Weathering the Storm // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 3

Have you ever noticed – when you take a good decision to plant some good seed in difficult soil – all of a sudden, a dirty great storm whips up.  Hey, I’m trying to do the right thing – God what’s going on?

We all like sunshine and warm weather. You know when the weather forecaster comes on and says it's going to be cold and wet tomorrow, we go, "Augh yuck," but of course without the rain we'd all be dead. It's as simple as that, and sometimes it comes down in torrents, storms blow, the rain pelts down.

Have you ever noticed the plants and the trees and the bushes in all that? They sway and bend in the wind and under the weight of the water. They've been incredibly engineered with a perfect structural tolerance for the forces of the weather. Only in the most extreme circumstances will a tree go over.

There's a lesson in that. When we plant a seed, a good seed, into a difficult situation and that seed grows, the storms will definitely come. They're never much fun but they are a necessary part of life. So we plant the seed and it grows into this beautiful new thing, full of life and then a storm comes. And so we think, "God, what’s going on?" And he says, "Look at the trees, look at the plants; I've engineered them for the storms." Let’s unpack that just a bit today.

Storms well, storms are a fact of life. I'm a great fan of sun, surf and sand. I love summer, I love the seafood, I love the shorts and the t-shirts and the thongs - I love summer but you know something, you know what makes it more fabulous for me? The other half of the year is fireplaces and pastas for lunch and stews and jumpers and warm clothes. That makes the sunny, hot days so much nicer, I enjoy them so much more because I know there's another part of the year that’s going to be cold and windy and stormy.

As we survey the landscape that we call "our lives", as we look across this vast vista of life, we can see some bits that are sunny and warm and we can see some bits that are stormy and cold and all we want to do is get the most out of life, right? And so in different situations we know that if we want to get a harvest out of life, we need to plant some seed. God may put a dream in our heart to go and do something, its not going to happen until we go and do it, until we put the effort in, until we put the sacrifice in.

Sitting on the couch is not going to bring the dream into a reality; we have to get up and do it and plant some good seed. It’s a basic principle of life - you want to reap, you've got to sow and depending on what sorts of seed we sow, we might reap a good harvest or a bad harvest. We go into a situation and we sow seeds of anger and resentment into a relationship, well its not rocket science to figure out what sort of harvest we're going to get.

If we go into that same situation, that same relationship and we sow kindness and gentleness, what sort of a harvest are we going to get ultimately? It can be a very hard choice to sow a good seed into a bad situation; we've talked about this throughout the week on the program. We don't always feel like sowing a good seed in the face of adversity.

When someone does something bad to us we want to react instead of respond. We want to rip their heads off instead of responding with love and maturity and kindness and sowing good seed in a place that was bad for us.

So to sow that seed, to do good, is a tough choice. Let’s imagine we do it, I have someone in my life and they're being difficult, it’s been confrontational and I just make a decision. From now on I'm not going to react to them. From now on I'm going to bless them, I'm going to love them, I'm going to be good to them. I'm just going to sow good seed into that relationship. I guarantee you, when you and I make a decision like that, a storm will come.

There was a guy called Job in the Old Testament, you can read about him. I remember when I first found that book in the Old Testament I thought 'Job' (employment), I wonder if that’s who they're talking about - I still read of it as Job. Anyway this guy is called Job and if you read the Book of Job, chapter 1, you'll see that Job was one good dude. He just obeyed God and was a good and Godly man.

He did the right stuff and yet some horrible things fell on him. The devil came after him with an axe and he lost everything, his home, his family, his fortune, his health – EVERYTHING Job lost. In this book you can read about it, Job chapter 30, verse 22. He said, "God you've gone feral. What are you doing hounding me? You kind of lift me up in this gale and you toss me around in a storm."

It can be a hard enough decision on its own to plant a good seed and it seems sometimes forever 'til that little sprout comes out of the ground. You know, you've been watering it and you've been nurturing it and you think, 'My, I've been good to this person, nothing is happening' and eventually something does, eventually you start seeing some good signs. I guarantee you a storm will come. Just starting to come good and this massive storm hits.

Maybe that relationship takes a huge dive downhill. I find it really useful to see what God does with his trees and his plants in a storm. You know when it's blowing a gale outside and you look out the window and trees bend and shake and they even break off the odd branch before they go belly up.

And the next day you go outside and yeah, there a few leaves on the ground and there might be a few branches on the ground but the tree's still standing. The tree is still there and the storms gone. Storms don't last forever. It’s very rare that a tree's destroyed, very, very rare. Storms go away.

The disciples found that out when they were on the water in a storm, in a boat and they were scared. You can read about it in Matthew, chapter 8, towards the end, verses 24 to 26. And they were petrified and they said to Jesus, ‘Jesus, calm the storm.’ And he said, ‘What’s the matter with you? I'm Jesus.’ And he calmed the storm.

We, when we're in the middle of a storm, it feels like it's going to last forever, doesn't it? All you can feel is the storm and the wind blowing and you think, "but ... I've been sowing good seed. Why is this happening?" Because it always happens 'cause that’s life. Storms are a part of life and you plant that seed and a little seedling comes out and it becomes a sapling, it becomes a tree, maybe it's an older tree, maybe you do really well and this trees been around for a while, it's going well, it is engineered to withstand the storm.

The good seeds that we plant under God’s  hand are engineered to weather the storm. And what I've noticed is, if it's a difficult relationship and we plant seeds of blessing into that relationship and we believe that God will give the increase, it almost always gets worse to start with. The enemy comes along and there's opposition.

Today, together, let’s get God’s  Word, his gentle, powerful, perfect Word into us. His plan is for us to weather the storm. God has engineered us that way. God has engineered our seeds and our dreams that way. Don't grow tired of doing the right thing because just at the right time we will see that harvest.

It's funny how we can miss this stuff in life, something difficult happens and instead of running away we say, ‘No I'm going to plant a seed.’ And we plant the seed and it takes forever to grow up and we want to give up but we hang in there and the seed grows and all of a sudden a storm hits and we want to panic and we want to run away.

You notice how the older trees have that weathered look, its part of their beauty, its part of why we look at an old tree and go, "Isn't it a gorgeous thing." Because it has weathered the storm. NEVER get tired of doing good. NEVER give up because God is the God of harvest. God is the God of blessing and he honours us when we go and plant good seed into a bad situation. God is the one that will give the increase and the harvest will come.