Reaping What You've Sown

Jesus says that a man will reap what he sows.  What have you been sowing this week?  Have you been sowing grace, forgiveness, laughter?  Have you been sowing hope and affection and purity?  Have you been sowing friendship, intimacy with your spouse, attention to your children?  Have you been sowing lessons given, spankings delivered, corrections to bad decisions – but all with a spirit of gentleness and spiritual qualification?  Then you will reap the world for you are one of the meek ones and Jesus said, Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Or, have you been sowing thorns and thistles?  Have you been sowing excuses for your sins, bitterness and pettiness when offended, whining and complaining when it hasn’t gone your way?  Have you sown bringing up old offenses when he thought they were forgiven, or finger-pointing when she thought you had told her it had all been let go?  Have you sown a little peek at porn here, a little inappropriate lusting there, a little giving in to the flesh again?  Have you refused to pour into your daughters, your sons, your wife, because you were just too busy – again?  Have you refused to study and meditate upon the Word, your source of light and life, because it just seemed so boring – again and again?  Have you sown gossip and malice, pride and contempt in your conversations with others about others?  Then Jesus says you will reap what you sow – and it will be a garden of thorns.  Relationships will crumble, your reputation will be ruined, your fortune lost – and it will be obvious to all why this has happened.

The answer, of course, is grace.  It is Jesus.  The only way out of such patterns is through the ministry of the Holy Spirit to convict us rightly of our selfish idolatries.  And it is grace when we become aware of such patterns, when we find ourselves hating them, when we confess them and walk away from them and get help from stronger brothers and sisters for them – and when we come here, to worship God, to find rest, to find revival, to find renewal – again and again and again.  When we own it all, then Jesus takes it all.  That is how grace conquers – that is how grace is sown again in hearts that are born again.