A Weekly Walk - July 25

The Harvest


Earlier this month we looked at the principles of planting and harvesting and we talked about various seeds. Now it's time to see some of what the harvest teaches us.

  1. We harvest only what has been planted.  I mean, how clear is that?  You can't harvest stuff if you don't plant it. Farmers never decide to skip the planting and just pray for corn! Good results spring from good choices; you know what comes from bad choices! Too often we forget that we're planting every day. 
  2. We harvest the same in kind as we plant. There's a God behind things making absolutely sure that what goes around comes around. You see a person acting a certain way, treating people in a certain way, you say to yourself, "That's coming back to her or him." If we're not watchful of what we plant, we can expect to be disappointed with the results we get.
  3. We harvest in a different season than we plant.  Decisions take a moment; consequences and results roll out for a long time. We often tend to live through the spring time of life and we make all these shortsighted decisions: "I'm gonna act the way that I want to. I'm gonna do the things that I want to do. Who cares about results—this is my life!"  And so we plant all these bad things: choices, habits, and decisions. Young people can get rebellious and make bad choices that seem to go unnoticed. By the time they reach adulthood they're like, "I beat the odds. Nothing's gonna happen to me. I got away with it."  And then we get to harvest time and we're like, "How did this happen?" And it all comes down on our heads. And we're like, "Why didn't somebody tell me?"  I'm telling you right now. You harvest what you plant; but you harvest in a different season.  Numbers 32:23 says, "Be sure your sin will find you out."  That's as true today as it was when God instructed the Israelites not to treat sin lightly. 

These are three significant reasons why we should be continuously in prayer to the Lord of the harvest, that He will instruct our planting efforts each and every day.
—James MacDonald 



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