Our quote for this week's focus
is from the Bible in Galatians 6:7 Do not
be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also
reap. In other words, in the end we may not like what we reaped but it’s what
we sowed. We need to start out right, picking the correct seeds.
The first week of our “harvesting
a crop God can be proud of” series we talked about preparing the soil for our
planting. This week we get to talk about the picking and planting of the seeds.
For some people the hardest part about the garden is the picking of the seeds. If
you’ve ever planted some of the seeds believe me they can be pretty tiny and
that creates a problem as well.
In the process of picking out
seeds the first order of business is knowing what you want. If you want corn
then what you pick out is corn seeds, sounds simple enough doesn’t it? No, not
really it’s never that easy of course it deepens if you want yellow corn, or
sweet corn, tall corn, or short. One by one you still have to weed out what it
is you don’t want. You already know what you want to harvest but you have to
get the right seed.
After getting the packages all
lined out then comes the reading of the instructions on the when, where, and
how to plant the seeds. Each item picked has to be planted at the right depth,
in the right kind of light, with the necessary distance between seeds, and a
few other tidbits to watch out for.
There is no doubt about it if we
pick out the wrong seed we will get a wrong crop. Duh, Karen! Now, now don’t
get too nasty too soon because if you think about it people are really stupid,
dumb, nuts, crazy, or whatever you call it in this area. They plant a crop in
their lives and when the harvest comes around they just can't believe what they
got. As I've always said, "We may not like what we’ve sowed but it is what
we planted." God said that in His scripture about how God is not mocked,
you reap what you sow! Go figure.
Here is my confession I
promised….I planted a garden once and after the months went by we were so
excited to see what made it and what didn’t. One of the things that grew really
good was the watermelon. It was the perfect size for eating when we decided to
enjoy our harvest. As the grandkids and I gathered around in the kitchen to
slice our newly grown treasure we got the surprise of our life. On the outside
the watermelon was long, round, oval, green, and all the other features of a
good watermelon. However, when we sliced it open it was orange. Orange? Yes,
what we had grown was not a watermelon but a pumpkin that wasn’t totally ready
for picking yet. We had totally forgotten that we didn’t plant the watermelon
seeds that year because there was no room in garden for them.
We do this with our spiritual
harvest as well. We think for sure we know what we planted but when it comes to
harvest time we are surprised. We live our lives as we see fit and when we
harvest a crop that isn’t that pleasant we wonder where we went wrong. The
fault lies in the seeds we pick out to plant and grow. As Billy Graham once
said, "We can’t sin all week and go to church on Sunday and pray for crop
failure. Ignorance of what you have sown does not release you from what you
reap."
The seed packages we need to be going after are the ones
full of God’s word, faith, trust, obedience, self-denial, patience, love, and
the list goes on. We can complain that our garden isn’t big enough for all that
so we choose to leave out a crop or two but we are without excuse. The planting
ground of our hearts God has given us is efficient enough to handle all we need
to produce for Jesus.
A lot of the things we grow produce their own seeds and the
cycle goes on, such as the seeds the words of our mouths produce. Some of the
seeds turn out to be good and others are not so good. Once again it all depends
on what we originally planted in our hearts as to what kind of word-seed gets
planted.
As nice as it would be for Satan to stay out of our gardens
he likes to come in uninvited to plant his own seeds. Seeds of doubt, discontent,
disobedience, impatience, lack of faith, selfishness, and more. This brings up
a whole new struggle in the garden and that is the weeding out of the things
that grow uninvited or sadly enough, “invited.” God isn’t mocked, He’s not a
fool, He knows we will reap what we sow. it’s important we know that as well.
We need to live intentional lives, intentionally picking out
the fruit that God requires us to grow. We can’t live a wildflower seed life
forever. A kind of life where you just randomly throw some seeds out on the
ground and hope they grow or again, pray for crop failure on Sunday.
Truly, the best seed of all is the seeds of eternal life,
the message of the gospel that contains eternal life. Spiritually we are where
we are today because someone picked and planted a seed of eternal life in us or
in our parents and ancestors who passed it down from generation to generation. We
need to do this as well.
Pick and plant; plant and pick as you grow a crop today that
will harvest tomorrow an awesome produce for the kingdom of God.
Forever fruitful. Forever God’s.
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