Sowing and Reaping

Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord. --Hosea 10:12

Coming from a farming community, I have sat on a tractor more than once and thought how nice it would be if we did not have to do that every year. Every farmer knows the truth that he cannot sow once and then keep reaping for the next seventy years. The effects of sowing and reaping last for one season. Therefore, if we were to apply this principle to consequences, we could readily see that they, too, are for a season. Sow to the flesh and reap to the flesh; sow to the spirit and reap to the spirit. Galatians 6:8, “For the one who sows to his own flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life.” However, a person cannot sow to the Spirit once and expect to reap the consequences of that act for the rest of his life. The same is true for the flesh. If one sows to the flesh, for that season he will reap flesh. The answer is to start sowing to the Spirit in this season and the next, so in that way each new season will bring something new, beautiful, fresh, and living to reap, rather than by sowing to the flesh and reaping death. 

It makes no sense that a Christian would commit a stupid act of the flesh and God would keep him under bondage, placing him for the rest of his life in a new category entitled “Second-class Believer”!Again, if it were possible to commit one sin that would cause suffering the rest of his life, then it would also be possible to commit one act of righteousness that would carry a person through his whole life. But abiding is for the moment, the season. God is not interested in punishing us for the rest of our lives. Often believers think everything that goes wrong is a consequence of a past mistake, like marrying the “wrong” person, succumbing to temptation and sin, or betraying a loved one. Very likely it is not the past that is causing misery, but today’s walking in the flesh.

OK, how many of us recognized this scenario and quickly admitted a personal experience, or acknowledged someone else’s fling?

Sowing and reaping.  A simple law, correct?  With many optional issues of sowing and many optional issues of reaping, correct?  What is about these familiar words of God that we do not seem to “connect” with?

Each of us has to take Michael’s discipleship to heart, and make some choices about our past, our present, and our future.  Correct sowing on our part yields a spiritual harvest from God.  But we must keep one thing in mind: WE are the ones who do whatever SOWING.  God only enters into the reaping.

- Mike Wells