What Are You Sowing?

“Don’t be misled – you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit.” (Galatians 6:7-9 NLT)

To believe we can live an offensive, self-focused life, yet still “reap” eternal life in heaven is like planting corn and expecting a harvest of wheat? What we sow we reap, but that’s not the only implication. We’re so blind to believe because “no one else knows about my sin,” it won’t really “hurt anyone.”

At least two fallacies exist in that thinking. One is to ignore the fact that our sin hurts the heart of God and He knows every detail of our lives, even our thoughts. Purity of heart, mind, soul, and body recognizes that our goal is to please and honor the Lord, not break His heart with our thoughtless sin. As God’s child we want to put a smile on His holy face, not bring Him sadness.

But the second, often neglected or ignored implication of our sin is the effect it has on our “body,” the Church. When we’re sick or suffer physically, our whole-body aches and is weakened. It’s like our whole system is disoriented and malfunctioning. It’s not unlike that in the Body of Christ. Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 12:26 “If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it, and if one part is honored, all the parts are glad.”

Pastor Corky Calhoun sheds light on this when he wrote: “The church always reaps collectively what we sow personally.” We’re naïve to believe we can live as we please and it not hurt our corporate effect as a body of believers. Where do you think the common criticism of Christians is derived that says: “Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites!” or “The church is just filled with fakes and liars!”

It breaks my heart when I hear those kinds of comments, and I do my best, as I’m confident many of you do, to stop that kind of “negative press” in its tracks, but words are cheap. I would hope that what people watch is our life, not simply hearing our words in a heated or unguarded moment, but, unfortunately, opinions are derived from moments, not years.

What we “sow” day after day, week after week will hopefully render such a strong “crop” of evidence that we’re real, caring, hopeful, joyful, and radiate the love of Jesus that those who have had negative experiences with Christians can rethink their position. Yet, we all have weak moments or even seasons when we’re ashamed and regretful for what we’ve said or done. However, too often the “seeds” have been sown, and the hurt has been inflicted. We can only pray for forgiveness and ask the Lord to send someone to help heal the hearts of those we’ve hurt.

It would be wrong of me to project these negative things onto you or others, because I’ve been as guilty as anyone in not living up to God’s standards, especially in my early years of walking with the Lord. When appropriate, I’ve begged forgiveness of those I know I wronged and asked the Lord’s forgiveness and for His help in making things right, but His instructions have always been the same – “You can’t undo what is done, you can only live in a way that shows it wasn’t representative of the person you’re becoming in Me.”

Each of us has “sown” some rotten “crops,” but our prayer is that the Lord God would enable us to change and to bear the fruit representative of true repentance and a heart being formed by our Savior.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊