In Other Words Tuesday for October 30, 2012

A Fallen Grape

                 

Quote: The harvest will not self-reap but the harvest will self-destruct if it’s not reaped.  Wayne Corderio

 

For the month of October we have gone from the beginning to the end of planting a crop that God would be proud of. Definitely a crop yielding the fruit the Lord wants us to yield in our Christian walk and talk. We prepared our soil, picked out our seeds, planted them, nourished and pampered our garden and now we get to “reap what we sowed.” Ouch! Do we really have to? Yes, we now come to the point where we finally reap what we’ve sown.

 

I remember when way back I finally woke up to that reality myself. It happened when the harvest of the crop I had planted fifteen years earlier was staring me in the face and I couldn’t believe what I had. The more I thought about it and back-tracked my steps over the years there was no denying it. What I had reaped was exactly what I had sown.

 

We can have our educated guesses on why our crops have failed here and there but when it comes to the actual growth of a crop there is no denying. Like it or not it comes out exactly what we sowed. Problem is at the time of our planting season we don’t think too much about precisely what it is this will yield that I’m doing today. Does the fourteen year-old child think that smoking a cigarette will get them the crop of lung cancer later? No. Is the person enjoying their donut breakfast for the fifth time this week think about the heart attack they will yield years from now due to being overweight? No.

We seem to fall into crop failure mode sometimes I’ll call it. As a young girl I heard the whole scoop about brushing my teeth but I never did it well. Now as an adult I would like to shake my finger at that young girl for the crop her behavior reaped that I now have to deal with. We just don’t get it. The one major “Murphy Law” you could call it that will never change is, “You reap what you sow” yet we refuse to believe it. We like the theory of, “It will never happen to me” or the one where we go to church on Sunday and pray for crop failure from our weeks’ worth of activity. It doesn’t work that way.

 Another thing about harvesting a crop is the fact that it doesn’t make sense to put all that time and effort into it only to miss handle it once it’s grown causing it to ruin. A crop may not be able to self-reap but it can very easily self-destruct if it’s not harvested properly. Like anything we grow it needs to be properly harvested or we could lose all we worked so hard to produce. When my dad raises his hay if he bales it up before its dry the bales will get moldy on the inside. What good does that do him? None!  What he has grown needs to be properly brought in and handled in order to benefit from the labor.

 Our Christian lives are no different. It doesn’t make sense to put all we have into growing the crop God can be proud of only to let it self-destruct out in the fields it was produced in. Our talent or gift for singing, writing, serving others, helping others, speaking, teaching, and so much more simply gone to waste because we don’t handle the harvest from them properly. Picking them and storing them frequently and correctly in order to enjoy the harvest from them.

 If you think about it when it comes to our Christian gifts or crops we aren’t the only ones that will benefit from them. For my dad the hay he grows is strictly for the cattle he raises and for no one else. However, with our spiritual crops they benefit not only us but those around us as well. In Leviticus 19:10 the Israelites were told not to glean their entire harvest because God wanted them to leave the fallen fruit for the poor or stranger who happens to come along.

Truly what a blessing it is to get even the benefit of a fallen grape here and there from someone who is producing as God would want them to. This should be a goal for our own garden to be that person for someone else. Someone producing well enough that even a fallen fruit here and there can be used to help others and glorify God’s kingdom.

It may be a part of our harvest we may never see but with God watching over us we can rest assure it won’t go by unnoticed. A crop self-reaped instead of self-destroyed as we spread to others the benefit of a fallen grape or fruit from the garden of our heart and the fruit basket of our soul.

 **Next week I won't get to participate in Tuesday's writing because I will be at a Cancer Treatment of America clinic having my cancer evaluated. See you the week after that!

© 2012 Karen J Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing         

 

 

In Other Words Tuesday Picking and Planting

October 16, 2012

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Other Words Tuesday ~~~ Prepared to Produce

My model in the picture is my dad in his good old irrigation boots and his trusty shovel.

Our quote this week is, "the condition of our soil makes a difference in the outcome of what we produce. We need to prepare well and then we will have abundant fruit. To prepare sometimes you have to plow the ground under and burn last year's stubbles left over. God will not sow seeds on a field that is not prepared. It's a waste of seed If we do our part God will do His part. Wayne Corderio

 For over fifty years I have watched my dad farm everything from grass hay, to wheat, alfalfa, and potatoes. In spite of the fact he worked hard on the fields the year before they still needed to be prepared each year in provision for the new crop. The last year’s crop had to be plowed under in order to prepare the soil for the new seeds. The fields were not only plowed under once but several times over and over again. After tearing them up they then needed to be smoothed out and corrugated in order for the water to flow thru evenly.

 

The thing that amazed me the most was the fact that no matter how many rocks we picked out of the field the year before each time dad plowed up the fields there were more rocks to pick. We use to think that was the number one crop grown in Powell Butte was rocks. Whether we felt like it was a lost cause or not it was something we had to do if we wanted a good crop. No doubt about it the better the preparation the more abundant the fruit or the crop that it would yield.

 

Our Christian lives are no different. The better the preparation of our souls the more abundant of a crop we will produce in our spiritual walk. Diligence and determination are the driving factors needed to start the process. Old habits, old crops, last year’s stubbles, bad attitudes, and wrong choices all have to be plowed under in order to prepare our souls for new crops yielding God’s will in our lives. Even the fields that grew good crops last year have to be plowed under and prepared all over again in order to yield an abundant harvest.

 

If we aren’t willing to prepare our souls for new growth, new seeds, or better crops then we better not expect God to sow seeds in our unprepared heart because He won’t. It’s a waste of seed, time, and effort. God is more than willing do His part but we have our part as well in the process and that’s getting ready for the new. We have to prepare the field of our heart to accept God’s word and be obedient, to believe in His promises, and trust in His power. However, what comes first is the plowing under of the old and making room for the new. It’s not a onetime course, a once in a life-time event, an evening course offered once a year. It’s something that is never ending.

 

The more diligent and determined we are the more likely we are to get the field of our hearts in the conditions they need in order to produce. It would be great if we were able to get rid of all the old stuff in a onetime plowing but each preparation brings up more stuff that needs to be dealt with. Indeed clogs and clogs of dirt and grime in our lives that will need to be smoothed out and corrugated. Fields that are corrugated well enough with evenly spaced out trenches that allow the living water of Jesus Christ to flow thru our fields freely and evenly.

 

All of it is a process that goes on unnoticed, behind the scenes, to yield a crop evident to all. Truly what we get out of our efforts all depends on what we are willing to put in to it. The corn in Safeway is not in its natural habitat, it was raised in fields prepared to produce. The faith you see in someone’s life didn’t just show up there, it was raised in a heart that was prepared to produce.

 

How prepared are you to produce? Have you disposed of the old first and plowed up the field of your heart getting ready for the new? Prepared to produce is a choice we all need to be willing to make, act upon, and work at. The choice is ours. It’s a choice we’ll never regret as the seed, time, and effort put into it are never wasted.

 

Prepared to produce, prepared to yield!

 

I’m the host this week and for the rest of the month of October as we continue on with this series on harvesting a crop God can be proud of. Now that we have the preparation of the ground taken care of the next step is the picking out and planting of the right seeds. The quote we will be using is Gal 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.
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Others participating are:

Mamas Little treasures
Mr. Linky is giving me trouble again: Put your name and site in the comments and I will add it so people can get to your writing as well as we share in this month's harvest.

Follow Suit

“ I must make a conscious, deliberate, daily choice to sit at His feet, to listen to His word, to receive His love, to let Him change me, and to pour out my heart’s devotion to Him. When I get into His presence, the whole world looks different. ” A Place of Quiet Rest by Nancy Leigh DeMoss.






If you think about it very few things in life “just happen.” There are a lot of things that do. For example the car accident I was in wasn’t intentional. I know for sure my breast cancer wasn’t intentionally either done. The head injury I received as a young child was intentional but the damage from it wasn’t.




Although there are plenty of things that happen unintentionally there is an even bigger list of things that need to happen intentionally. If we want to pass a test we need to intentionally study. If we want our finances to be good we need to intentionally manage our money. If we want to lose weight we need to intentionally go on a diet and change our eating habits. That one I’m still holding out for maybe happening by wishful thinking or something that doesn’t require any effort on my part. Nice try Karen but no cigars or should I say, “No candy.”


Our walk with the Lord is one of those things that require an on purpose effort on our part. We are the ones who have to make the conscious, deliberate, daily choice to sit at God’s feet to listen to His word. Doing so very patiently like Mary did that day in spite of the grumbling that came from the kitchen from her sister Martha.


It’s important to the health of our Christian lives to receive God’s love and allow Him to change us. The process begins with a premeditated effort to pour out our heart to God followed by the setting aside of ourselves for Him. Often we do things we haven’t thought out and it seems to backfire in our face. Other times we may have had good “intentions” but what we did just didn’t seem to come out as planned.


When we intentionally put ourselves into our relationship with the Lord it will work out. There may be some lumps and bumps along the way but the end result will be well worth the journey to get there. Sooner or later if we stay on track with our efforts the whole world begins to take on a different light and the road ahead doesn’t seem quite as long.


God already made His intentional move now it’s up to us to step forward and follow suit.

© 2011 Karen J Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing

Map of Common Sense

“If you don’t change the direction you are going, then you are likely to end up where you are headed.” ~ ~John Maxwell ~

Whatever happened to good old common sense in this old world? Did it go out with the 60’s? Perhaps the 70’s stopped it from going any further or was it the 80’s that demolished it? As much as we like to blame the changing century’s and years for what is going on we only have one person to blame and that is ourselves.

Common sense tells us if we don’t change the direction we are going, then likely we are going to end up where we are headed. Problem is a lot of people don’t realize where they are headed. A lady I knew once told her daughter if you don’t deal with your daughter’s attitude now when she is five you are headed for big trouble. The daughter failed to see it coming but grandma could tell and what she predicted came true.


Perhaps our problem is also the fact that we lack real direction and vision. We can’t see where we are going because of the blurred vision we often use to guide us there. We stubbornly figure we can get where we are headed without the consequences others have faced when they got there. For example when our daughter was in High School they had over five deaths over a period of time of teenagers drinking and partying. It didn’t matter when the first one died after all, “that kid didn’t know what they were doing, it won’t happen to me” was their thinking.


Eventually kid number two died the same way and kid number three and so on. All of which could have been avoided if they would have stuck with the concept of “Oh, if we don’t change the direction we are going with partying like we do we will likely end up exactly where they did.” No, that didn’t pertain to them. They thought they could beat the odds in front of them.


Life isn’t a card game or a gambling board to play with trying to “beat the odds.” The fact that you reap what you sow pertains to all of us. If we go down the route of anger and bitterness we will wind up in further anger and bitterness situations. If we go head down the direction of smoking cigarettes we can wind up getting lung cancer. If we head down the direction of careless spending we will wind up broke.


It doesn’t take a lot of common sense to figure it out. What it takes is the willpower to take the time to look before you leap kind of thing. Years ago as I stood weeping over the harvest I had surrounded myself with the Lord told me, “it may not be what you like or wanted but it’s what you sowed.” Ouch!


We’ve all been given the map of common sense to follow but the problem is some use it and some don’t. We can stand there and hold a thousand maps in our hands but until we are willing to stop and use those maps to show us where we are headed they do us no good.


We are the ones who have the ultimate choice. The spiritual world is no different. We can live our lives is fashion that is pleasing to God or in a manner not so pleasing. Both will reap a harvest but the choice happens back in the sowing process. Indeed we pick what we harvest by our choice of what we sow or plant.


It’s never too late to start over once we see where we are headed. Praise the Lord!

© 2011 Karen J Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing

Harvesting Hands

“Then Jesus made a circuit of all the towns and villages. He taught in their meeting places, reported kingdom news, and healed their diseased bodies, healed their bruised and hurt lives. When he looked out over the crowds, his heart broke. So confused and aimless they were, like sheep with no shepherd. “What a huge harvest!” he said to his disciples. “How few workers! On your knees and pray for harvest hands!”Matthew 9:36-38 (The Message)

Pardon the picture I’m about to paint but it’s the one that came to the canvas of my heart. Reading this verse from Matthew about going out into the harvest and how there is so much that needs to be done I think of dirty dishes. I told you, you wouldn’t like my picture but isn’t it true. The harvest of souls out in the world that are wandering around confused and aimless is never ending like the dirty dishes in the house. No matter how many dishes you do it seems like it never ends and there is always one dirty dish somewhere that you miss.

When Christ was here on earth He was constantly on the go from town to villages. He taught, reported, and healed. Occasionally, if not always, He would stop and look out over the crowds and it broke His heart. What He saw sheep with no shepherd wandering confused and aimless. His reaction then and still is, “What a huge harvest!” He recognized the fact there was a lot of work to do and He called on His disciples as He calls on us to help bring it in.

After a big meal when we see all the dishes that need to be done we can stand there in awe of what a big task we have only to discourage ourselves or we can jump in and get it done. The harvest of souls is big and we can’t look at it as a whole only to discourage ourselves. When we do we frequently convince ourselves the job is for the professionals. You know the preacher and the missionaries, that’s their job we often reason.

Like anyone is qualified to do the dishes, although try and convince your kids of that!  Sorry. Everyone is qualified to reach out and be a worker in the field for Jesus. Christ that day gave us the first step we need to take and that was to get down on our knees and pray for harvest hands. Not to pray for others to do what we could do but to pray for harvest hands from all.

When I see a school bus full of kids it just breaks my heart thinking about the souls on board. Who it is that is going to reach out to those kids? Who will be saved, who will be lost? Looking for the bus number I pray to the Lord for the kids. I could leave it at that or take it even further and that is what I hope my writing on my blogspot for kids is doing at karenskidskorner.blogspot.com is reaching out into the harvest of kids.

Someone else’s specialty or passion may be for young single women, or middle age men, or teenagers, or married couples, or mom’s or dad’s it doesn’t matter. What matters is that we are getting in and helping with the dishes, helping to show others what Christ in their lives can do and the blessing of being a sheep in His flock.

We can’t run from the kitchen, as you may have already found out there are no dish fairies that come out at night that does our dirty dishes for us. If we leave them in the sink they will be in the sink in the morning. We can’t leave the souls who have yet to find Jesus waiting, one soul at a time is a good way to bring in the harvest. As much as I would like to take that bus load of kids into God’s family all at once it doesn’t work that way. One child at a time beats no child at all.

The harvest is huge and the workers are few but we can change that if we are willing to be a part of “harvesting hands.” As a prophet said once, “Here I am, send me.” Let us carry the same attitude in our hearts. We may never need to travel the world to bring in God’s harvest but there’s plenty to done in our own backyard.

“Here I am, Lord. Send me.”
© 2010 Karen J. Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing