Weeding While We Wait // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 4

Sowing and reaping. There is such a long gap, often between those too, have you noticed how long it takes to reap that harvest? And sometimes, frankly, we get sick of the wait. It’s a bit like a farmer becoming impatient and walking off the land, the week before his crop springs out of the ground. Seed Time and Harvest Over the last few weeks on Christianityworks we’ve been looking at "Reaping God’s Harvest in my life" and in your life. How, when, why should we sow seeds? How do we get God’s harvest? What does God’s harvest look like anyway? God’s harvest is awesome – God’s harvest is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. That’s what Paul writes in Romans chapter 14 and verse 17. He says,“Look, it’s not about food or drink. It’s not about all the physical things and sure, God is in our physical needs; God wants to supply and provide and He does do that, but at the end of the day, the Kingdom of God isn’t about food or drink but it‘s about righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And I don’t know a single person on this planet who doesn’t want that sort of a harvest; of goodness and peace and joy in their lives. And sometimes we go through life and it’s a big drought. We feel dry, we feel like we’re in a wilderness, – not always, but more often than not – it’s because in some area of our lives we have rebelled against God. And God’s a good Dad, it’s like being a parent to a teenager, you know, when you’re bringing up kids and you want to see them grow up and have a wonderful life, but when they rebel, some times you have to withdraw some of the blessings, some of the privileges from their lives to bring them to a point where they learn. God’s like that too. God loves to rain His blessing down in our lives but when we rebel; when we turn against Him, when we turn our back on Him – maybe not in our whole life, maybe just in one little bit of our lives – God says: “Well, you know, it’s time for some pruning; it’s time for some teaching.” And so, sometimes, when we are going through a drought in our lives, when it’s all dry and that blessing isn’t flowing the way it should be, we need to ask ourselves: “What’s this drought about?” Maybe I have a problem with a relationship, maybe I’m not giving God my top priorities, maybe there’s some area of my life. And when we figure that out, we say, “God is speaking to me in this drought”. That’s the first step. That’s admitting that we have a need and then the Holy Spirit – the Holy Spirit ends up calling us to plant a seed somewhere. You know, when we have a need; when we are struggling with something, we want to feed that need. We want to say, “Ok God, if you want me to plant some seeds somewhere; if I have financial problems, maybe I have to hoard all my money to deal with my financial problems and God says, “No, I actually don’t want you to feed your need right now. I want you to sow some seed in another field.” And it’s a really weird thing because often you say to God, “Hang on a minute, God, my problem is over here yet you want me to sow a seed in the ground over there? What are you doing? What’s going on? It doesn’t make sense – the two don’t even add up!” So that’s what we have been looking at over the last few weeks and if you haven’t been with us the whole time, I really would encourage you - this is one of those teaching series that will just make a huge difference to your life as we learn what it’s about – to sow and to reap – because it’s a Spiritual principle that occurs right through the Scriptures, from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Sowing and reaping and why God sometimes calls us to sow in a different field because it’s counter-intuitive; it’s a step of faith. I remember when I first met my wife, Jacqui, gee, it’s twelve years ago now and she just came to our church one Sunday morning and I was preaching. I wasn’t feeling very well and I was only going to be preaching that morning and she was only going to be in church that morning because she was visiting from a different city and she had really wanted to go down to some markets that were near the church. She had a few hundred dollars in her pocket and she really wanted to go and spend this money down at the markets but somehow her mum dragged her, kicking and screaming, to church that morning and I was in the middle of preaching a message and I looked out and I didn’t know who this woman was and I just felt God saying to me, “That woman is going to be your wife.” And it turns out God was saying that to her about me while she was sitting there. But in the middle of the service, when the offering came around, she felt God calling her to take all the money that she had in her pocket, a few hundred dollars – which is a lot of money to her – and put it into the offering. God was calling her to sow a seed and she obeyed Him and ...