One of my significant financial regrets occurred a number of years ago when as a subscriber to the prairie agricultural newspaper the Western Producer I came across a classified advertisement for 120 acres.  The asking price was $39, 500 ( I’m under no illusions that this was a perfect patch of paradise so don’t get sidetracked by issues of whether the land was half under water or a former toxic dump).

 

In my conversation with the fella who was selling he informed me that the land was currently being rented out to a nearby farmer who had already put in a crop.  For the sake of my example let’s say we work out all the legal stuff and I purchase the land complete with its growing crop of canola.

 

Let’s say that, with the canola in full bloom, I discover I have severe allergies to canola and decide that I would prefer a field of barley instead.

 

What’s going to happen?  Will my crop change from canola to barley?

 

What if I pray for it to change?

What if I claim it by faith and tell everyone it has changed?

What if I post signs saying “THIS IS BARLEY”?

 

reap_what_you_sowI’ve seen this sort of thing happen too many times to believers, ministries and churches.  Well-meaning believers who have been convinced that renaming a crop, or claiming a change of crop will make it magically happen.  And I used the word “magically” intentionally.

 

The Biblical principle is this:  You reap what you sow.

 

Now, I can auction off all my canola machinery and buy a whole new set of all the machinery and equipment I need to harvest barley, but that still won’t change what is in the field!

 

Too often churches and ministries discover this the hard way.  Their current leader or pastor leaves (jumped, pushed, dropped, sails) and when the new “machinery” arrives they expect him/her to change a crop of canola into barley.

 

It doesn’t work that way.

 

It is a soundly biblical and eternally consistent truth that you reap what you sow.  I like how utterly emphatic the Apostle Paul is in writing this truth to the first century believers in Galatia.

 

Galatians 6:7 (PNWiV)

7 Do not be duped:

God is not mocked,

Whatever you sow, that’s precisely what you will also reap.

 

I have no way of knowing what season you personally (or your family) may be entering.  But I sense in my own spirit that the I, my family and the ministry in which I am serving are entering a time of sowing.

If that’s true… if that’s also you… it requires… it demands that we be intensely vigilant.  It requires us to tune ourselves intentionally to the whisper of the Holy Spirit because what we do in this season is going to have ramifications not just for the present but from now until it is harvested.

 

What you “put in the ground now”…

  • relationally…
  • in time…
  • in energy…
  • in ministry…
  • in attitude…
  • in programming…
  • in finances…

…all of these and more – is going to “die” and then “multiply” (John 12:24)

 

Plant wisely

 

 

…just sayin’