and he just sat down in the forest and said, God, teach me how to farm. Teach me how you do this. And so he came up with just two simple principles he saw that were that contrasted with what he was doing, which was one, there was no regular deep plowing in natural creation like he had been doing. And there's always a blanket of mulch on the ground. And so he just said, well, let's just. I'll have the faith to try those two things. I mean, you're not talking some complicated design system that he came away with. It was just two simple childlike principles he saw. And he did that on just a very, very small part of the farm. And it was so successful once they implemented on the whole farm that they were profitable every year and ended up being the second largest privately owned farm in Africa at the peak. And so from that, they began to teach the poor. And so that's where foundations for farming came from. But it really is rooted in this. When you have a challenge, you literally can just go and say, okay, Jesus, show me how you've designed this to work. It's kind of like going back to the owner's manual, which really, you can only read the like. That's where the heart has to go with it. If you don't, if you approach creation without the humility, then you're not really going to learn from it. But for me, it's teaching people to say, how does my father do this? So when I face a bug problem in my garden, I'm asking, okay, so I'm trusting that the original design of this, though it's flawed, there's wisdom in that. So, for instance, when we have Bugs eating our crops. It's not like we're ever going to have a Garden of Eden where there's, there's none of that. But we have to understand and appreciate too the design of some of these bugs. Sometimes we have stressed vegetables in our garden because we're growing crops that don't grow in this part of the world that we haven't done a good job of watering necessarily. And God's actually built into his natural creation a process where bugs come and eliminate weak and sickly plants. And sometimes that's my garden. So even though I can protect that garden from the bugs, I want to, with humility, say, what is it about my management as a steward that's causing this problem in the first place that I could learn from and improve? And a lot of it goes back to just appreciating the fact that soil is so important. Just like that represents our heart. We don't want to just deal with behavior issues, want to deal with the heart. Same thing in the garden. It's almost always a soil issue that's being reflected in the plant itself. And even just practical things, we're just asking God for solutions and asking him to give us eyes to see. We had, there was a community in Africa where they had elephants coming through and trampling all their crops in the, during the growing season. And they, they, but they had been taught, well, just ask our Father what to do. And so they just did that and started observing to see what he would show him. And they showed him that they elephants rarely go near their own manure. So they collected elephant manure, put it around their fields, and that kept the elephants out. So it's just trusting that God wants to speak to us. He wants to us to learn from Him. And it's just sometimes we don't think he really has those practical solutions for us. Or those are the kind of things that we should go and ask him about.

Well, yeah, no, this is really good. And those are great examples of learning from the master farmer. But in God's grace, the master farmer also gives wisdom to broken human farmers, right? And entrepreneurs, believers and non believers alike.

So talk about that tension.

How do you think about how much time you spend learning from the master farmer? God himself versus the human beings that through God's common grace, he's given wisdom to.

Yes, I definitely think it's, it's both. And the question is, are we like, even when we're listening to another farmer, are we asking, what can I learn from this farmer? Or what is God teaching me through what this farmer is sharing with me.

That's good. Talk about the difference that question makes.

Well, what it does is it's so easy to have an us versus them kind of mentality of do I agree with your farming or not? And if I don't, then I'm going to be kind of combative and try to convince you of my position and not really appreciate anything that you have, which is really a false view of all of us as Christians. I kind of tend to think of it as this. We're in different places, right? So if you look at picture, kind of a chart, my eye may be over here on the left hand side where I am at in my farming journey. You may be over here on the right hand side. We maybe have different starting points. You have a large scale legacy industrial commercial farm and that's what God's entrusted you with. And you've got to figure out how to grow in your faithfulness to reflect God better there. And I do as well. Maybe I'm just starting in an urban lot in town, you know. But what we don't need to do is say well how can who should be where? Like should you be where I am or should I be where you are? Jesus is way up at the top somewhere in terms of what he's calling us to. Can we unify around calling each other to grow towards Christ? And that's really where, when I'm listening to that other farmer, I know I'm so far from what I need to be. I don't expect him to be exactly where he needs to be either. But what can God teach me? It's kind of like when we're around other Christians that are different than us, but we do have a heart for Christ. Like we really then it's like it gives us a way to triangulate on Jesus in a way that we can't by ourselves or with people that are just completely like us and so going and saying what can I learn from this farmer? Learning to listen is one of the most unselfish things we can do. And it's where wisdom comes from and it's where God teaches us even. And it's. And one of the most humbling things is to listen to somebody in depth and in detail that you know, you don't agree with maybe even 80% of what they're saying. Right? But you're mining for that like common grace of truth that they have that you can appreciate and affirm in them because you want to see even more of that in them. And the thing that's not helpful is to just, you know, there's this danger in trying to glorify God where maybe it could be everything from, hey, you know, I don't grow genetically modified crops because I love Jesus and that's an expression of my love for Jesus. And so if you do grow genetically modified crops, you must not love Jesus as, as much as I do or I use essential oils because I love Jesus and I. And so if you don't use essential oils, you must not love Jesus as much as I do. And that's just Satan's way to really distract us. And so that's that idea is we can unify around the fact that we both are broken and we both, that's the hard part is we feel is getting that place where we feel open to admit that we're not where we should be and that we're never going to be where we should be. And I need you to help me to see where I can grow and you need me to help you see where you can grow. And agriculture is, that's a big heart of mine because I feel like the church won't touch agriculture with a ten foot pole oftentimes because it's too controversial and we don't know how to talk about it in a healthy way.

That's good. But I love that question. I love that framing. Not like what can this person teach me versus what does God teach me through that person? It's a totally different, more humble posture, recognizing that by God's common grace, everybody's got something to teach me, right? Believer and non believer alike.

Right.

I'm going to learn more. I'm also going to serve more because I'm in a much humbler position to serve that person. Man, it's really, really good. Hey, so in farming, I think farming is a really interesting case study of this theme that I write a lot about. This tension between trusting in God to produce results through our work, which scripture tells us he produces every result in our work.

Right.

So you got this on the one hand, trusting in God, but on the other hand, this frequent command throughout scripture to hustle, to work hard, to make things happen in our work. What are some signs for you in this profession that you are or are not holding that tension between trusting and hustling or hard work?

Well, yeah, well, I don't know that it maybe doesn't relate exactly to your question per se, but we talk a lot about with stewardship, the idea of faithfulness and generosity, which is really just an expression of contentment that God as our provider has given us everything we need right now for wholehearted faithfulness and wholehearted action and everything we need right now to be generous in every way that he gives, you know, opportunity, he gives us to be generous. But practically, a lot of times what we're trying to look at and evaluate in our lives is, is God adding to me or taking away from me, not just in terms of money, but in terms of increase in my relationships and my walk with him, in my health and all those things, you know, easily. We can. We can measure profit in one area of life at the expense of others, right? But it's this idea that he adds to faithfulness. He takes away from unfaithfulness. He adds to generosity. You know, as you measure, it'll be measured to. To you. So if I'm losing, you know, if I'm being taken away from, I need to reevaluate whether I'm really truly being faithful to what he's called me to or whether I am just trusting in myself or the way I think it even planning takes a lot of faith. This idea of anything that's not done in faith, which is really just like taking action in light of who God is and what he's called us to, is sin. Anything that's not done in faith is sin. But the biggest, a lot of this factor is you can measure it by the joy factor. If you are losing your joy, which in farming, burnout is a big, big thing for a lot of people, is then I think it's an indication of not being faithful. Because God adds, you know, he doesn't add any. It's like talks about the income of the wicked, you know, and when he gives income to the righteous, you know, he does. He doesn't add any sorrow to it. But this idea of the joy of the Lord is our strength. And typically when we in our family, as we're working or we're doing stuff and somebody starts losing their joy level, we need to say, okay, you may be being hustling right now, but is this really for God or for you? Is this you trying to get done what you want to do or not? Or is it you not wanting to do what God's told you to do and you're being lazy and there's some. Some other idol in life that you want right now instead of what resting in what God's given you to do? And so that's where we're always kind of like, once we need to monitor our joy level because our joy is connected to the spirit of the Lord. And so you may be doing something that's good, but if you don't have that joy, something's off in your heart that is not going to produce good results at the end of the day. Again, it's not like happiness or comfort I'm not talking about, but it's that, that joy that motivates you to do your work without the stress of it. I think we all can tell when you flip that switch. It's like when I'm trying to get this. The garden planted and I just. I had in my mind I wanted to get one more bed planted before I go in. And guess what? I'm out of time, you know, And I'm just really time to go in to the family. But I'm like trying to. Trying to do whatever I can to get it done. And then now I'm like clicked into this hustle stress factor to try to finish that bed instead of just stopping and being content with what I got done. And then I'm only get half of it done. And then the household is not running well because I'm not there quite yet for supper. And then it's just. It all kind of goes downhill because I held up something that I wanted rather than saying, okay, God, am I going to be content here with what you've told me to do and go for that. But that joy level is something that we really feel like has been lost in a lot of or been left out. As far as an important thing to monitor in the farming world. There's a lot of people that work hard. Diligence is like people love. Like we really work hard, but we can do it to the point where we're losing our joy. And it really is an evidence that we're not content with what God. The limits God's put on us and the rest that he promises to us every day.

Yes, that's really good. I don't know that I've ever heard joy connected to this idea of trust, hustle, rest that I write so much about. Yeah, that's a pretty good indicator if you're not on the right side of that tension. It's really good. Hey, you as a farmer at the mercy of weather in a lot of ways.

Right.

The weather doesn't always cooperate with us in our planning and our planting this side of Genesis 3. But if you come to see that as a blessing in a roundabout way, in that your profession by its very nature just makes you more obviously and practically reliant on the Lord, oh, definitely.

And like you said, it's. It's just more obvious. We're just as dependent on the Lord and other professions, but all of us.

Are dependent on the Lord. You could just see it up close and personal.

Right? You really can. And the other year it was interesting because I was. Felt like the Lord wanted me to put together this gardening resource, and I just didn't have time to do it. And so my wife and I just knelt down one evening and we were just praying. Lord, just show us if you want us to write this little handbook for churches about planting this gardens for outreach into the community. Because we're in the middle of the farming. Early spring is about this time of year in April. And so we prayed that. And the next morning we woke up and this massive hailstorm came through and just decimated most of the crops in the garden. And I felt like God was like, all right, well, now you don't have to make any deliveries this week, so you can write that book, you know, And I'm like. And it just. It was interesting because I made a YouTube little YouTube video that some people shared in our community about, hey, look, this is kind of discouraging, obviously, but God tells us to rejoice when there's trials. And ultimately, I work for him. This is his garden. It's all his lettuce if he wants to. Like, despite my best efforts for a catastrophe to destroy them all, like, I just had to. I work for him. It's not my stuff anyways. And there was so much fruit that came from even that struggle. And, you know, some of those. So many of those crops grew back. So there was a lot of other beautiful pictures in that. But also the neat thing too is we've seen the more that we appreciate and honor the design of God in creation, the more resilient our farms are. And I think part of what we are always looking for. And I would recommend. There's a book called the Glorious Pigments of Pigs by Joel Salatin. And what he does is he talks about how can the attributes of God be reflected in our agriculture? Whether it's forgiveness or his abundance or freedom versus slavery, those kind of things. And what does our agriculture reflect? You know, so things like that. Resilience is. Is one of those. And you know, in places like Africa, you'll end up having, you know, these droughts and stuff. But we found, as a lot of the people that we partner with and that teach, for instance, if you just apply those two principles of not plowing the ground and Putting a mulch on the surface of the ground if you have a rain. There's been tests that show where they did rainfall tests. And in one, the normal plowed and unmulched field, 90% of the water ran off and only 10% infiltrated into the ground. Which means if you had two and a half inches of rain, only a quarter quarter inch is down there for the plants to utilize. Whereas on the field that was not plowed and had a mulch on it, 94% infiltrated, only 6% ran off. So it means that all of a sudden, now you don't need rain for weeks, and your farm is way more resilient. So it's. It's a beautiful picture both of. Yes, life's storms, whether they're real or figurative, can come and go, but the more we apply and humility and look to God to. To give us wisdom, as in how we live our lives, the more like more resilient our lives end up being towards those storms.

I love it. So good. Hey, so about two years ago, at the time of this recording, you walked away from a pretty successful farming business. You still farm for your family, right? But you're not farming for anybody else. Your family is your only customer now. And you walked away so that you could teach others how to glorify God through farming. And I loved the way you framed this in your announcement. I read every single word of it in prep for this episode. You said, basically, hey, you realized I can't do both farming and teaching this stuff really well at the same time. Or at least that's how I interpreted it. Tell us more about your conviction here around focus and the need to go deep on one of these two things, Noah.

Yes, I am still learning that idea, but it's faithfulness requires. I've told my kids in the past to obey. God requires us to be faithful to what he's told us to do. Faithfulness requires focus. And focus requires us saying to no to everything except what we've been told to do.

Amen. Come on now.

Yeah. So all my kids, you know, it's like they're doing all these good things. I'm like, but that's not what I told you to do. Right? And you know, the challenge in life is, is God tends to direct more through limitations than he does through opportunities. And those limitations change as seasons change. And that's part of the humility as we learn how to live one season well. And then the limitations change and the opportunities change too. And we've got to adjust as we follow him in our mission. But if we keep saying yes to everything and we don't allow him to prune off things. I was talking to one of my farming mentors yesterday from Africa and we were talking about this principle and he said, the harder you prune, prune a tree, the more fruit you get. And he said, it's so hard, but it's, that's the way it is and that's the way it is in our lives. So I was at a point, we felt, called for 13 years to show that you can make a living as a family, small scale farming. And because everybody told me you couldn't do it. And I not necessarily to prove them wrong, but I felt like, man, if God calls me to do this amazing calling that he had from the beginning, surely he has the wisdom to show me how to do it. And there was just. We ended up running a small scale farm selling vegetables and meat, chickens and eggs and different products to families that we knew and delivering them. But we also had a lot of people mentoring us and teaching us not only good ways to farm, but how to integrate discipleship and how to apply a biblical worldview to it. I wrote a book called Born Again Dirt Farming to the Glory of God and had some opportunities through that to share about this topic. And as my family grew, I have seven kids now, my main ministry is to my kids and my family. And ultimately the biggest ministry that we have is when people come to our farm and learn from us. They often say that they're more impacted by just seeing us in the struggle of learning to do well, just the basics of life and family. And it's not in this, you know, a discipleship center kind of setting, conference center, but it's, it's like, like seeing our life on a day to day basis. That is really where the foundation of us being able to show the gospel to them comes from. And after 13 years, our farm was kind of what we had set out for it to be. We had about 30 customers we delivered to every week. And it was just our family growing food for families and doing it together. And it was really great. But we had had more and more opportunities, especially after 2020 people like, how do we grow food for ourselves? And I feel like in the future the biggest area of freedom in food and farming is going to be in self production and in local community production, the larger scale commercial agriculture. There's a lot of war going on right now in the food realm over that because it affects people's freedom. And some people Want control of that and other people, you know, there's. So I felt like the most impactful thing we could do is teach people to feed themselves. And we had been very passionate about living out what we were teaching people. We were going to share with them about how to make a living farming. We need to be doing it. So we had that to share from. But once we felt the passion and the urgency to teach people how to feed themselves, we were like the farming, commercial farming just was getting in the way of being able to do that. And so we said, well, we just. Maybe we are supposed to just do what we're telling other people to do, which is grow food for ourselves and free up the time to teach them. Because I used to do some of my redeeming the dirt ministry, you know, on the evenings of the weekends. But once you have a family, it's like there's no more. Your work days, your only flexible time. So I said, either that's what we're going to do for work or we just can't do both. Well, so it was just neat to see. Once we gave that up to the Lord, we felt like because it was doing well, it's like David said, I don't want to give the Lord that which cost me nothing. That that was a good time to step away from that. And the Lord has just provided so many opportunities for us to be able to basically help several different. Our goal is really to equip the church to understand how to be good stewards of creation, especially in the realm of food production and food security, so that we can have the answers to the challenges the world faces and not be in the same boat. So we spend. We have a lot of opportunities now to help mission people that are doing missions in different parts of the world that understand the importance of. Importance of bringing that in what they're doing. And also people that are in agriculture who want to integrate more discipleship into what they're doing. So whether you're coming from the faith side or the farming side, we're helping them connect those two. And that's kind of what our family focuses on doing at the moment.

I love this so much and I just got to commend you for the courage that it takes to close off one thing. I wrote a whole book about this called Master of One. I wholeheartedly believe we glorify God by pursuing excellence at all things. And we simply can't pursue world class excellence at many vocational things at the same time. Right. Or to use farming language in the same Season. And so I love this idea. Faithfulness requires focus. The harder you prune a tree, the more fruit you get. And, like, calling isn't static. Right. God might be calling you to something right now in this season, but he may be calling you to something totally different in the next season. So thank you for that reminder, Noah. Hey, one more question before we get to our kind of final rapid fire round. One of my favorite passages of scripture is Isaiah 65, where God says, I will create a new heavens and a new earth. My chosen people will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people. My chosen will ones will long enjoy the work of their hands, that they will not labor in vain. End quote. That's, I think, verses 17 through 23 I mentioned as a farmer.

Right.

Like, this can't mean that on the new Earth we are going to plant a strawberry seed and the next morning we wake up to perfect strawberries.

Right.

It's still going to be work. It's just without the thorns and the thistles.

Right.

So in your mind, I know this is a nearly impossible question to answer, but what is that going to look like? What is it going to look like to long enjoy the work of our hands, but that work not be in vain on the new Earth?

Yeah, that is a good question. That I definitely don't say that I know what that would look like, per se.

I don't think anybody does. Company.

Yeah. But part of my heart. And that is one of the things I like about, and I think most people do about gardening. We do it with the anticipation of the harvest on one hand. But if you're a really good gardener or you're a really good craftsman, you do it for the love of the craft. I like harvesting, but I really don't, because it's like, I've been taking care of these carrots for so long. It's just I love coming out every day and seeing this beautiful carrot bed that I've just. And so to pull it up is sometimes like, oh, but I really have loved taking care of this bed of carrots. It's just. It's so satisfying. Or the same thing with a craftsman. I mean, it's. It's the process. Yes, you like the result, but it's really the process you enjoy. And to be able to participate in that in a way that you don't have the stress of, like, just get it done. So we can make a living or whatever it is. And then like you said, the, the idea of it, if it's not in vain, I'm not going to grow the strawberry and then go out. And like yesterday I went out in the morning and we had these, all these new fresh green beans coming up in the garden. But one of the chickens had gotten out of one of my kids chicken pins and gone over and scratched up a big bunch of the row, you know, and you're like, oh, my little baby beans. There's kind of the tragedy in that. But I think that's the beauty is it's not. In the consumer culture we think instant gratification is bliss, that that is, you know, utopia, but it actually isn't. It's the process of creation and creating and producing where we enjoy fulfilling the way God's created us the most in reflecting him, I think 100%.

And Adam and Eve. Listen, before Genesis 3, it was hard work. I don't think it was pain. It clearly was a painful toil. There weren't thorns at thistles. It was a different kind of difficulty. Right. But it was still challenges.

Right.

Because that's essential to human flourishing and flourishing work. Right. That's the essence of craft, of having to work hard at this thing. But in a. From a position of rest and peace, not to earn rest and peace, but out of a position of rest and peace that is perfectly secure because our relationship with the Lord is perfectly secure. Does that make sense?

Yes. And I think I look forward to the really deep, long satisfying sighs at the end of whatever work we're doing in the new new Earth where it's.

Like, oh, yeah, yes.

And that doesn't come without the, the excitement of a challenge.

Correct.

That is that God will be there to allow us to experience. So it's, it's so much more to look forward to than I think most of us think about on a regular basis.

Agree. What do you want to do in the new earth? You want to farm?

Def. I would love to start with that. I have so many interests and, and things I've. I've thought like I really do need all of eternity with Jesus just to. I'm like, let's. I just want to be a Greek family fisherman for a bit. You know, an Alpine dairyman, composer. I want to, you know, be an Australian cowboy for a bit craftsman and make all sorts of stuff, learn, learn from Jesus and how to do that. Definitely a gardener for maybe a couple thousand years and. But it's just this idea. One of the things that I. In Proverbs, it says, trust in the Lord with all your heart, lean not on your own understanding. And in all your ways, acknowledge him and he'll direct your paths. Somebody once shared that the idea of that, acknowledge him can mean more of that, to know him more, acknowledge. Kind of like a husband knows his wife in that intimate way. So it's this idea of, in all your ways, seek to know him more, and he'll direct your paths. So that's what I feel like. Gardening is most rewarding when I'm pursuing an experience of Christ. Through that, a fuller understanding and knowledge of Him. So on the new heavens and new earth, that's what I'm most excited about. There's elements of Christ that I can experience through gardening and agriculture. But there's other things, too, that I want, I'm looking forward to doing as well, because it'll give me a whole nother aspect of being able to experience and see him through that. But that'll be the biggest thing, is I want to experience Christ in all those full, rich ways. Yes.

That's so good. And I so resonate with your perspective on, like, man, there are a million jobs I want. Right. Like, I want to play piano on a cruise ship. Right. I don't know. Right. But I. I want to be a photographer. I want to do all these different things. I want to write screenplays. And here's what's interesting. Going back to the conversation we just had about focus, I found that the more I meditate on the promise of billions of years of perfect work, the easier it is for me to focus on the one thing I believe God's called me to do professionally today and not get distracted by all of these side paths, because I'm gonna have billions of years to do all those different things. Right. It's so interesting. It's made me so much more committed to the work I believe God's called me to do right now. Because, man, I just know I'm going to have forever to do everything else. Does that make sense?

Oh, it totally does. And that's what should set us apart as Christians is our commitment to understanding the season that we live in now, what the stakes are, what the battle is, and that we want to hold nothing back because we're living for an eternity of what the world is trying to live for today.

Yes, man, come on. That's so good. All right, Noah, three questions before we wrap up. Number one, which books do you find yourself gifting most frequently to others?

Yes. Well, I've only written one book, Born Again Dirt. So that's one that I would encourage such a great title to get. So I probably don't want to promote mine a lot, but I've probably given more away because I just happen to have them. Another one is Mentor of Mine in disciple making is a guy named Curtis Sargent, and he wrote a book called the Only One. It's interesting. It's the only book he's written, I think, but it's. It's about focus. It really is about, like, our. It's helpful because it relates to what you said about focus. It's about intimacy with Christ, and it said, like, what if there was only one thing we had to do in life and that was pursue Christ? And he's like, that's it. So I really recommend the only one I've given. It's one of those books that I hardly never have because I've always given it away. Another one that I really love is Beautiful Outlaw by John Eldredge, about the personality of Jesus. And then there's another book about productivity and consumerism that I like to share with people. And it's actually open source. You can. Or not. It's. You can find it free online. It's called Henry and the Great Society that a pastor wrote in the late 60s. And then that Glorious Pigness of Pigs by Joel Salatin. It's also a really great one related to this topic.

That sounds amazing. That sounds really good. Hey, Noah, who would you want to hear on this podcast talking about how their faith shapes the work they do in the world?

I don't know. Have you had Joel Salatin on?

I've not, no.

Yeah, I would highly recommend. He's one of the guys that impacted me a lot in applying a biblical worldview to agriculture. He would be great as far as talking about. I would love to hear his conversation with you. For sure.

It's good. The Marvelous Pignats of Pigs. What a great title. Oh, my gosh.

Or maybe it's the Glorious Pigments of Pigs. I can't remember.

That's so good. I love it. Hey, Noah, what's one thing from our conversation that you want to say before we sign off or something you simply want to reiterate from our conversation thus far?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is, like, what I tell people at our farm trainings is my goal is not that they go away to garden, but that they go away more in love with Jesus. And so I would just say don't just work for God, but work to know God more in everything that you do. And that's the biggest reward that we can get from anything that we do.

Yes, and we know him more as we work because he is a creating, working God, right, Who reveals his character as we co labor alongside him through the power of the Holy Spirit. Noah brother, I want to commend you for the exceptional work you do for the glory of God and the good of others, for giving us just a really compelling case study of what it looks like to apply the Gospel to your field of agriculture. And just for reminding us of something I know I forget even though I've written books on it. Faithfulness requires focus, right guys? If you want to learn more about Noah and his work, check out redeemingthedirt.com or his book Born Again Dirt. Noah, thanks for hanging out with us.

Thanks so much Jordan.

Man, I love that episode. I hope you did too. Hey, if you're enjoying the Mere Christians podcast, do me a favor and go.

Leave a review of the show right.

Now on Spotify, on Apple, Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to the show. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I'll see you next week.

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