Welcome back to the Promises of God Podcast, Episode number 43. My name is Tracie Rollins, and I want to thank you so much for spending some time with me as we learn and take action on God’s promises in life. This months series is about the changing seasons of life, and we’re working out at the momentum devotional offered by Bible journaling ministries titled Seasons. You can learn more about Bible journaling with their free 10-day Bible journaling course at BibleJournalingMinistries.com. Today we’re exploring the seasons for planting, and our verse is Galatians 7:9 and I’ll read this out of the World English Bible. It says, don’t be deceived. God is not mocked for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But he who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. Let us not weary in doing good for we will reap in due season if we don’t give up. I like this verse, but I think that sometimes it can be misused, especially as it relates to prosperity. Sometimes I hear this verse, uh, being thrown around and for whatever a man sows, he will also reap. And so I hear a lot of people saying, if you give all your money away, God will give all your money back to you. If you work hard that you will be very, very rich. And I don’t believe in, that’s precisely what this verse was intending to do it especially as I read verse eight. So as you read verse eight, it says, for he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life.
So what I gathered there, and again, I’m not a theologian. I am not a pastor, and this is just Tracy what I think. So I would always encourage you to open up your Bible and read for yourself. I believe that you should hear what the Holy Spirit is calling to you in your heart and responding accordingly regardless of whoever is preaching to you. Even the most experienced pastor is doing an interpretation of the Bible. So this is just my interpretation. I usually don’t make a lot of interpretations, but this one was just on my mind, and I felt called to kind of dive deep just a little bit into it. So even if we, so here on earth, like let’s say we work hard, it doesn’t mean that we’re going to be rich. If we look at the book of Ecclesiastes, he week, it says for everything there’s a season and a time for PR and a time for every purpose under heaven.
But when we have this self-focused way of thinking, it’s hard to understand why things don’t always balance out. Sometimes we wonder why a corrupt person can be so rich while the one who tries and works hard, struggles to eat every day. Why is one person healthy but another person born sick Why do some people live along, and others don’t I think having a god focused life helps reconcile these issues. At least it does for me. And so when I read this section here, I can’t tell you that if you work hard that you’re going to be rich and that you do everything in your power to be healthy, that you’re never going to get sick. I can’t tell you that the Lord is going to heal you tomorrow as you know because you do all the right things, I don’t know.
But what I can tell you is that if you sow to the spirit, if you sow to the spirit, you will reap eternal life. It’s clear in the word here. So your reward for sure will be in heaven, but you may not feel like is happening today on earth. Again with Ecclesiastes, there’s a time for everything. And yes, we want to reap our rewards. Now we don’t want to necessarily. So sometimes we want to reap the harvest. Sometimes we want to take the harvest. We don’t want to do the work. And even sometimes, when we do the work, we don’t get to reap the harvest. So it can be a little frustrating. But the verse clearly says for he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But he who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life.
And that’s a promise. That’s a promise you will reap eternal life. And that is worth more than any dollar, any car, any house, anything that you can have here on this earth. So as you are thinking about this week in the whole section today, we’re talking about not giving up that you should do good to all, you should continue to do good and don’t be weary when you’re doing it. Let us not be weary in doing good for. We will reap in due season, whatever that season is. Maybe it’s not today. Maybe it’s not tomorrow. Maybe it’s when you get to have the opportunity to be in the presence of your Lord. That’s when you’ll reap for sure. That’s when, that’s when all Christians get to reap it. Maybe that is worth focusing on. At least it is for me. Don’t give up. Last year I purchased my sister’s house.
She wanted to downsize it, and it seemed like a pretty good move that could benefit her family and mine. And so in buying her house I had to put my house up for sale, and as the realtor assessed my house, he recommended quite a few improvements including planting alon, and we’re talking about thousands. I know it was well over 10,000 the amount of work that we had to put in this house to sell it. And you wanted us to put in a new lawn because my husband, when we bought that house, he, my husband put so much work into that lawn it, I mean, goodness, it was so beautiful, and it was like a big lawn, and it was huge and he put so much work on it, but eventually he gave up on, I guess after 12 years he was done with it.
So he let it go. It was a little not that awesome. So the realtor says you have to, you know, do something about this lawn because it’s going to ruin the chances of this house selling. And I didn’t want to invest in a new lawn. I mean, I think it was quite a few thousand dollars just for the lawn. I’m telling you to get this house ready. We painted it; we put a new lawn in it, we put new carpet and flooring in it. It was so much work to put this house on the market. And I just wanted to sell it and be on my way. But you know, we listened to the realtor but thousands of dollars into this house, and we planted, right. We planted the lawn; we planted a beautiful home. We planted, you know, nice new carpet. Like it looked amazing.
We clean that thing. Like it looked beautiful and the house sold in a day. It sold in a day. But I didn’t get to read that harvest. I didn’t get to play on that lush, beautiful long we put in there. I didn’t get to smell the beautiful paint and decorated the way I wanted to. I didn’t get to have, you know, the most awesome new carpet. When we bought that house, that house already had old carpet in it, and I left it in there cause we couldn’t afford to replace it. So that time, it was not a good season. Not a season of prosperity for us. And I left that red carpet in there for years. And I finally think I did the master bedroom like two or three years before we sold the house. So I guess I was in there for nine years with a ratty carpet, wanted to change it, couldn’t afford it, so we put it off until we finally could do it ourselves and we, and we eventually ended up doing it ourselves.
I did get to reap that harvest and be with and have lovely new floors for a few years, but some of the things that I have planted, especially with the sell of this new house, I didn’t get to, I didn’t get to reap that harvest. I guess you could argue that we sold the house pretty quickly, which could also argue that we probably undersold that house, but I don’t know, sometimes the seasons for planting, they don’t line up with my plans, but I’ve got to plant them anyways. I’ve got to do what the Lord is calling me to do. I plant seeds in many areas of my life that I don’t expect to reap from. Sometimes it’s intentional, like a, just discussing with my kids. You know, sometimes I’ll plant seeds in their life by saying something or, or suggesting something and that’s intentional.
Right I may never see that that fruit grow, right You could plant seeds all day long, but sometimes you don’t ever see the fruit that your kids, you wish your kids would have, but sometimes you don’t see that fruit. But sometimes it’s the seeds that I plant, they’re scattered, and I have no idea where they land like what I’m talking to you on this podcast. Maybe there’s something that I’ve said that has inspired you or encouraged you. I’ll, I may never know that unless you reach out to me, which you’re welcome to reach out to me on my email or Facebook or however you, however, you want to where Bible, Julian ministries and or you could go to the website, the promises of God, a podcast.com you can reach me there and I would love to hear that. But so many times, I don’t know, like where are the seeds that I’m scattering are landing.
Even the other day where I prayed for this woman in the parking lot had never met her before and just felt the Holy Spirit calling on me to pray for her. And so I did with her, and I just don’t know like what happened to that or maybe when I’ve paid for somebody behind me in the, in the McDonald’s parking drive-through or paid for someone’s meal at a restaurant, or gave the waiter an extra tip because somebody ripped them off or whatever. I don’t know what happens to those seeds, and I don’t always get to see the fruit of the hard work or the food of the seeds that I scattered, but I learned to let that go. My job here on earth is to do with the Holy Spirit calls on my heart to do and regardless of whether or not I get to reap the harvest of whatever seed that is sown, I will do what the Holy Spirit calls me to do.
I will do what God has me to do, and that takes a lot of discernment. It takes a lot of mistakes that I’ve made and experiences in life and perseverance. Sometimes I can get tired, and I suspect sometimes you can get tired, but the Lord says, do not be weary when you’re doing good. Just do good. So this week take some time to write your journal about how you can continue sewing even when you’re tired or when you don’t expect to reap the harvest. If you’re here today and you’re tired, maybe you so all the time and you feel like you never get to harvest or maybe you’ve harvested a lot lately, but the pool of your career and the things of this world have you feeling disconnected from God. Call on God. Talk to him. He wants to be in a relationship with you. He wants to love on you.
He wants to be with you during the hard seasons and the fun and exciting seasons. Don’t leave him out of either. Bring him along for all of it cause he wants to be there with you and he wants to have a relationship because he loves you so much. You’re not promised tomorrow. Don’t put this off. Romans 6:23 says, the wages of sin is death, but a free of God is eternal life in Jesus, our Lord. So turn to him, confess your sins and follow his will in your life and you will feel the love of Christ that surpasses all understanding. In our next episode, we’re going to talk about overnight successes and the season of harvest, and so I cannot wait to speak to you about that in the next episode, but today I want to thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Promises of God Podcast. You have a blessed day. Goodbye.
Episode 043: Planting Seeds That You’ll Never Harvest
