Weekly Sabbath Survey
What Goes Around — 3-7-2015
We have all heard “What goes around, comes around.” The implication here is, what we do will eventually come back to us. Some people who don’t know better call this ‘karma’, which would be the universe paying us back for what we did whether good or bad. This is true enough, but neglects to mention who is The King of the Universe. In Bible times and still today, formal Jewish prayers begin with: Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe . . .
In God’s Book, this ‘payback’ thing is very real. It’s called “sowing and reaping.” A person who sows seeds of kindness, patience, mercy, love will receive a ‘crop’ of these same things abundantly in return. We all love this about God’s law of reaping what we sow. BUT, there is also the other side of that coin.
Have you ever said even in jest, “What have I done to deserve this???” I know I have. It’s a great question and sometimes there is a simple answer. This sowing and reaping also works for the bad things we sow into our lives and the lives of others. Bad seeds equal bad crop. Some people live mired in problems and never understand that it isn’t their star-crossed destiny or their family history or anything else, except, they have a SPIRITUAL problem. While there are trials and troubles for all of us, the person who is PLAGUED by it, is merely harvesting the bad fruit from his own bad spiritual garden. The garden is our life, and with the exception of stray weeds that happen to us all, what grows there is our own planting. This quote from my friend Geri McGhee sums it up nicely:
God’s righteous Law of Sowing and Reaping guarantees our own misdeeds
and bad conduct will return to us through people and situations . . .
with repentance and confession of sin, the reaping can be reversed, but
many times we don’t see our sin. We don’t or won’t recognize the problem
began with us, and we are reaping what we have sown.
One thing that must be said about sowing and reaping is this: It isn’t one bad deed and you get one flat tire as pay back. When a seed sprouts, it produces MANY MORE seeds. One kernel of corn can produce one stalk that will yield dozens of ears of corn with hundreds more kernels! Good seeds are multiplied as well. So, the kind of seed we plant determines the life we live: blessed, or not.
There are ways to stop this cycle with the bad seeds. Repentance, as Geri pointed out is the first step. Get right with God. CHANGE YOUR MIND. You can believe in your own worthlessness and your bad life without God, or you can choose to be blessed and beloved of God. Begin to see yourself as blessed and cling to that instead of moping around over all the bad things. Got up this morning and all your body’s plumbing worked right? Praise the Lord! You are blessed! Be thankful. But even doing this does not mean you will be instantly pulled out of hell and set down in Disneyland. There are bad things that won’t just “go away.” One friend calls it having to mow down the things that keep coming up from when she was sowing her wild oats. So, reaping and sowing; sowing and mowing. Some bad seeds are persistent, but they can be eradicated if we let the goodness and power of God prevail in us, and never stop mowing the bad and sowing the good.
God’s laws are immutable. They never stop and are always true. We wonder “why” at times when the answer is as simple as four areas of our lives where we have gone wrong and we made our own bad luck. 1) Bad choices we made; 2) False beliefs we cling to; 3) Ungodly habits we allow; 4) Bad company we keep. We must un-choose, un-do and un-friend. Drugs, drunkenness, foul mouth cursing, all wickedness and evil-doing MUST GO, and the people who do those things, too. Space prevents me from going into detail here, but I can tell you—I know first hand what can happen when any/all these four things get messed up.
Do not be deceived, God will not be mocked, for whatever a person sows, is what he will reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but he one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary. Galatians 6:7-9
Charlene Reams Manning
Believer in the Lord Jesus Messiah
Forward any WSS you feel has merit. (without changes, please) Copyright July 2014
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