On a warm fall day last September, I wrapped up a marathon road trip with our son from our home in Edmonds to Los Angeles, where he started his junior year at UCLA. Having spent the night just north of Sacramento, we were trying to decide which way we would take – the more scenic route down 101 along the coastline or the “drier” route down the heart of the state on I-5. Both being type A men, with utility and efficiency at the top of the mission parameter chart, we chose to head down the valley and save a couple of hours.

While he was taking the first shift, I stared out into the long rolling farmlands abutted up against the majestic brown hillsides that typify the glorious state of California. For those who have done this drive, you know the scene: lush orchards of peaches, pistachios, apricots and nectarines seemingly misplaced amongst the arid, parched rolling hills that come right out of the pages of a Steinbeck novel. It was a stunning picture: life teeming in the midst of death and barrenness. And then it hit me…

That’s what we marketplace believers are! We are the only source of life in a lost and dying marketplace. Commerce today is a relentless battle for profit at almost any cost. Last year’s records are now this year’s baseline. The dearth of resources and the ferocity of the competition, coupled with the thundering war cry for leaner ops and greater productivity leave people empty, tired, dry and dying inside. And all for what? As Wesley was often quoted as saying, “It’s all destined for the fire.”

As carriers of Jesus’ name, we are the only hope this lost and dying world has. Like the farmers who purposely irrigated the croplands, the Lord of the harvest has placed us intentionally, purposefully, where we are in order to fulfill His prophetic call that “Anyone who believes in me may come and drink! For the Scriptures declare, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from his or her heart.'”

After all, how can anyone fulfill the call of Jesus in John 15 to bear fruit if there is no living water? Thank the Lord for your calling to the marketplace and seek Him passionately to empower and flow through you to heal and the deliver the nations!

~Paul Perez is Principal at Accelerated Breakthrough Coaching & Consulting