Welcome back to the Promises of God Podcast, Episode number 44. 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 our lives. This one series is about the changing seasons of life, and we’re working out of the momentum devotional offered by Bible journaling ministries titled Seasons. You can learn more about Bible journaling would their free 10-day Bible Journaling Course at BibleJournalingMinistries.com. Today we’re talking about overnight successes and of course harvesting, and our verse is Isaiah 9:3, and I read that out of the World English Bible. It says you have multiplied the nation, you have increased their joy, they rejoice it before you according to the joy in harvest. As men rejoice when they divide the plunder. I’ll have to admit I am impatient when it comes to gardening.
I only garden because my husband likes it and I try to engage in activities that he enjoys. I prefer to grow herbs and sprouts that like literally take a few days to sprout and use not the type of Gal that likes to plant tomatoes that could take months to mature and fruit trees that take years to mature. Actually when it comes to purchasing trees, which we have done many times because we’ve had, we’ve moved around a lot in our lives and have always, I’ve always loved planting fruit trees and when it comes actually to go to the nursery to buy those trees, I will pick the ones that already have fruit on them. Even though I know the stress of planting them is going to cause, our fruit to fall or not be good. I like to buy the kind that already have the fruit on them because I don’t have to worry though.
I know that the tree will produce fruit and sometimes actually more often than not, the Teresa have the fruit that I’ve picked in my life and then I’ve planted these trees that have fruit. They take longer to grow than the ones that didn’t. It just drives me nuts. Fruit does not grow overnight. A few years ago I took my kids on a camping trip down to Willcox, Arizona where they have just beautiful orchard of apples, just wonderful apples. Just so good. I took my trees on my kids on a camping trip around. We did a whole tour around Arizona. It was nice, and I even went up to the Grand Canyon and saw that which was fun. Anyways, we started and headed towards Tucson and then pass Wilcox and towards Wilcox actually and stopped at this place called, I think it was Annie’s orchard and she hadn’t even know why I call it a she because I’m not sure if she owns it or not or if it’s a family.
I think it’s a family venture now. We all got to pick apples, so we grabbed our buckets, and we had these, he’s little, oh gosh, they were called apple pickers, I think apple pickers where there’s a, they’re on a pole, and they have these wires attached to them and you basically find the apple that you want on the tree and you grab it with this contraption and then you, it releases the apple and you put it into your basket. I’m not kidding you. It worked like a charm. It was so easy. I could pick the exact apple that I wanted. At the top of the tree. Well, not at the top of the tree because I’m so short, but close, close, closer, maybe halfway through the tree. Anyways, I could graph the apple that I want and just put it in the basket and then I could, after we picked all the apples that we wanted and we had quite a few pounds of apples, we took them to the register and paid for them.
And honestly, I don’t think the price was any cheaper in the store, but it was just so fun to go and harvest these apples and I just loved doing it. It was such a fun experience with my kids. But the reason why I’m telling you this story is that I was so guilty of wanting to harvest without doing the work. Don’t get me wrong. I work hard. I love to work. In fact, I often have to have people that I love in my life tell me to stop working and take a sabbath. I have a goal this month to make one sabbath every week and start incorporating that into my life. I have done this before, but with, with me, sometimes things creep into who it, I usually will choose like a Sunday to do my sabbath, and then I’ll get bored, and I’ll do work because I’m bored.
So I love to do work, but I love to harvest. I love to go pick fruit instead of having to do the work to grow the fruit myself. I am so guilty of doing that. And I mean, aren’t we all kind of a little bit guilty of, of that I mean, maybe we look at people who appear to be overnight successes, right And we just sort of look at them sometimes and be a little envious of, you know, how did they get to be there How come they’re doing all these great things, and I am having struggles. But if you look at overnight success stories, they’re a myth. If you look very closely at an entrepreneur or a singer, artist or someone that you admire, you will find out that they did so many hours of hard work, so many days, years to get to where they want there.
A lot of failures happen in overnight success stories. It’s just so fascinating that we look at people and when you say what happened like I have a friend of mine who I admire and love and she’s 70 pounds lighter today than she was the last time I saw her. And you know, I look at her, and I’m a little envious. I’ll be honest with you, I really would love to lose more weight, and my weight is just not coming off the way I wanted to come off. But I’m also not doing the work that she’s doing. I do, I do work, but I’m, I didn’t do the work that she did. In fact, to get to where she was. She said no to carbohydrates and sugar for a full year. She didn’t eat hardly any fruit. I think at least for the first 50 pounds, she didn’t eat any fruit.
And I love to eat fruit so it’s hard for me not to eat that I can’t do well. I’m not going to say I can’t do what she did, but she, what she did was tough. She had a lot of protein and high-fat diet that’s called the Keto Diet, and she looks amazing, and she’s off of her medication. She’s doing so well, and I look at her, and I go, man, can I do that I really would love to be able to do that, but I’m not exactly there in my life where I’m ready to do that. I’ve, I did try to do the Keto Diet but didn’t stick to it cause then I had sugar and some fruit and that doesn’t work well with the Keto Diet. So I’m not the Keto Diet expert. I promise you do not look over here for that. I am the girl that keeps trying.
And when I fail, I pick myself back up, and I keep trying and you know, I’m just going to keep working on it as hard as I can. But I can’t look at her and say it’s so easy for her cause it’s not, she had to go through the same things that I go through, which is a lot of withdrawal when it comes to sugar and fruit and stuff like that. And she had to go through a hard, hardpoint. But what I find fascinating about any success story, even if I look at other overnight success stories, like you know my pastor, right My pastor, you could look at him, he’s so young and you could say, oh he’s an overnight success story cause he has this, you know, this church that’s thriving and he’s so young and how does he do it Well his overnight success was years of seminary, years of youth ministry, years of cleaning bathrooms and puke off the ground and volunteering.
And so when I look at these people that surround me that I just admire, I’m joyful because their harvest is here, but then I have to remind myself that my season of harvest, it won’t come unless I do the work of planting the seeds and all that work is so hard, so hard. I have to nurture the plants; I have to do the work. One of the things that I find fascinating when I look at these overnight success stories, and anybody that I admire is you can always see that there’s this, it almost feels like when you look at them now, when they’re done, or they’re successful, you go, oh gosh, it looks so easy for them. I can tell you right now; it’s not. It’s hard work. They’re continuing to do the hard work, but there’s, I feel like there’s like an inflection point.
There is a starting of the process, which she can be very, very motivated to do and super excited and then you hit a point where it’s like really hard, you know So the motivation is gone, and now there’s a lot of friction. And if you can break through that friction and continue to create healthy habits, you will find success over time, right Over time you have to continue to do the work. You have to continue to do the planting in order to reap the harvest and the reward. But it’s fascinating to see that it’s this pattern of like, you know, good, easy motivation and maybe it’s not easy at the gate, but perhaps you have a lot of strong motivation and willpower to get through it. Then there’s a source of friction. And then there’s this overcoming of that friction and, and the establishment of habits to the success.
And it’s just, it’s fascinating to me that that is the pattern that I see for people that are quote-unquote successful or overnight successes, right They’ve worked so hard, they’ve overcome such friction, and then they create these habits that are, they’re lifelong and as long as they continue their successes, they have these certain habits. So it’s neat to see successful people, and we can look at people, and we can say, oh, I can’t do, or they’re successful, and they’re going to be successful. But I would encourage you not to say that I wouldn’t, I would encourage yourself to not put yourself down, to seek the help that you need to make it to the level that you are. You’re trying to make it to. I have a coach like I pay somebody to tell me what to do, even though I know what to do, I literally will pay somebody to question me sometimes to help stretch me beyond.
That’s why I’m doing the sabbath. I have a coach that says; you must take a break. It’s biblical is she’s a Christian coach. But you know, it’s so funny because we think that we can do these things on our own. And I, if I look at it hindsight in 2020, I say, Gosh, why can I, I should be able to do this on my own. And I think the Lord wants to surround me with people that encourage me. And so in the season of my life, in this particular season of my life, I’m gonna rely on some additional help, and I’m going to pay for it. And that’s just the way it’s going to be so that I can get over some of the things that hold me down and, and don’t bring me closer to God, but pull me away from him.
So I would encourage you to find those people in your life that can encourage you. If this podcast is one of them, I’d like to thank you so much for listening. Please, uh, give us a thumbs up and visit us on our website and the promises of God podcast. We can help you out with our Bible journaling resources if that’s something that you’re interested in. But this week, take some time to write a journal about someone in your life that appears to be an overnight success. Who is it in your life that is an overnight success And if you’re here today, and you feel like the harvest is so far off and you’re ready to really reap the rewards today, you know that harvest is not coming, but you want to the rewards today, I would encourage you to lookup. If you are listening to this audio, I promise you; you’re already blessed.
You have access to the Internet, you have the technology, and that’s more than what so many other people have to give things for what you have and go outside. Go outside, walk outside, feel the warmth of the sun on your skin, dance in the rain, and find a new friend. Pray to God and ask him to show you your blessings and ask him to continue to give you more. Ask Him. He wants to know your heart. He wants to know your desire. So ask him. Tell him he wants to be in a relationship with you, but thank him for the gift of Jesus Christ and open up your heart to the many, many more blessings that he has in store for you. But more importantly, the best blessing is your eternal reward in heaven because you’re not promised tomorrow. Romans 6:23 says, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life and Jesus our Lord.
So turn to Him, confess your sins, and follow his will and your life, and you will feel the love of Christ that surpasses all understanding. In our next episode, we’re going to be talking about the need to control the seasons in our lives and the seasons of other people’s lives. So we’re going to talk about control and how to work through that. And I just want to thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the Promises of God Podcast. If you haven’t left us a review, please do so. Give us a thumbs up and share with a friend. I hope you have a beautiful day now. Goodbye.