As We Sow, So Shall We Reap // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 3

When you think about it, sowing seed and then reaping a harvest is all about multiplication. You sow one seed, you reap a hundred. But the extent, the quantum of the multiplication factor, has an awful lot to do with the way that we sow the seed in the first place.

 

Lord of the Harvest

Over the last few weeks we have been working our way through a series called, “Reaping God’s Harvest in My Life”. A couple of weeks ago we looked at how Isaac sowed seed in the middle of a drought and reaped a harvest. And again last week we looked at figuring out exactly what the drought is about because sometimes we go through seasons of drought; seasons where we’re not experiencing God’s blessing the way we should be and we think, “God what’s going on? Why am I going through this? And sometimes Dad is trying to get our attention.

Sometimes God knows there’s something wrong in our lives; we’ve rebelled in this area, maybe with our finances or maybe we’re living in un-forgiveness or maybe we are living in some sort of rebellion. Maybe we are not spending the time with God that we need to be and God thinks, “I love my child so much, it’s time to get his attention; it’s time to get her attention,” and so we start going through this drought thing and … “God, what’s going on?" And we need to figure out what that drought is about.

Those seasons of drought are very important times because there’s power in sowing seeds of faith during the drought. The power comes from the faith that we place in God and His desire to bless us. So if you’ve missed those couple of programs, you can actually purchase this series on CD, because it’s one of those teaching series that I believe all need to experience so that we know what it is to live with the Lord of the harvest; so we know what it is to reap God’s harvest in my life.

This week we are going to take a closer look at two things. The first one is – what exactly is God’s harvest? I mean, how do we know when we are in harvest time? What does God’s harvest look like? Good question! And the second one is the importance of not only sowing seeds of faith but looking at how we sow those seeds. I’m really excited about being together today because when we speak about God’s harvest, we’re talking about His grace and His power and I hope you’re excited too, so stick with me over the next twenty minutes or so.

Jesus called God "The Lord of the Harvest" and the notion of sowing and reaping, is one of those consistent principles that we find right through the Scriptures; Old Testament and New Testament – it’s a pretty straightforward proposition.

You buy some seed, you put it in the ground, you wait for the rain and the sun and it grows into a plant that gives you more seeds. You don’t sow, you don’t reap the harvest! The question is: is it worth sowing in the first place? I mean, why should we bother? Going out and buying seed – it costs money. Sowing seed in the ground is hard work. You know, it’s not always convenient to sow seeds. When God says to us: “Go and forgive that person,” it’s not always convenient. We don’t always want to do it. Invariably, when God says: “Sow seed", it involves some form of sacrifice. It involves something that we really don’t want to do.

And so it’s not unreasonable to say, “Well, do I really want to sow seed? Maybe this drought thing isn’t so bad. Maybe I can just survive it on my own. Cor … sowing seed, taking a risk, spending money, spending emotional energy and then God has this crazy idea, instead of feeding my need, He wants me to plant His seed somewhere else. Oh, I don’t know.” So when we are making a decision as to whether we should plant this seed; whether we should experience seed time and harvest, we have to weigh these things up. On the one hand we look at the cost of the seed, the effort of sowing, the risk of loss and on the other hand, we look at the value of the harvest. We balance those two things and we think: is it worth it?

So what does God’s harvest look like? Is God’s harvest about money and a big house and a nice car? We all have physical needs – there’s not doubt – and you may be listening; you may be someone who has really acute, physical needs. This program goes all over the world. This program is listened to by wealthy people and people who don’t have enough food to eat. God is in those physical things. God wants to meet our needs but we all know that when the physical provision – the food, the shelter, the security, the money – when it gets to a certain level, to meet our need, after that all the other luxuries, all the other things are lovely and nice and they’re wonderful icing on the cake, but they’re not the things that ultimately satisfy us. They’re not the things that fill us up.

So what does God’s harvest look like? Well, Paul, the Apostle, in Romans chapter 14, verse 17, he wrote this; he said, “The