Waiting, Waiting, Waiting // Reaping God's Harvest in My Life, Part 4

We pretty much know that to reap a good harvest, we have to sow a good seed – but I’ll tell you sometimes it’s a long way between sowing and reaping – waiting, waiting, waiting….

I'm not a farmer but I've often imagined what it must be like, you know you spend the money, you buy the seed, you prepare the soil, you plant the seed and then you wait. So many things can go wrong, too much rain, not enough rain or it rains at the wrong time and pests and disease and fire and hail. Sometimes it can be a different one each year but eventually after some hard work, the investment and the wait; it's harvest time.

When is harvest time? When the crop is ready and not a day before. It must take a really special person to wait that long. My hunch is that farmers have a really special heart, a heart weathered by disappointment and incredible patience and wonderful, wonderful times, harvest time. Harvest and time go together; harvests are essentially about two things, planting seeds and waiting. Planting seeds and time.

And it doesn't matter how much we wish it would come earlier, doesn't matter how impatient we get, harvest only happens at harvest time, at the right time and I guess that’s why harvest time is such a special time for the farmer and I guess when we plant some good seed into the ground and eventually that harvest comes, well harvest time is a wonderful time.

We want to get something out of life, a harvest, 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 might put a dream into our heart to go and do something. It's 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 got to sow. Patience hasn't always been my strong suit I'd have to say, you know I have drive, I like to get things done and I like to finish things off. That's good but we need patience along the way. This week on A Different Perspective we've been looking at the idea of sowing seed.

You know when we look around at our lives and we see over this side of our lives things are going fantastically well and in this one area, or maybe there's two areas, well, things are not going so well. What do we do with those? Do we ignore them? Do we run away from them? Do we complain about them? Do we get angry with people? The best thing we can do, as we've seen on earlier programs this week, is to sow good seed into those places.

When we're in a tough spot in life, in our finances, in our relationship, in our career, in health and we want to run away, Gods plan is that we should sow some good seed and we sow good seed in a difficult relationship, we sow kindness. In financial difficulties we sow giving, maybe giving to the poor. We sow a good seed and we wait and we nurture and we watch it grow and we weather the storms but it all takes time. The seeds, time and harvest.

Sometimes planting those seeds is very difficult. In difficult times when someone’s not being nice to us we don't want to plant kindness into their lives, right? We just don't want to. But if we've got half a brain, we will because there's a Godly principle that says, "You plant good seed, you'll reap a good harvest."

So it’s hard enough, we plant the seed, then, we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait and nothing happens and we wait some more. Great, now that’s a good plan God, thank you so much for that plan but God's harvest rarely happened in an instant.

Time is a process, it’s a journey. It allows us to mature and to grow and to believe and to heal and to grow and to learn and to mature and to heal. You know good cheese spends months in the cellar, curing. A good wine can spend years in the cellar maturing and it's like that with us, you know, when we're going through this time, this time between planting a seed and harvesting the results, it feels like we're in a cellar sometimes. No one really understands, no one can feel what we're feeling, we just have the frustration and the hurt and the fear sometimes.

But time is the hardest bit of all and today, I want to encourage you, enjoy the time, keep sowing good seed, keep watering the ones you've sown. A mate of mine, Paul the Apostle, a couple of thousand years ago, he wrote this, "Don't grow tired of doing good because at the right time, you will reap the harvest if you don't give up."

Why shouldn't we grow tired of doing good? Because at the right time, at harvest time, when the crop is ready, when God is ready then we will reap the harvest if we don't give up. It's so easy to miss out on the harvest. The marriage is rocky, we're busy and tired, she's pick, pick, picking and he's closing down and they're drifting apart, one of those two decides to sow a good seed. It doesn't get any better right away, in fact, maybe it gets worse and time goes on and it gets worse and they still argue and it hurts, "I sowed the seed, I watered it, God what are you doing?"

Time goes on and on, we keep sowing, we keep watering and we keep sacrificing, we keep blessing and loving but it doesn't get any better. "God what are you doing?" Why is it like that? Because God has a plan. His plan of sowing and reaping involves time. That’s the plan. When you think about the farmer who prepares the field and sows and fertilises and weeds but actually the crop grows naturally out of that.

He doesn't grow it, that’s Gods thing and a harvest, out of a couple who are having difficulties in their marriage and one of them decides to sow good seed into that relationship, the harvest is a rich marriage, the harvest is a soul mate, the harvest is intimacy and joy and love where once there was conflict and pain and void.

Harvests are worth waiting for. Harvests are worth rejoicing over and when we get to that harvest, we thought we never would, and we get to that harvest we think, "Man, imagine if I'd stopped. Imagine if I'd lost interest. Imagine if I'd given up just because it took time.
That’s why most cultures have harvest festivals; it is such a long wait.

If you've ever watched soccer, I mean I love soccer but it can be a long wait until someone scores a goal, so when they do score a goal, man; everyone goes mad because they scored a goal. It’s like that with a harvest; don't give up. God's plan is that time should go by. God's plan is that in that time, when we feel like we are in the cellar like a bottle of wine, don't grow tired of doing good because at the right time we will reap the harvest if we don’t give up.

God means for you to have a harvest time in your life, no matter where you are, no matter what you've done, no matter how bad the situation is, whether you're at the point of famine or sowing or waiting or waiting or waiting or waiting or reaping. The harvest is coming. Don't grow tired of doing good and you will reap a harvest at the right time if you don't give up.