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The law of sowing and reaping is one of those biblical themes that spans the whole of scripture. From the beginning of Genesis, where God emphasizes that everything produces seed and fruit after its own kind, to the final book in the Bible, where men reap in due season what they have sown in their lives, the simple idea of reaping and sowing is underscored in the word of God.
We often think of this law in the sense that God will not be fooled, a man WILL reap what he has sown. In regard to that principle, wise parents and teachers warn our young people that if you sow the wild oats you will reap the whirlwind. However, this isn't the whole of the concept. There is a positive aspect to the law of sowing and reaping as well. If you sow in righteousness you will reap in blessings. Therefore, we advise others as well as ourselves, live faithfully and righteously and you will reap the benefits and blessings of walking with God.
For much of my life these two principles have been the foundation for my understanding of the law of sowing and reaping. However, recently, I have become aware of another simple truth contained within this timeless law. There is a statutory, binding, aspect to this simple law in both the physical and natural realms. It is simply this: Where you sow you will reap. The converse is equally true: Where there is no sowing there will be no reaping.
Why does this matter? Because, the law of sowing and reaping pertains to much more than just judgment and blessing. This simple governing principle that God put in place from the beginning emphasizes the fact that where there is sowing, of any kind, there will be reaping, of the same kind. If you sow wheat you will reap wheat. Ask any farmer. Where wheat is sown, it produces after its own kind. Even in lean years, even in times of drought, at least a portion of what is sown results in a harvest.
Jesus touches this principle in several ways in the gospels. In a notable example, He told a great crowd in Luke 8 a parable about a sower that went forth to sow seed. Later, as He explained the parable, he told the disciples that the seed is the word of God. He then underscored the simple truth behind the law of sowing and reaping, if you sow you will reap. Not every soul that hears the word will receive it and bear fruit, however, if you are faithful in sowing you will be faithfully rewarded in reaping.
Perhaps this is why Paul told the Corinthians that one plants, another waters but God gives the increase. Because there is a statutory aspect to the law. If you will sow, you will reap. You and I don't create the harvest, we only sow the seed. God gives the increase. By god's own law, if we sow faithfully, sooner or later there will be a harvest where the seed is sown.
With this principle in mind I have found myself coming back to a simple theme over the last six weeks. With the image of Psalm 126 in my mind I have constantly reminded the church that "he that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him."
I am persuaded that the harvest is in our hands! Revival is ours to have. We have, within our possession, the powerfully fruitful word of God and the law is steadfast. If we will sow it faithfully and indiscriminately in accordance with the example of the word of God, we cannot help but reap a harvest in due season.
I am reminded that a farmer once admonished me, "seed is cheap, sow it." It costs us little to share the benefits and blessings of the gospel but it gains us much in terms of harvest. I fully believe that we will each experience a revival that is directly proportionate to the amount of sowing that we have been engaged in.
I simply want to encourage you to sow the seed. Share the word of God. Share the blessings and promises of God. Tell anyone that will listen just how good your God is. The key to reaping lies in the sowing. Let me encourage you, friend, don't grow weary in well doing, if you are faithful, in due season you will reap a harvest. Your efforts are not in vain. They can't be in vain. Where there is sowing, there will be reaping, God's law requires it!
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Lessons From A Snowflake…
The Snowflake Man, Wilson Bentley was 15 when his mother gave him a microscope. It was snowing on his birthday, so he used his new microscope to look at a snowflake. In the fleeting moment before it melted he glimpsed its six points and the intricacies of its patterns. That day excited a passion that never subsided. During the next 50 years, Wilson Bentley took over 5,000 pictures of snowflakes.
In all his photographs of snowflakes Bentley never found two alike. In fact, he was the first to recognize and catalog this fact. Bentley said, “Every crystal was a masterpiece of design; no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.”
Wilson Bentley photographed over 5,000 snowflakes and found no two identical. Understand this, there are 5,000 snowflakes in just a swipe of snow, and 10 million to a cup. There are 18 million snowflakes in a single cubic foot of snow -- and not one of them is like another. The chances of two snowflakes being exactly alike are about one in a million trillion.
This is the first lesson you can learn this afternoon from a snowflake. You are unique! Psalms 139:14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. God himself intentionally made each of us who we are. There's not anybody in the world like you. There never has been, and there never will be. The same God that calls the snow from his storehouse and insures each individual flake, trillions an hour, is uniquely formed – he crafted you in your mother’s womb. He made you uniquely you! If you were to search the whole world, you wouldn't find two people who had the same footprint or fingerprint or voice print. God fashioned you and formed you and he made you perfect according to his plan and purpose for your life.
You, as a person, are the combination of many seemingly random things. Not only are your fingerprints, voiceprints, footprints, even the design of the iris of your eye, completely unique. You are further made an individual by other factors. You are the compilation of DNA gathered from both your mother and father. DNA that was further impacted by your grandparents and great grandparents, on down the line. Your personality and character are the compilation of all of your life experiences. Everything that has happened to you along the way. Your education, your work, your skills, your talents, they all combine together to make a completely unique you.
This leads us to the second lesson to be learned form a snowflake. What stunned and motivated Bentley to study snow was the tremendous balance of order and recklessness. Whatever their pattern and variety, all snow crystals are six-sided. This fact had intrigued the German astronomer Johannes Kepler. In 1610 Kepler wrote a book called The Six-Cornered Snowflake. Why, asks Kepler in his little treatise, do snowflakes fall as six-cornered starlets? There must be a cause, he asserts, for if it happens by chance, then why don’t snowflakes fall with five corners or with seven? At the end of his little book, Kepler confesses his ignorance and leaves the problem of the snowflake’s symmetry to future generations of natural philosophers.
The riddle of the snowflake has since been partly solved. Physicists have traced the snowflake’s six-sided secret down into the heart of matter, to the form of the water molecule, and, ultimately, to the laws of atomic bonding that give the water molecule its shape. Water is a combination of an atom of oxygen linked with two atoms of hydrogen in a regular hexagonal lattice. That forms the foundation for the shape of a snowflake. But their growth as crystals has an element of randomness that gives them their individuality.
Snowflakes look stable but at the atomic level they are a frenzy of activity, as the water shifts and electronic bonds between molecules are made and broken a million times a second. Faults in the crystal jump from place to place and are repaired. “And somehow,” he says, “in the midst of this atomic chaos, the snowflake acquires and retains an ordered form.” The snowflake is one of nature’s most profound mysteries. Beauty and structure arise from a delicate balance of order and disorder.
This is the second lesson you can learn from a snowflake this afternoon. Your life may seem to be the compilation of random chance but there is a divine order to the events and happenings of your life. All of these external forces that have shaped and formed you – while they may seem random – were divinely orchestrated to order your life according to God’s purpose. God has a plan for you. You were shaped for a purpose! You're not here by accident.
God made you for a reason.
You were designed by God, and it was his idea to make you. It's not a mistake. You were planned before birth. The Lord told Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." The Bible clearly teaches that you were purposefully and personally planned and designed by God. His loving hand made you exactly the way you are. Your uniqueness is what God wants you to offer to the world. God designed you to minister to hurting world. Your experiences, the seemingly random events of your life, have conspired together to make you a tool in the hands of the lord uniquely fashioned for a singular purpose. There is a work that only you can do. There are souls that only you can reach. God has blessed you with experiences, both good and bad, that uniquely equip you to minister to some individual in this world that desperately needs to know him.
We can marvel at the snowflakes, but human beings are much more complex than snowflakes. Each of us has been endowed by God with a completely unique spectrum of gifts. Each one of us can do things, say things, think things in different ways. Each of us fills a specific role in the Kingdom of God! In a hurting world every need must be addressed. And in order to accomplish that every one of us must excel at being that perfect individual that God made us to be. Today, lets learn a lesson from the snowflake. It was formed in a seemingly random and chaotic environment. However, when it finally made landfall, there was a specific, ordered and unique six-pointed design to it. Let it remind you today that you were fearfully and wonderfully made by God, for his purpose!
This brings me back around to our final lesson to be learned from a snowflake today. As I studied snowflakes last night I discovered something that I never knew about snow. Scientists have discovered that every snowflake has a tiny piece of dust at its core. Snow crystals begin their growth on a nucleus of wind-borne dust. Every snowflake has at its center an invisible grain of dust. A water molecule bonded to that speck of dust as it fell through the atmosphere. It happened once, twice, three times, and more, gathering weight, and then it was lifted again by the updrafts of the wind, each time acquiring more water molecules that form the branches and points of the snowflake. The flake keeps getting bounced back up into the atmosphere until it becomes too heavy and finally falls to the earth as a completely unique snowflake.
I must admit, I was shocked to discover this last night, particles of airborne dust provide the nucleous about which snowflake crystals grow. Without dust there would be no snow…. But what struck me last night was the fact that every snowflake has a heart of stone. A “dirty heart” if you will. The process of the formation of snow covers that heart of stone with the pure white of frozen water crystals. We have a lot in common with snowflakes. We also had a heart of stone. We also had a dirty, sin stained heart. But the Lord, through the prophet Isaiah (1:18), extended us an invitation, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow…”
My favorite thing about a snowfall is how it changes everything. The whole world becomes a much prettier place for at least a few hours as a fresh blanket of new snow covers all the impurities and imperfections. Everything is made brand new by the miracle of snow. The Lord, extended you and I an invitation to experience a similar transformation in the spiritual realm. When the blood of Jesus is applied to the heart of an individual, it cleanses him from all sin. God removes every stain and washes him even whiter than snow. This is why David prayed in Psalm 51:7, “…wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Wash me, David said. Cleanse me, and I will be whiter than snow. How do you get whiter than snow? The answer lies in the third lesson we can learn from a snowflake this afternoon. In the Hebrew language there are two words to express the different kinds of washing, and they are always used in a distinct manner to indicate the kind of washing that takes place. One word for “wash” indicates the kind of washing which only cleanses the surface of a substance, which the water cannot penetrate. This is the kind of washing you do on your car, or your floor when you mop it. You can’t wash it through and through, you only clean the surface of it. This is the kind of washing that takes place in a snowflake. The speck of dust is covered. It is concealed. It is transformed on the surface, but at it’s core it is still dirty. Just like the pristine tranquil beauty of a snowfall. Under that snow, all the trash, and imperfections are still there and in a few hours of harsh sunlight, they will be revealed again.
However, that’s not the word that the Psalmist used. The Hebrew word used by our songwriter is one that signifies the kind of washing which penetrates completely through the substance of the thing washed, and cleanses it thoroughly. It is the word that is applied to the washing of clothes – a process where a thing is washed through and through. This is the same word that David used in verse 2 of this same Psalm (51:2) when he said "Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin;" Wash me, David said 5 verses later, and I shall be whiter than snow.
This is the third lesson to be learned from a snowflake. In the matter of cleansing, we are different from the snowflake. When God washes us, he washes us whiter than snow. He doesn’t just cover up our dirty heart – he washes it through and through. My sins don’t remain, their stains are gone. I’ve been given a brand new heart! My past is forever past. It has been cast as far as the east is from the west – never to be remembered against me again!
As I looked over my yard today I was struck by the sheer beauty of the snow. But I was also reminded that this beauty is a passing thing. Tomorrow it will all be a muddy mess. Today all is pristine and white. Tomorrow things will be muddy and messy and generally worse than they were before the snow.
As I considered that, I was very thankful for the cleansing blood of Jesus. I’ve been washed in the blood – and it was more than just a temporary change. My soul was cleansed by the blood of the lamb. I’ve been washed through and through. That's the most valuable lesson we can learn from a snowflake...
In all his photographs of snowflakes Bentley never found two alike. In fact, he was the first to recognize and catalog this fact. Bentley said, “Every crystal was a masterpiece of design; no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.”
Wilson Bentley photographed over 5,000 snowflakes and found no two identical. Understand this, there are 5,000 snowflakes in just a swipe of snow, and 10 million to a cup. There are 18 million snowflakes in a single cubic foot of snow -- and not one of them is like another. The chances of two snowflakes being exactly alike are about one in a million trillion.
This is the first lesson you can learn this afternoon from a snowflake. You are unique! Psalms 139:14 I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. God himself intentionally made each of us who we are. There's not anybody in the world like you. There never has been, and there never will be. The same God that calls the snow from his storehouse and insures each individual flake, trillions an hour, is uniquely formed – he crafted you in your mother’s womb. He made you uniquely you! If you were to search the whole world, you wouldn't find two people who had the same footprint or fingerprint or voice print. God fashioned you and formed you and he made you perfect according to his plan and purpose for your life.
You, as a person, are the combination of many seemingly random things. Not only are your fingerprints, voiceprints, footprints, even the design of the iris of your eye, completely unique. You are further made an individual by other factors. You are the compilation of DNA gathered from both your mother and father. DNA that was further impacted by your grandparents and great grandparents, on down the line. Your personality and character are the compilation of all of your life experiences. Everything that has happened to you along the way. Your education, your work, your skills, your talents, they all combine together to make a completely unique you.
This leads us to the second lesson to be learned form a snowflake. What stunned and motivated Bentley to study snow was the tremendous balance of order and recklessness. Whatever their pattern and variety, all snow crystals are six-sided. This fact had intrigued the German astronomer Johannes Kepler. In 1610 Kepler wrote a book called The Six-Cornered Snowflake. Why, asks Kepler in his little treatise, do snowflakes fall as six-cornered starlets? There must be a cause, he asserts, for if it happens by chance, then why don’t snowflakes fall with five corners or with seven? At the end of his little book, Kepler confesses his ignorance and leaves the problem of the snowflake’s symmetry to future generations of natural philosophers.
The riddle of the snowflake has since been partly solved. Physicists have traced the snowflake’s six-sided secret down into the heart of matter, to the form of the water molecule, and, ultimately, to the laws of atomic bonding that give the water molecule its shape. Water is a combination of an atom of oxygen linked with two atoms of hydrogen in a regular hexagonal lattice. That forms the foundation for the shape of a snowflake. But their growth as crystals has an element of randomness that gives them their individuality.
Snowflakes look stable but at the atomic level they are a frenzy of activity, as the water shifts and electronic bonds between molecules are made and broken a million times a second. Faults in the crystal jump from place to place and are repaired. “And somehow,” he says, “in the midst of this atomic chaos, the snowflake acquires and retains an ordered form.” The snowflake is one of nature’s most profound mysteries. Beauty and structure arise from a delicate balance of order and disorder.
This is the second lesson you can learn from a snowflake this afternoon. Your life may seem to be the compilation of random chance but there is a divine order to the events and happenings of your life. All of these external forces that have shaped and formed you – while they may seem random – were divinely orchestrated to order your life according to God’s purpose. God has a plan for you. You were shaped for a purpose! You're not here by accident.
God made you for a reason.
You were designed by God, and it was his idea to make you. It's not a mistake. You were planned before birth. The Lord told Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations." The Bible clearly teaches that you were purposefully and personally planned and designed by God. His loving hand made you exactly the way you are. Your uniqueness is what God wants you to offer to the world. God designed you to minister to hurting world. Your experiences, the seemingly random events of your life, have conspired together to make you a tool in the hands of the lord uniquely fashioned for a singular purpose. There is a work that only you can do. There are souls that only you can reach. God has blessed you with experiences, both good and bad, that uniquely equip you to minister to some individual in this world that desperately needs to know him.
We can marvel at the snowflakes, but human beings are much more complex than snowflakes. Each of us has been endowed by God with a completely unique spectrum of gifts. Each one of us can do things, say things, think things in different ways. Each of us fills a specific role in the Kingdom of God! In a hurting world every need must be addressed. And in order to accomplish that every one of us must excel at being that perfect individual that God made us to be. Today, lets learn a lesson from the snowflake. It was formed in a seemingly random and chaotic environment. However, when it finally made landfall, there was a specific, ordered and unique six-pointed design to it. Let it remind you today that you were fearfully and wonderfully made by God, for his purpose!
This brings me back around to our final lesson to be learned from a snowflake today. As I studied snowflakes last night I discovered something that I never knew about snow. Scientists have discovered that every snowflake has a tiny piece of dust at its core. Snow crystals begin their growth on a nucleus of wind-borne dust. Every snowflake has at its center an invisible grain of dust. A water molecule bonded to that speck of dust as it fell through the atmosphere. It happened once, twice, three times, and more, gathering weight, and then it was lifted again by the updrafts of the wind, each time acquiring more water molecules that form the branches and points of the snowflake. The flake keeps getting bounced back up into the atmosphere until it becomes too heavy and finally falls to the earth as a completely unique snowflake.
I must admit, I was shocked to discover this last night, particles of airborne dust provide the nucleous about which snowflake crystals grow. Without dust there would be no snow…. But what struck me last night was the fact that every snowflake has a heart of stone. A “dirty heart” if you will. The process of the formation of snow covers that heart of stone with the pure white of frozen water crystals. We have a lot in common with snowflakes. We also had a heart of stone. We also had a dirty, sin stained heart. But the Lord, through the prophet Isaiah (1:18), extended us an invitation, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow…”
My favorite thing about a snowfall is how it changes everything. The whole world becomes a much prettier place for at least a few hours as a fresh blanket of new snow covers all the impurities and imperfections. Everything is made brand new by the miracle of snow. The Lord, extended you and I an invitation to experience a similar transformation in the spiritual realm. When the blood of Jesus is applied to the heart of an individual, it cleanses him from all sin. God removes every stain and washes him even whiter than snow. This is why David prayed in Psalm 51:7, “…wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Wash me, David said. Cleanse me, and I will be whiter than snow. How do you get whiter than snow? The answer lies in the third lesson we can learn from a snowflake this afternoon. In the Hebrew language there are two words to express the different kinds of washing, and they are always used in a distinct manner to indicate the kind of washing that takes place. One word for “wash” indicates the kind of washing which only cleanses the surface of a substance, which the water cannot penetrate. This is the kind of washing you do on your car, or your floor when you mop it. You can’t wash it through and through, you only clean the surface of it. This is the kind of washing that takes place in a snowflake. The speck of dust is covered. It is concealed. It is transformed on the surface, but at it’s core it is still dirty. Just like the pristine tranquil beauty of a snowfall. Under that snow, all the trash, and imperfections are still there and in a few hours of harsh sunlight, they will be revealed again.
However, that’s not the word that the Psalmist used. The Hebrew word used by our songwriter is one that signifies the kind of washing which penetrates completely through the substance of the thing washed, and cleanses it thoroughly. It is the word that is applied to the washing of clothes – a process where a thing is washed through and through. This is the same word that David used in verse 2 of this same Psalm (51:2) when he said "Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin;" Wash me, David said 5 verses later, and I shall be whiter than snow.
This is the third lesson to be learned from a snowflake. In the matter of cleansing, we are different from the snowflake. When God washes us, he washes us whiter than snow. He doesn’t just cover up our dirty heart – he washes it through and through. My sins don’t remain, their stains are gone. I’ve been given a brand new heart! My past is forever past. It has been cast as far as the east is from the west – never to be remembered against me again!
As I looked over my yard today I was struck by the sheer beauty of the snow. But I was also reminded that this beauty is a passing thing. Tomorrow it will all be a muddy mess. Today all is pristine and white. Tomorrow things will be muddy and messy and generally worse than they were before the snow.
As I considered that, I was very thankful for the cleansing blood of Jesus. I’ve been washed in the blood – and it was more than just a temporary change. My soul was cleansed by the blood of the lamb. I’ve been washed through and through. That's the most valuable lesson we can learn from a snowflake...
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