There are many basic, viewable laws in life.
Here is one:
A person’s life is created by choices.
Here is another:
Every one of those choices has a consequence.
Choices are like seeds.
Consequences are what we harvest from those seeds.
If we choose to lie – we become a liar.
If we choose to steal – we become a thief.
If we choose to walk in obedience to Christ – we become a disciple.
We have no choice but to sow.
All of our life is spent planting.
In the end:
We reap what we sow, more than we sow, and later than we sow.
8 Principles Of Sowing And Reaping
Genesis 1:11
Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so.
1. The seed we plant is the same kind of seed we reap—seed of its kind.
You can’t sow cucumbers and hope to get broccoli.
The cucumber seed has built into it the exact genetic code to grow a cucumber, nothing else.
So it is with us.
If we sow into the Spirit, we reap life because life is built into the genetic code of the Spirit.
We can’t sow into the flesh and hope to reap life anymore than we can sow a dandelion seed and hope to reap a rose.
Here is another viewable law:
Our lives come from the sowing of others who were here before us.
For example, all of us are reaping the consequences of a decaying society.
The increase of divorce.
It is undermining the dignity and sanctity of the home.
The basis of human society.
The craze for pleasure.
It is undermining the need for serious communication.
The basis of human society.
The decay of religion.
It is undermining morality and a need for standards and values.
The basis of human society.
This is why we must not eat from seed sown in the Kingdom of Darkness.
2. We determine the size of the harvest at the time of planting.
2nd Corinthians 9:6
Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.
The farmer knows that he is going to reap in proportion to what he planted.
If we sow love and mercy, we will reap in proportion to what we have sown.
A family serving the Lord is more important than dollars.
Marriages are planted this way.
3. We will always have a harvest.
Galatians 6:9
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
A believer’s harvest is not determined by natural laws, but by God.
4. You will reap later than you sow.
Farmers know that both growth and decay take time.
Nothing happens right away.
Marriages do not succeed or collapse in an instant.
We want what we want; preferably, yesterday.
So, we take matters into our own hands.
We run ahead of the Lord.
We employ our own strategies and methods:
James 5:7
Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains.
Harvest time has it’s own time.
God’s time is an appointed time.
5. We will always reap more than we planted.
Matthew 13:8
Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop--a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.
Plant a kernel of corn, and you will reap a stalk with several ears of corn.
On the ears of corn are hundreds of kernels of corn.
So it is with a blade of wheat.
The law of increased return is what makes farming a good enterprise.
It is also the reward of a Believer’s life.
6. There is a season for planting and a season for harvesting.
Ecclesiastes 3:1, 2
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: 2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,
Time is an important element.
If the seed germinates before its proper time, a harvest can be lost.
Some of us grow weary thinking God has not noticed what we are planting.
This is because our human nature craves the experience of the harvest.
We must walk in faith that when we plant the seed, a harvest will come.
Proverbs 22:6
Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.
7. Seed can be sown secretly, but the harvest is always viewed by many.
To those not involved in the labor, it seems like the seed was just planted.
When we see people who are reaping a great harvest of blessing, we MUST remember that it took years of faithful sowing to bring them to that place.
8. WE are responsible to sow and God is responsible for the harvest.
We are the ones who choose whether to sow to the Spirit or to the flesh.
What we choose is never an accident.
When God created you He said, “This is good.”
YOU ARE GOOD SEED!
God does not produce failures.
He is the Lord of the harvest.
1st Corinthians 15:58
Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.
I was at a funeral not long ago, and what I saw deeply saddened me.
It was obvious to me that the people gathered there to mourn:
Lived only for the present.
They gave no thought to eternity.
They paid no attention to their spirits.
They weren’t the type to read a Bible.
They acted like they were all happy, fulfilled atheists.
They lived their lives like there is no God.
They lived their lives like there were no consequences.
Without knowing it, their message was, who needs God?
They were declaring, this world alone fulfills us.
But underneath all of that, there was this troubling sense of meaninglessness.
What did the man they mourned reap from his lifetime of sowing?
Friends who could offer his wife nothing but sorrow for her loss?
Funny stories of near catastrophes caused by reckless abandon.
As I walked away, I could see that they were all wondering one thing:
Surely there is something more to life.
They didn’t know that
Hosea 8:7 reads:
For they sow the wind, and they reap the whirlwind.
Sow a thought; reap an act.
Sow an act; reap a habit.
Sow a habit; reap a character.
Sow a character; reap a destiny.
Mark 4:26-29
And He said, "The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, 27and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. 28For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. 29But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.
