Knowing Your Seasons and It’s Fruit Part 3
Scriptures: Galatians 6:7; 5:22; Jeremiah 1:5; 1 Corinthians 3:6-8
Introduction:
This is part three of my series “Knowing Your Seasons and It’s Fruit”. In parts one and two I shared with you that we all go through season, naturally and spiritually. Our natural seasons consists of the four seasons – winter, spring, summer and fall, as well as other seasons that we experience in our life time that are not related to the weather (i.e. Christmas, seasons of a job, etc.) From a spiritual perspective I told you that just as it is in the natural, we also experience spiritual seasons. I gave you two visuals to reflect on – the first week it was the bananas and last week it was popcorn. Each visual was to plant a question in your mind as to where you were spiritually in your seasons as it related to your relationship with Christ.
This morning I will conclude the series by focusing on the fruits of our seasons based on the seeds we sow. I shared with you what Paul said to the Galatians in Galatians 6:7. It reads “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.” If a farmer sows corn, he will reap corn. If he sows wheat, he will reap wheat. Whatever he sows, that is what he will reap. If my wife plants roses in her garden, roses will grow. Whatever we sow, that is what we will reap. One of the keys is to know when and what to plant. There are certain vegetables that you must plant at certain times of the year if you want them to grow. The same applies to flowers. Some flowers you plant once and they come back every year while others are more seasonal and must be re-planted every year. This is how it is spiritually with our sowing seeds. We must recognize the seasons we are in so that when we are sowing seeds, we are sowing the appropriate seeds. Also in conjunction with this, by knowing the seasons we will know what fruits are growing – even if we are not the beneficiaries of the fruit, we recognize that we have fruit out there that someone is benefitting from.
There are two key points that I want to stress to you this morning. The first point is spiritually when we are sowing seeds, we do not always know what fruit will come from those seeds. The second point I want to make is that the seeds we sow will produce fruit, but the fruit may not be solely for our consumption as each of us are truly benefitting from the seeds others have sown within us. Keep these two points in mind as we do through the rest of this message. As a visual aid this morning, I am giving each of you a small bag of seeds. Please do not eat the seeds; they are for your reference point for this message. I will refer to these seeds throughout the message so please keep them close by in case you need to take a quick glance at them from time to time.
I. Understanding How Your Seeds Produce Fruit
If you consider the seeds that I gave you, unless you are someone very familiar with flowers or vegetable seeds, you do not know what will grow from the seeds in your bag. All you know at this point is that you have a bag of seeds. If you look closely at the bag you will notice that not all of the seeds are the same – there is a mixture. The first thing I want you to recognize is even though the seeds are different they have some things in common with each other. The first thing all seeds have in common is their need for fertilization. This is the process that starts the seed into becoming the fruit or plant it was designed to be. Spiritually it could look like this: there is a need for pews in your Church so you sow a special seed offering of $200. Your $200 seed offering is used to purchase a pew. So the seed that was sown was $200 which produced the final fruit of a pew for the Church. You may or may not ever sit on that pew, but someone will so someone is benefitting from the seed you planted that produced that pew.
The second commonality that all seeds share is their viability. Some seeds are viable (able to remain alive and grow into something after separating from the parent) for only a few days like those of a willow tree, while others are able to remain viable for thousands of years like the Oriental lotus. The viability of some seeds is dependent upon when they are sown. Seeds sown after their best time can produce weak plants or not grow at all. This is critical for us spiritually. We must know when the best time it is for us to sow certain seeds because it will have an impact of the final results. If we are in line spiritually with our seasons we will know when and what to plant in order to receive the best fruit because the Spirit of God is directing our efforts.
The third commonality that all seeds share is their ability to go dormant (the so-called resting or sleeping periods.) Some seeds continue to mature during these resting periods while other seeds get ready to start producing fruit. We must understand spiritually that we will have seeds that will produce quickly and some seeds will lay dormant for a while to produce fruit later. An example of this is the seeds that we are sowing in our children as parents. We do not know when or how those seeds will produce fruit, but we walk in faith knowing that they will.
The last commonality that seeds share is that they go through a time of germination. This happens when the seed come out of it dormant phase and begins to start growing into what it will become. This happens when the seed is transported to a favorable environment, which contains adequate water, oxygen, and a suitable temperature. As the seed germinate it dies and becomes something else. You can never have fruit of the seed does not die. Likewise, if you hold on to your spiritual seeds and never sow them, you will have the seeds but no fruit. You cannot save the seeds and produce fruit at the same time. The same applies to the seeds we sow spiritually. We can sow seeds down a dark hole and they may never produce fruit or we can sow as God leads and know that the fruit will come. It does matter where you sow your seeds and when.
As you consider these four commonalities that all seed share, look at the seeds in your bag. Although they are different, they do have some things in common. All of these seeds will need to be fertilized; they all have some type of viability; they are all dormant presently; and if planted appropriately, they will produce something.
As you consider these seeds, I want you to reflect on this statement: “The fact that you are a Christian exemplifies that someone, somewhere, at some time sowed a seed within you. In addition to this, God has planted seeds within you for His purposes.” You may not know when it happened and you may not know who it was that did it, but the fact that you eventually accepted Christ as your personal Savior means someone watered the seed that God had placed within you and it grew. If you are working within the Church, someone else planted a seed within you that got you started – and that seed is now producing fruit. This is important because you are bombarded with opportunities to do the same and if you do not recognize those opportunities, they will be missed. Again, if you are in your sowing season, you must start planting the seeds that you have been given. Your seeds can only produce fruit when you sow them. As long as you are holding on to your seeds, they will do nothing but lay dormant and in some cases, die. I know that some of you are wondering if in fact you do have seeds, so let me address this now.
II. Our Seeds
I want to read a verse of Scripture to you so that next point will make sense. God told Jeremiah the following: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jeremiah 1:5) I want each of you, regardless of your present circumstances, to hear me clearly now. Before you were formed in the womb, God knew you and had a plan for you. Whatever it is that God has called you to do for Him was put in place before you were born and actually before you were formed in the womb. That was the first point. My second point is this: God has “seeded” you with seeds that are waiting to be fertilized and watered by the Holy Spirit so that they can produce fruit. The seeds were placed within you at the beginning and are just waiting for the Holy Spirit to fertilize them so that they can produce fruit. Have you ever thought about why early man made idols to worship? There is an innate desire within us to worship a higher being. Before there was a “God consciousness” man fulfilled this desire by creating idols. They understood the idols were handmade by themselves, but it was what they represented that made the difference. We do not have to create idols because we have a God consciousness and we understand that He is. But my point is this; when we were conceived, God knew us and knew exactly what He wanted us to do for Him. He seeded us with everything we needed to fulfill that mission. All we needed to do was recognize and accept the seeds; fertilize them and allow them to grow and bear fruit. For that to happen we had to come into the knowledge of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the one who produces the fruit within us through the seeds that have been planted within us. Sometimes this is a direct interaction and sometimes He uses other people. Let me prove this to you with a couple of Scriptures. Turn to Galatians 5:22.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”
This verse does not say that the “seed” of the Spirit is….it says that the “fruit” of the Spirit is…. It is the seed that produces the fruit since the beginning. When God created the earth – He created the fruit tress, plants, etc with the seeds within them to continue the reproducing process. When God created man, He created us with the seeds within us to continue producing life. But since the beginning, if there was to be fruit available, it started with a seed. That being said, the fruit of the Spirit are those things that I just read – love, joy, peace, etc. Those are the fruits of the Spirit – but just as it is naturally, the fruit had to start with a seed. The fruit came from the seeds that were dormant within us and began to grow once we accepted Christ and began to allow the Holy Spirit to work within us. This is why you see such a difference among Christians – how some can be hateful and evil while others are loving and warm. While some can be judgmental and critical while others are welcoming and forgiving. It all goes back to how we allow the Holy Spirit to use the seeds within us. Although God planted the seeds within us, we control them and determine how they are used (if they are used at all.) If we allow them to be fertilized by the Holy Spirit then they can produce fruit – the fruit of the Spirit, if not they will lay dormant until the day we die. Does this make sense to you?
There is one final point I want to make to before I summarize and conclude this series. Again I want to refer you to the seeds in your bags. I want to say this slowly so that you get this. You are responsible for the seeds within you. Your only responsibility is to produce fruit with those seeds. You must take care of your seeds to ensure that you use them to produce fruit. Once you begin to produce fruit – you share your fruit with others and in doing so you are giving them seeds to produce their own fruit. Remember, the fruit you produce has its own seeds so that when you share your fruit, you are sharing seeds at the same time. But there is a reason we share the fruit with the seeds in them. If I wanted to give watermelon seeds to someone who has never tasted a watermelon, the seeds would mean nothing to them. But, if I gave them the fruit (the watermelon) and they ate it and loved it, then they would gladly take the seeds so that they could produce their own. This is what happens spiritually. Spiritually we share the fruit and the fruit is what draws people. Love will draw people. Joy will draw people. Friendliness and gentleness will draw people. These are the fruits which the Spirit produces within us that we should be sharing. Once you share the fruit and sow the seeds that are contained within them, your responsibility ends for those seeds. The person who owns the seeds are responsible for sowing them and/or producing fruit with them – both leading to the same end – Jesus Christ. You are not responsible for the seed that someone else possesses, but when they are sown, you may be responsible for watering them. You are not responsible for the fruit that someone else produces, but you may eat of their fruit once they start sharing them.
Let me read one more reference to tie this all together. 1 Corinthians 3:6-8 says “I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. Now he who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor.” In these verses Paul addresses a situation that developed within the Church at Corinth. Some of the members wanted to be identified with Paul while others identified with Apollos. Paul was making it clear that while he and Apollos had different responsibilities, they both served the same God and it was God was gave the increase or caused the growth. Now thinking back to what we were talking about, you may sow the seed, but someone else may come along and cause that seed to produce fruit. For those of you who are working in this Church and you have never worked on this level before in any other Church, we are benefitting from the seeds that were sown within you that is now producing fruit. Whenever the choir sings we enjoy the fruit which grew from the seeds that were sown within them. We did not sow the seeds, but maybe we watered the seeds and allowed them to grow to the fullness of where they are today. So many times we sow seeds and then stand over the dirt waiting for something to grow. Some times this is appropriate, but oftentimes we must sow and allow God to provide the one who will fertilize and water it and bring it to the point of producing fruit.
Conclusion
Three weeks I started this series by talking about our seasons. We all go through season and those seasons have a direct effect on us. Because the seasons change, we are responsible for changing or modifying what we do in order operate appropriately within the season. If we do not recognize the seasons, then our responses to them will be wrong. In the natural world, it would have been a wrong response to wear a fur coat outside in Kansas this past week with the heat index over 105 degrees most of the week. The same applies spiritually. When we recognize the seasons we are in, we can walk more assuredly with God as He leads us through each one. When we recognize the seasons, we know when to plant and when to pull up what was planted. We know when to speak out and when to keep quiet. We know what seeds to sow when and which seeds should be bearing fruit. All of these things come through knowing and understanding the seasons we are walking in.
Every one of you is precious to God. He knew you before you were born. He knew what you would look like and actually took the time to know how many individual strands of hair were on the top of your head. He knew this about you because He loves you. When you were formed in your mother’s womb God placed seeds within you that would one day produce fruit so that you will be able to worship Him and lead others to Him. Those seeds belong to you and it is up to you what you do with them. Throughout the different season of your life, God has used others to plant more seeds within you; to water the seeds you were carrying and to look out for the fruit that you were producing. All of this was done with one purpose in mind – so that you could have a relationship with Him and help others by being a light in this world. Throughout every season of our life, we are presented with opportunities. We have opportunities to sow seeds; water seeds; or eat of the fruit that grew from them. When we recognize what season we are in then we are able to know when to sow; when to water/fertilize; and when to harvest what was sown.
The world is God’s field. God is the farmer and we are the laborers that He has on hand to work those fields. There are seasonal activities that must be done in order to ensure that a crop will grow. It is not the laborer’s job to determine every aspect of the operation as what needs to be done during each season it is the farmer. All the laborers need to know is what their individual responsibilities are and ensure they carry them out. Do you understand what season you are in right now and what you should be doing? There are lives at stake based on your season and mine. We must recognize them and allow God to navigate us through them.
“Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”
(Matthew 9:37-38)
May God bless and keep you is my prayer.
