Part of gold mining is finding a place to dig. You have
thousands of acres to look for a small amount of gold and to determine if a
place is good to search you need to do test digs. If you find gold in a couple
of 5 gallon buckets then it may be a good place to dig. Then on average you may
need to move 30 tons of dirt to get 1 ounce of gold. Figure 42 5 gallon buckets
of dirt is about a ton of dirt. So 30 tons is moving a lot of dirt to get that
ounce which is about $1000 at today’s market.
So do the math, to make a million dollars in gold mining you
need to move 30,000 tons of dirt. THAT’S A LOT OF DIRT!! With shovels and a
dredge you are looking at about 2 tons a day, so that would be digging every
day for over 41 years to get your million from the earth. Now you see why the
TV show Gold Rush is not real exciting when it comes to return. I have never
watched a “clean out” on that show (granted I have only watch part of two episodes)
but I have watched a bunch of broken stuff causing problems.
Now when you think of souls as gold we tend to take the same
approach. It’s a bunch of work to get real salvations and it is not as easy as
TV or Ray Comfort’s YouTube channel makes it out to be. Like gold mining you
have to get dirty before you can see a return. Often you have to spend times
working with the poor, who will say whatever you want to hear to get a meal or
a buck. You will serve others who will criticize your hard labor. You will be
mocked by those who think it is folly helping others.
When you get down to the meat Matthew 10:14 has the
solution:
And whosoever shall not receive
you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off
the dust of your feet.
If you are mining and your test digs come up empty or your
evangelistic efforts come up dry, it’s time to move on to the next spot to see
what’s there. Often in mining you may find nothing and then after a big wash,
the hole that produced nothing has something that has moved down the mountain.
Often we talk Jesus with someone who mocks and ridicules us causing us to shake
the dust off our feet, who later is on fire for Jesus.
So don’t be discouraged when you do shake the dust off,
because those “seeds” planted may sprout. Also, does the hard work over 41
years make the hard work not worth starting? So, two hands, a shovel and a
dredge mean hard work, but great rewards. Do you put in the hard work? Is it
worth it? You have two hands and a Bible to reach others for the kingdom. Do
you put in the hard work? Is it worth it? If you were not saved would you want
someone working in the mud and weather for 41 years to find you? Or would an
eternity without God be ok?
In the end we all must mine for souls, and do it like
we are digging for that million dollars!!