B. Plant Seeds and Pull
Weeds!
Start sowing seeds as
soon as you can! Plant GOOD things into
your life! The better the seeds you
plant into your life every day, the better the harvest that will continually be
coming up!
Are you sowing seeds
that will inspire you to jump out of bed each morning and throw open the
windows, excited to see what’s growing from the seeds you planted? Or are you
closing the shades and covering your head because you don’t even WANT to know
what’s coming up from seeds you planted?
(I DON’T even WANT to see that person!!!!) What do you need to plant more of so you can
eagerly anticipate the harvest?
The past few years
I’ve absolutely been INCREDULOUS of what Christians have allowed into their
lives. Compromise after compromise.
Then, when the HARVEST comes, the people that so openly violated God’s statutes
and principles are the first ones to feel confused, acting like GOD just dealt
them an unfair hand.
God’s Word says it
plainly: DON’T BE DECEIVED (KJV). Don’t be misled: No one makes a fool
of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants
selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!— harvests a crop of weeds. All he’ll have to
show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting
God’s Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal
life. (Gal. 6.7-8)
If you grow a healthy tree, you’ll pick healthy fruit. If you grow
a diseased tree, you’ll pick worm-eaten fruit. The fruit tells you about the
tree. (Matt 12.33)
You can tell what has
been planted by what is growing. You can
go by any field and know that if strawberry plants are everywhere, that’s what
was planted there. If corn is growing
you can be sure that corn was planted.
Let’s take a minute to
think about what has been growing on in our own lives. Have we been “sowing” to the flesh, which
the Bible promises will reap “corruption,” or to the “Spirit,” which the Bible
promises will reap everlasting life? Are
there some things that the Holy Spirit has been putting it on your heart to do
that you just haven’t made the time to do?
Are there some things that you know the Holy Spirit has been putting on
your heart NOT to do, yet you still do them?
Do you “redeem” the time, and live with an eternal perspective?
Just like in a regular
garden, good things will NOT grow by “accident.” Things worth keeping will not
just plant themselves when you’re not paying attention! For example, in order not to sin against God,
you must hide His Word in your heart! In
order to rightly divide the Word of truth, you must study. In order to find, you must seek. In order for the enemy to flee, you must
resist him. In order to discern the good
and acceptable and perfect will of God, you must not be conformed to this world
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind! In order to be exalted by the Lord, you must
humble yourself. These things must all
be DONE in order to achieve the stated result!
None of these promises of God fall from the sky: they are all stated to be EFFECTS of certain
actions! Do a verb study in the Bible
and see what seeds you need to be planting to get the harvest you desire! God’s love is unconditional; but many of His
blessings are EFFECTS of obedience to His statutes and principles.
WEEDS are
different: they can “drift in” and even
take over by accident! In fact, left to
itself, a garden will become so FULL of weeds, that the life of the good plants
will be choked out! What has “drifted
in” and choked out your eternal perspective? If it looks destructive or even
not productive, weed it out!
Also, remember that
with both weeds AND with good plants, what you harvest is always exponentially
larger than the seed originally put into the ground. Consider a tomato seed. It is incredibly small, yet one seed produces
a plant which produces many tomatoes FULL of seeds to produce more plants! Consider a dandelion. One seed produces a plant which produces many
more seeds to blow and carry to produce more plants! Be wise about what the seeds you plant
because you will have exponentially more to bless or curse your life with when
the sown seeds come to maturity! Hos 8.7
says, Look at them! Planting wind-seeds, they’ll harvest
tornadoes.
C. Many lives will be
impacted positively OR negatively by what is produced there.
Romans 14.7 tells us
that no one lives or dies unto themselves.
Many people are affected by the seeds you sow in your life and the
resulting harvest from them.
If your garden has
been allowed to populate with weeds, it is time to attend diligently to
it. Too many people have allowed
compromise and lack of conviction to set in, and without even realizing it,
their weedy garden has seeded and flown into others’ lives producing weeds
there also. In the book of Romans, Paul
says that he will do NOTHING that causes others to stumble. In Luke, we are told it is better for us to
be thrown into the sea with a huge weight around our necks than to cause
someone to stumble. When David committed
murder and adultery, the judgment of God fell on him specifically because he
had given great occasion to the enemies
of the LORD to blaspheme. (2 Sam
12.13-14) Our influence is a HUGE
responsibility. If your garden hasn’t
been blessing others abundantly, just start pulling those weeds immediately!
God’s plan is for your
garden to yield so many good things that it overflows to everyone around
you. It is meant to yield far more than
you can enjoy alone! Remember when the girl
in the Bible was referred to as “a garden closed in…”? In Song 5.1, the picture is the Lord coming
back to her garden, finding abundance there, and inviting friends to partake of
the fruits there. As the Father sent
Jesus, He sends us (John 20.21). When we
do good to others, it is as if we are doing it for Him. He even desires that when He comforts you
through your trials you share the same comfort with others! (2 Cor 1.4)
Is your garden one
where you willingly share what is produced for the benefit of those around
you? We are stewards of everything we
receive from the Lord; and He has entrusted us with various spiritual,
emotional, physical, financial and experiential provisions to share with
others. To whom much is given, much is required. Have you used all He has entrusted you with
to bless others? Whatever it is, even
if it’s just a lunch like the young boy gave to Jesus, dedicated to the Lord,
He will use what you give Him to bless many many people. (Handful of meal; cruse of oil – Elijah in 1
Kings 17.12-15; pour out – like the
woman who poured out her pot of oil and as she poured it filled vessels “not a
few!”)
Challenge
I close
with what Paul says in 2 Cor 7.8-12 to the Corinthian church after his letter
convicted them:
The letter upset you, but only for a
while. Now I’m glad—not that you were
upset, but that you were jarred into turning things around. You let the
distress bring you to God, not drive you from him. The result was all gain, no
loss.
Distress that drives us to God does that. It
turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that
kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of
regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets.
And now, isn’t it wonderful all the ways in
which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You’re more alive, more
concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more
responsible. Looked at from any angle, you’ve come out of this with purity of
heart. And that is what I was hoping
for in the first place.
This
incredible parallel was meant to inspire each of us to “lift the bar.”
Assess your
garden with the Lord, Plant Seeds, Pull Weeds!
Not only does the Lord wish to bless YOU, but allow others to be
incredibly blessed by the fruit of the seeds you plant in your life!
I
will make you a great nation, I will bless you. I will make your name
great,and you will be a blessing.
(Gen. 12:2)
You’ve
gotten a reputation as a bad-news people, you people of Judah and Israel, but
I’m coming to save you. From now on, you’re the good-news people. Don’t be
afraid. Keep a firm grip on what I’m doing. (Zech. 8:13)
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